Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "South China Morning Post" channel.

  1. PRC: "Be scientific!" Destinations: "Kindly publish ongoing daily statistics by detections, strains, hospitalizations, deaths, and recoveries." PRC: "No!"
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  2. You're not swimming very far if you're knocked out or jammed inside of a sunken car.
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  3. Must've already forgotten how to open a KFC box šŸ˜‚
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  4. The strong preference for fresh food every single meal is what makes China so vulnerable to logistical interruptions. Americans and those who experienced American humanitarian aid would be more open to having MREs that were sealed and boxed five years ago.
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  5. Instead: Meng Wenzhou released and back in China! (not said: after verifying evidence of the Iran-HuƔwƩi Affair and ensuring the release of the two Canadians held captive in thinly-veiled retaliation)
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  6. Mainly because the PRC has been growing more controlling and arrogant about what China "deserves" from the rest of the world.
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  7. Bases that are there by invitation of the host governments to defend against Communist expansion. They're likely not going anywhere after the Philippines asked US forces to leave... only to get its nearby waters forcibly named and exploited by the PRC.
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  8. There's a lot less to lose by siding with the West though. China keeps getting caught probing Indonesia with drones and military-age "tourists" in the outlying islands, while having its soil stolen instead of getting the ore refined first by Indonesians, on top of the Bandung HSR fiasco. There's a reason Indonesia has historically been not friendly with Chinese people and communists.
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  9. This is why regardless of place I always look for and try to avoid manholes, not only to avoid potentially open ones but also badly-leveled ones. Plus they're much more slippery when wet, and are especially dangerous when riding a bike/motorcycle.
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  10. Chinese people don't do canned or preserved food, everything has to be fresh. Instant noodles is about the limit, but these only have so much nutrition. That's why it's been especially hard feeding them all under their logistical limitations.
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  11. Not necessarily better, there are parts of NE China that have been going through a similar ordeal. It's just impossible to hide the ineptitude in ShĆ nghĒŽi.
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  12. That's beginner level. You should see the holdouts in Narita who had an airport literally built around them back in the 1970s šŸ›«šŸ”
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  13. EVs are ubiquitous in urban China, unfortunately that also means plenty of opportunities for a bad battery to self-ignite
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  14. The rule of appraising real estate is "location, location, location". China isn't exactly known for setting up new housing where people would like to live, ghost cities aside it's also not unheard of for a new apartment to be an hour's drive from the nearest grocery store.
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  15. Apparently China mandates inflexible price controls on electricity, and power companies are operating at a severe loss because they're no longer using the high-grade Australian coal that their plants were optimized for. So short of a very embarrassing bankruptcy and total shutdown, they're forced to ration service.
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  16. My parents have a similar thought after a transit through Beijing. Made In China might be getting better, but Served By China is still horrible.
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  17. They barely got their piped sewage system installed after like 20 years. A citywide rain capture storm drain system would be novel, expensive, not used often, and doesnā€™t attract foreign investors.
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  18. A similar situation exists with the Koreas, the only exception being the two sides ended up with roughly balanced powers and are both recognized states.
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  19. Two systems requires that physical separation and border controls in between.
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  20. They'll likely ask if you were in China within the previous 14 days.
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  21. Or rather their failure to meet the benchmarks. China's energy is still dominated by coal.
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  22. More like people are getting more choosy as costs of living rises.
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  23. A visit with the US would come after this year, when itā€™s known who will lead America the next four years. No point in meeting with a head of state who might change in a few months.
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  24. Ironically even Sir Everest didn't want to have it named for him, but foreigners weren't allowed to enter either Tibet or Nepal and ask the locals at the time of the Survey. So out of the many purported names that refer to the mountain, Waugh chose to submit the completely different option and name the peak after his predecessor.
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  25. The dams are mostly in the south and west, most of the power outages are in the opposite end of the country.
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  26. Pumping and maintenance costs too. Beyond a certain point (and thus design complexity) it's simply not possible to break even due to the operating expenses, hence why they're practically always found near existing volcanisms with shallow depths to the heat source.
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  27. It probably requires a link between police databases, which Beijing and Taipei are not going to just grant to each other.
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  28. Wouldn't be surprised if it came from some internal spread, since not every village and township is China is as controllable for authorities as the cities that us foreigners only see
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  29. PRC needs foreign tourists and the valuable monies they exchange into CNY.
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  30. ā€‹Ā @mouseisbrokenĀ ā€‹ā€‹ Because Chinese is still not all that useful outside of China or communities of ethnically Chinese people, and the colony-like isolationist attitude of overseas Mainlander communities makes it unlikely that Mandarin will grow in popularity and utility. Around the world I've found that even Korean is a better lingua franca, despite not being a UN official language.
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  31. Can't riot, but can assemble for protests and not get tossed into jail or later visited by police about it.
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  32. It's all for nothing because China remained sterile and complacent on its whole-virus vaccines that no longer work. Now the Chinese people are effectively unimmunized against a disease that spreads faster than measles while the rest of the exposed/vaccinated world moves on šŸšŸ¢šŸ‡
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  33. To the Ukrainians, American equipment is well worth the price of saving their sovereignty.
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  34. Outside of urban China, yeah it's actually pretty normal
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  35. It's least disruptive for the ROC to pretend that it wants to reunite with the Mainland under its own terms. But over the years the PRC has made the term "China" so toxic that Taiwanese are abandoning the label, and are considering whether to formalize its separation (which inevitably includes reigniting their war against the PLA).
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  36. I lived in Indonesia. The locals actually have a lot of suspicion and criticism of China: the way overpriced and delayed Bandung HSR, taking raw ore back to China instead of minerals first refined in Indonesia, paramilitary activities near the Natuna Islands, and Chinese submarine drones they keep finding in their waters. Americans by contrast were a lot more tolerated whenever there wasn't some gaffe about perceived insults against Islam.
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  37. @agapp11able Over the long term I see the CPC facing the same question about their own legitimacy, having destroyed Chinese culture in the Cultural Revolution, and increasingly having difficulty guaranteeing economic prosperity and gaining the admiration they think they deserve worldwide. An attempted takeover of Taiwan -- and even a successful one having to face generations of armed resistance -- would only accelerate the decline when China's only sons in the PLA keep disappearing or returning home in urns.
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  38. For Taiwanese, life under CPC rule is not peaceable; money does not buy love, which is the only thing the PRC can really offer after the Cultural Revolution destroyed Chinese culture, and even then the Party's selective enforcement of its own laws make economic prosperity tenuous. They've even stopped identifying themselves as "Chinese" because of how toxic the Communists have made the label "China".
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  39. Both sides have been preparing for this for decades, though only recently the Communists are becoming competent with modern warfare now that technology and experience made obsolete simple camouflage and misdirections that the PLA historically specialized in.
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  40. And then the PRC banned the BBC ā˜­
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  41. The Soviets gave the CPC Manchuria and considerable materiel support, whereas the other Allies withdrew. The KMT were also a corrupt incompetent bunch, which left many Chinese citizens ripe to consider the Communist alternative. Had the otherwise superior KMT focused on defending China Proper instead of overextending into Manchuria, we probably would have had a North and South China (akin to East and West Germany), and they'd have reunited once Communism fell in the North at the end of the Cold War.
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  42. The PRC would know, even its own people realized continued Zero-COVID measures was more political than medical.
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  43. Might also be to caution China that heā€™s willing and able to talk with the competition too.
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  44. Itā€™d be Japan before that, as thereā€™s more high profile Japanese joint projects and America might change its president next year.
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  45. Most of China supports its government now, but that support/tolerance depends almost totally on continuing an economic rise that is getting more difficult to achieve as it enters middle income levels, trapped by a lack of real trust in its products and in how the rest of the world fits in to the Chinese Dream. Combine that with an upcoming cliff of self-made aging, household debt, and soil pollution whose solutions are politically distasteful, and CPC rule increasingly risks imploding as they approach -- the bigger question then is if the PRC can hold together as a unified state, or end up degrading into a weaker shell of regional partnerships if not provinces going rogue from Běijīng and declaring independence altogether.
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  46. Not just US media, but stories from all over the world of standoffish and inconsiderate Mainland Chinese visitors, and the projects created from PRC aid packages that are questionable in both design and intent. Basically reminiscent of European colonialism with an Asian face.
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  47. If they're uniformed and authorized to enforce laws and policies, they're basically police.
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  48. Because the unchallengeable Party wants it to be. They're enjoying the exodus of foreigners, and increased intrusiveness and impunity they can impose on the Chinese people. If they actually wanted to exit the pandemic, they'd have approved and imported the BioNTech-Fosun (we know it as Pfizer) vaccine over a year ago along with everyone else.
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  49. Ā @magictrick8833Ā  China is like that also, 70-year leases on land. This exception came likely because the local government was concerned that the homeowner could inspire a wider revolt had they forced her out.
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  50. In China that doesn't seem to be the case, else their ubiquitous Meituan/Didi/Hellobike rentals would at least come with blinkers like every other rideshare around the world (they all have electronic locks that communicate through cellular messaging, and many have solar panels integrated into the front baskets)
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  51. They still are, because there's so many ways to source the energy. China just happens to still be very reliant on coal-fired generation, particularly optimized for high-grade Australian ones that the Party has basically banned.
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  52. Still not as bad as daily traffic from jet airliners, where some residents in Narita have been holding out in the literal midst of an airport since the 1970s.
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  53. Ā @308_Negra_Arroyo_LaneĀ  Perhaps to signal that China is not the only major power heā€™s capable of talking with. Heā€™s still Indonesiaā€™s Defense Minister, and the TNI are markedly more anticommunist and Western leaning than the general population.
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  54. That's if Indonesia can get the rest of SE Asia to formally follow its lead as it already dominates the bloc and region... and yielding to a hegemon is anathema to being "non-aligned"
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  55. China making something and Chinese using it themselves seem to be very separate ideas.
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  56. I'd imagine an ASEAN+Taiwan+Japan blockade to starve Mainland China enough that the Party risks internal capitulation, as China's lands are too deserted/polluted to feed everyone and overland supply lines would not be enough.
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  57. It can be a backhanded compliment too, learning to avoid Chinaā€™s mistakes and incompatible ideas for the worldā€™s largest Muslim nation and third largest democracy.
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  58. There's also a rising undertone of hostility from the Chinese government, propagating into the public through its state media. I'd expect the unwelcome attitude to last beyond the end of lockdowns, meaning a relative lack of opportunity and optimism for foreigners moving forward.
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  59. Apparently about half the provinces have implemented rationing. Of course not in the city centers where foreigners and the affluent would take notice.
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  60. Ā @Al_MageMasterĀ  Although now we have vaccines and other treatments that make SARS-2 largely tolerable, and further mutations are more likely to become less damaging because with our collective immunity, becoming a mere nuisance will become the only way the virus survives. Which is a problem for Mainland China, which at this point is largely unexposed or inoculated with vaccines that doesn't seem to protect as well as it should based on accounts from other countries taking them. This means an alarming amount of the over 1 billion people will be hit significantly harder if they ease up and the virus gets in, hence why they continue this expensive zero-risk policy.
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  61. Ā @condorX2Ā  Misreporting, which is easily done where the only people to impress is a secretive unchallenged Party who's anxious about never looking bad. I'd wager their embarrassing statistics is missing at least one zero.
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  62. Wouldn't be such a threat if China approved the Western mRNA vaccines, but that's considered a political surrender.
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  63. For this to continue though, China has to remain peaceful with its neighbors. SE Asia has also been arming up for a kinetic confrontation because of the expansionist and exclusionary actions by its neighbor across the SCS.
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  64. Climate change will probably result in heavier rainstorms, followed by more severe heat waves and dry spells. The wanted rain would just be more random and intense, but not regular.
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  65. Haters claim itā€™s cloud seeding, ignorant that it canā€™t create supercells and wouldnā€™t be deployed to downpour directly on a city.
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  66. Local officials are either with the central government or are deemed against it. That's why they take the vague directives and go to insane lengths to "prove" they're on the side of the central Party. But then if it backfires the central Party refuses to take responsibility. It's the whole Inner and Outer Party dynamic depicted in _Nineteen Eighty-Four_.
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  67. Small businesses just mad the public didnā€™t pay all the costs for the updates to their POS machines, because somehow the act of accepting legal tender isnā€™t a cost of doing business šŸ¤·šŸ»šŸ’“
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