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

  1. The CPC plays a father figure by infantilizing its nationals with childish slogans, tribalist ideals, blanket bans, and habitual overreactions. The West at least gives more privacy, predictability, and personal liberty to its residents.
    1
  2.  @michaelotieno6524  Only through direct payments, increasing reliance on imports, and a low bar definition of "poverty" compared to the true costs of upward mobility. It wasn't so much through anything the government did to help durably develop the impoverished. At least in America you're free to move about the country to where the jobs are, and changing residency is fairly straightforward; China's prescriptive hùkǒu system means a migrant loses nearly all their gains in private sector upcharges for things like schools and healthcare because they're not a "resident", all the while still enriching their executives and Party officials.
    1
  3. Isn't is more accurate to be "gbo"? (I know the sound doesn't exist in English)
    1
  4. Just keep tapping the right side of the screen (on mobile apps) or drag the time slider
    1
  5.  @jantschierschky3461  Right, Nigerians are seen as quite obnoxious especially those fresh out of Lagos. But enough given time abroad eventually they do mellow out after realizing they don't have to practically scream and act so confrontational to every stranger they meet.
    1
  6. In Chinese language media, the US has already been made the enemy for even more minor and vague issues. This is really a conflict driven by the CPC, although luckily at least urban Chinese seem to know this despite all the censorship and propaganda. For the rest of the world, it's slowly realizing the overall parasitic trade relationship with Běijīng. Companies surrender critical IP and trade secrets just for cheaper goods and tenuous temporary access to the Chinese consumer market. Meanwhile BRI recipients receive a small army of Chinese workers who wall themselves into colony-like compounds and provide less local work opportunities than promised, while getting troublesome build projects, proliferated corruption, and added debt that's even harder to clear than their existing Western ones.
    1
  7. If you look at China-flagged movements globally, they want to take as much resources around the world as they can get their hands on. The real infrastructure they build focuses on getting those resources to the open sea where they ship it over, not so much is done with education and interconnecting the host nation like an actually benevolent aid package. It's all but copying what the Europeans did with their colonies a century ago.
    1
  8. China is certainly eyeing for an opportunity to take back the relatively resource-rich Siberian Far East that the Russians "stole" from them back in the 17th through 19th Centuries.
    1
  9. Taiwan has been a threshold nuclear power for decades now, they could probably get a warhead together in a year. In fact America has had to stop the ROC from proceeding further to not antagonize the Communist Bloc. Granted this was before Tiananmen when the Mainland seemed to be heading the Western way, much like how Taiwan was likewise about to end the KMT dictatorship and democratize.
    1
  10. That's because the last times America demobilized it got sucker punched into WW1, WW2, and 9/11. Better to fight small fires (localized conflicts) far away than to let it grow into a raging wildfire (industrial interstate war, now with nukes) that burns down the neighborhood.
    1
  11. Problem is practically nobody really trusts a Chinese stock market, and those who do aren't allowed to buy an considerably influential amount of shares. That's why the Chinese people basically threw all their investment efforts at the "safety" of real estate.
    1
  12. Right, it would take time for a new Russian expat to earn the trust that they don't secretly serve the old country, whether by intention or exploitation of any ongoing personal vulnerabilities they couldn't shake off in the escape. This limits their opportunities largely to routine maintenance, open source development, etc where they don't have the powers to hide their activities until they develop that trust over time.
    1
  13. Developed countries, especially puritan ethnostates, are not in the position to let "perfect" get in the way of "good".
    1
  14. That's because prices for basic goods (water bills, groceries, etc) don't rise or fall to match the income of the buyer; the poor simply have less to invest once their survival needs are met, whereas the rich have disposable wealth to spend on high-cost durable goods that aren't consumed during its useful life and might even appreciate in value over time.
    1
  15. It does hint at including social media features beyond user reviews in future updates, much like Mainland Chinese shopping apps are doing now.
    1
  16. The one with delayed macroeconomic consequences, while emboldening aggressive adversaries with personal endorsement.
    1
  17. The US specifically prevented Taiwan from achieving nuclear capability because of the threat of a cross-Straits conflict blowing up into WW3. Taiwan remains however a breakout power, able to build a warhead probably within a year if it wanted.
    1
  18. i.e. Their plan is to kick the can down the road and hope somebody will be able to recycle it later on... while the can is full of toxic waste and not getting any younger ☢️
    1
  19. Airlines have a very high barrier to entry, and aren't that profitable for the costs of operation. Competition won't be as strong especially if governments abandon them, which means higher logistics costs and reduced mobility going foward.
    1
  20. Once the missiles launch the supplies will dry up anyway. Anti-ship missiles aren't terribly smart on their own -- especially when the long range sensor assets are under attack -- and it only takes one container ship being mistaken for a juicy aircraft carrier or amphibious assault ship to really scare away the civilian traffic who were sailing to China.
    1
  21. That will backfire spectacularly. The "uneducated" literally help keep our food affordable, along with keeping America's massive agricultural exports competitive. Plus coming down hard on whole groups of 'undesirable' newcomers also discourages consideration from the ones we really want.
    1
  22. Right, South Korea and Táiwān were likewise horribly repressive regimes when they started out, but are now highly respected cultural powerhouses. The difference is that their dictatorships ultimately yielded to its people, unlike their NK and Mainland counterparts.
    1
  23. Reinstitute SEATO?
    1
  24. That's not how the demographics work. The bulk of China's population is rapidly aging because they failed to bring up enough younger people to succeed them, whereas America gets a constant supply of young and relatively healthy immigrants who compared to in Europe readily assimilate and Americanize.
    1
  25. "Highly specific" subject to very loose interpretation by the Party, as with all of their other laws.
    1
  26. I'd think the Koreans would instead point their nukes at Japan, as the hate is strong having been indoctrinated from childhood throughout all of living memory, despite China having invaded more often and more thoroughly subjugated the Koreans over the longer history.
    1
  27. Sounds like you underestimate the suspicion China's neighbors have developed towards especially Mainlanders, some ancient some recent but all commonly popular.
    1
  28. The reasons come from an alienizing (i.e. lacks Asian faces) West and an overbearing China. SK offers a non-threatening and actively inviting alternative. Similar transnational niches exist out of Bollywood, Nollywood, and Latin America, but SK made it a government priority to go global in the arts.
    1
  29. It's still more rosy than reality. There's a New Zealander named Tony who's an economic policy consultant in Beijing and runs the channel "China Update", and his daily videos are even more grim.
    1
  30. Because America in general is so political. If you want to avoid ideological controversy in your higher education, China's universities have plenty of seats reserved for foreigners (even then most "foreigners" there are just Chinese anchor babies raised domestically).
    1
  31. ... in jail.
    1
  32. Just ask the oil companies.
    1
  33.  @troywalt4834  Satellites are naturally weak and laggy signals, and can be easily jammed or hacked. Iran stole an American drone mid-flight just by remotely commandeering the controls. A drone that has a line of sight pencil beam to a manned asset and is hard-coded to prioritize commands from there would be much harder to infiltrate.
    1
  34. US doesn't have to overpower China either, just dissuade trade with sanctions and potential crossfire, starving the Mainland of the food and fuel it has to import. That's if America wants to preempt the looming challenges of aging, debt, pollution, and corruption which threatens the continued prosperity of the PRC (and thus the legitimacy of an unchallenged CPC) anyway.
    1
  35. Problem is China can't continue, it faces aging, debts, and pollution that simply can't be mandated away. Meanwhile America can find someone else to fill their order, and increasingly create small batches of it themselves.
    1
  36. Capitalism/communism focuses on production, libertarianism/socialism on distribution, and democracy/autocracy on policy. Arguably it's possible to be a capitalist socialist democracy.
    1
  37. Nuclear is expensive and has been rising in costs. It's likely cheaper to use wind and solar, with excesses stored in pumped-hydro projects.
    1
  38. "Personal responsibility" Republicans made drug usage a crime to hide from rather than a condition to seek help for.
    1
  39. America's role as the world's police fighting smaller local conflicts before they organize into industrial-scale wars is the reason for post-WW2 global prosperity. Pax Romana, Pax Mongolica, Pax Britannica, and Pax Americana are named as such because that one power maintained trade security for like a third of humanity at the time.
    1
  40. Semantics are nice, but ultimately the popular interpretation is what matters. Much like how "autopilot" actually still involves pilot presence and attention, but "common sense" interprets it as complete automation as seen with Tesla driving mistakes.
    1
  41. During a conflict, it's generally better to be open to the initial waves of refugees, since these tend to be women, children, and professionals with valuable skills. As the conflict drags on though, you start seeing hardier but less skilled people who will also be much more persistent in trying to cross in while the rest of their family waits at home or in a refugee camp for their sponsorship to immigrate, for increasingly economic reasons rather than political violence and vulnerabilities.
    1
  42. Also superior industry and moral justification: the Brits stopped trying to buy Southern cotton when the Union declared its goal to end slavery.
    1
  43. Lightning is basically an off-block side channel where microtransactions can be done before publishing it into the main blockchain. It trades the blockchain's inherent security for convenience, and there are scenarios where this can be used to compromise Bitcoin transactions (e.g. mass closing of channels and flooding the block, creating errors in legitimate transactions in the race to verify them all).
    1
  44. Strict traditional values disappeared because the nation would not survive by sticking with it. Remember when SK started out, it was poorer than most of Africa.
    1
  45. The effect of the spending depends on access too, Afghanistan is literally surrounded by major anti-US powers on all sides so a lot of that money had to go into basically bribery for the gatekeepers. For Táiwān though there's only open ocean and plenty of friendly ports nearby... combine that with defensible terrain and a hostile population, and the island is arguably the Afghanistan for Mainland China.
    1
  46. Yet America retains its "imperialism" because those countries fear the alternative... who aren't nearly as interested in letting you express yourself ☭
    1
  47. America at least listens to its people, because there's open discussions, independent journalism, and public elections. The CPC's patronizing attitudes makes it surrounded by sycophants and tunnel-visioned in its policies, which then have to overreact to unforseen/deliberately hidden issues that festered underneath.
    1
  48. The C919 is smaller, shorter-ranged, and less fuel efficient, making it a tough sell for airlines that plan to fly it over the next 20~30 years. That's on top of being like 60% imported American parts. COMAC has a long way to go to hope to be the next Embrear let alone an Airbus or Boeing, especially with China's economy itself stalling from aging, debt, pollution, and global divestment.
    1
  49. Bicycles are cheap and quite effective (especially when specifically designed to haul cargo), but most places would rather skip straight to cars because of its other advantages to its users (superior shielding, electricity generation, less muscle use). The issue with green energy is convincing people that clean air and stable sea levels are totally worth the extra cost.
    1
  50.  @RaulGonzalez-rs1be  As in their buildings are built so shoddy that they fall apart with alarming regularity. You can literally see that they age faster than their completion date suggests.
    1