Comments by "Bob" (@bobs_toys) on "PolyMatter" channel.

  1. ​ @deri1942  >>Just making bold assumptions is probably the most American thing ever to dismiss someone's opinion<< So you're assuming I'm American as a way to dismiss what I say? Something something hypocrisy something something. >>IDGAF if you believe me or not I was born and raised in Vienna and I have a lot of friends with an immigration background and racism is a thing if you want to see it or not<< That's a nice claim. None of my counterarguments rely on you making stuff up. They rely on facts that are true whatever story you come up with. If you disagree, please quote examples. >>If you go to certain districts (15,12,11,..) you can clearly see parallel societies<< What part of my argument is this meant to change? >>Just because refugees try to get into the "Anglosphere" XD (you mean Europe?), these problems don't disappear.<< 1. I've been talking about skilled migrants. Not refugees (Although they're also voting with their feet) - Basically in this scenario, however you spin it, China gets the West's leavings. This is something you yourself have responded to. That you've decided to pretend that we're talking about refugees doesn't do much for your honesty. 2. You're literally the first "European" I've come across who's attempted to mix these terms. 3. If you look back to my original post, you've done nothing to discredit that. You've attempted to shift the discussion away (as well as giving praise for the CCP's five year plan. Totally a normal thing for the sort of "European" who's confused on the difference between Europe and the Anglosphere to do. I did say 'join the Anglosphere practice' after all. Maybe you are Austrian, but... 1. For my argument, it doesn't matter if you are. 2. Sure you are, buddy ;-) Sure you are.
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  2.  @deri1942  >>English isn't my first language so sorry if I get something wrong<< I know. >>BUT first, you haven't presented any facts you were making claims as I did. Why should I choose to believe you? Without any sources or whatsoever. (But then present it as facts and deny everything I say wtf)<< Which bit are you doubting? >>Second, you were talking about skilled migrants, but then continued to say masses of people are risking their lives to get into the Anglosphere?! So you are saying masses of skilled migrants are risking their lives to get into the Anglosphere, which would make them refugees?<< Both things being true doesn't exactly support your argument. Both things are true. Which doesn't change that you yourself decided to ditch the skilled migrant bit as if it never were. >>Where have I said anything like that?<< I have. Do you doubt that China needs more people than any Western country does? Are you claiming that a country with 10k USD per capita can afford to pay what countries with up to $60k USD per capita do? Are you claiming that someone who's offered a higher wage in a more developed country is generally going to go for the lower wage in a less developed one? >>If you are American or not doesn't matter, what I said is still the truth. << Which is probably why "They rely on facts that are true whatever story you come up with. If you disagree, please quote examples" Doesn't have much in the way of saying where I'm wrong. >>Why can't you just accept that not everyone shares the same opinion? Some people choose to be unprejudiced and try to look at both sides of the spectrum. Channels like this clearly portrait one opinion.<< That's a very boring way of still not addressing my opening post, after a dozen or so subsequent posts between us. 1. With smaller populations, they don't need to attract as many immigrants to make up for it. 2. With more wealth, they can offer these immigrants better conditions. Which of these needs sources? This will go so much faster if you stick to the topic. You haven't even addressed my first response.
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  3.  @deri1942  Edit: Because I realise that this is a long post, and I'd reasonably expect a bit of antagonism, I'm going to repeat what I'd written last first. Look, I'll believe you're Austrian and apologise for doubting you (In my defence, this whole "I'm from anywhere but the PRC" thing is a trope amongst the Wumao.) and if there's anything you're curious about, ask specific questions and I'm glad to get you info on it. Anyway, original post: >>You are right, when talking about Austria I know that immigration (mainly from the middle east, plus turkey and the Balkans) is making up for the declining population. But I also know that this isn't the case for countries like Germany, where the population is still declining despite a lot of immigration. "However, long-term projections still forecast Germany’s population to decline"<< '1. With smaller populations, they don't need to attract as many immigrants to make up for it.' So the population declines. That's OK. The issue the PRC has is the crash. Not to mention the per capita poverty which directly affects its ability to deal with the crash. >>And even if immigrations make up for a decline in population, most of them are still not skilled workers.<< '2. With more wealth, they can offer these immigrants better conditions.' They need to attract fewer people to make up for it (or help make up for it) they get the best available. Austria is a country of under 9 million with a per capita GDP 50k that is number 18 on the Human Development index. How do you think that's going to fare when compared with a country of 1400 million with a per capita GDP of $10k that's number 85 on the HDI? Also, if you'll recall, your objection at first was Austrians don't want it. Can't != don't Now != the future. Fundamentally in this area, Austria is in a far better situation than the PRC could ever hope to be. >>According to the official gv site, there is a lack of at least 162.000 skilled workers in Austria. << There's a lack of skilled workers everywhere. Particularly in the technical/engineering fields. See previous comments about the size of the PRC's problem and the amount it can pay to overcome it. As a skilled worker who's currently living in his fourth city (Hong Kong... For the next two weeks after two very interesting years here) in his third country, I can say from experience a skilled worker is able to follow the money. Very few follow poverty. >>Plus racism and populism are a big problem too like I already said the formation of parallel societies, lack of integration, and so on<< See my previous comments about learning from the Anglosphere, which has been doing this for generations. Now more directly, racism and populism are problems.... But for talking about the PRC, dial it up to 11. This goes for pretty much any problem you see in a Western country, yeah, it can be bad, there's always room for improvement, but for talking about the PRC, just dial it all the way up to 11 in almost any category. To give an example (while we're on the racism subject) those Africans who were evicted en masse in Guanzhou? Well, that's from one of the wealthiest, most advanced, best educated and most international parts of the PRC. Whatever happens here is what you'd expect to be better than elsewhere. Actually, when I was in Shenyang a few years ago (probably the biggest city you've never heard of. Relatively close to Beijing... At least, to an Australian it is. A tier 1 city), we went to my wife's old school. An African American teacher came out with us. My wife's friends weren't just unsure, they were freaked out. Right down to the whispered questions to me on what they're meant to do. Not to mention the horror at seeing a yang guizi walking around with a Chinese girl. It's not open from everyone, but I'll see more opposition to our miscenegation in a week of there than I have in over fifteen years back home. Hong Kong is far better than any mainland place I've been to in almost every way (at least, before the central govt ruined things. If you want to see how well they're doing, check out the changes to electoral laws that have just gone in), but I still had the person renting me a place ask (on the phone) if I was Indian. To be asked that question where I'm from is pretty unthinkable. These isn't the worst acts, this is the casual acceptance. In a dictatorship, the worst acts can be, well.... Worse. But why am I telling an Austrian this? Long story short, your most famous citizen has far more in common with Xi, the CCP and what it's created than should be acceptable 80 to 90 years later. >>Of course, we are wealthy enough to give immigrants good conditions, but are we willing to?<< Don't want to != Can't >>What I meant in my original post was, yes China has a problem with its population decline, but we have one too<< Not remotely on the same level. Austria could potentially do something about it. If the Austrian people decide to face reality. The PRC.... Can't. The problem is too big and it's too undesirable a place if you've got other options. Austria is a net immigration country. The PRC is a net emigration country. Not by a small number, either. It's history's largest brain drain and it's still going on. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/net-migration Take a look here: Then when you see what looks like a low number per 1000, remember that the emigrants aren't random people from some Western village. They're not even random people from Shanghai or whatever. They're the best (or at least the best connected) the country has to offer. Look, I'll believe you're Austrian and apologise for doubting you (In my defence, this whole "I'm from anywhere but the PRC" thing is a trope amongst the Wumao.) and if there's anything you're curious about, ask specific questions and I'm glad to get you info on it. I've been going around this country for the last seventeen years and quite frankly, it's one of those places that seems great fun until you get to know it. The more you know it, the worse it gets. I'll miss Hong Kong dearly. More to the point, I'll miss what Hong Kong was. Except for the yangrochuar, and except for that I like my in laws, I'd be glad to never see the PRC again. I've met a lot of wonderful individuals there, but the country as a whole is sick in pretty much every conceivable way.
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  4. Seventy four years since the foundation of the secessionist PRC and the Republic of China remains as independent today as it has since its founding in 1912. It's done a first class job of stopping it so far.
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  5. Your problem here is that no one cares about the PRC. People barely care about the CCP. Only the CCP leadership matters.
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  6. That's taking even more resources to fix a problem that won't begin to show a return on investment until Xi is dead.
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  7. Automation isn't the magic wand you think it is. It needs massive amounts of investment and a lot of highly skilled people implementing it (it's most of my job). We'll go where the money is, and the money isn't in the PRC. To say nothing of the rest of the environment.
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  8. Plenty of room for expansion. With the CCP, it's not did they fuck up? Or how did they fuck up? It's in what wide variety of ways did they fuck up? You can peel infinite layers off the CCP's onion of fuckups.
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  9.  @HFrevive  according to the global times, from 2016 to 2020 the births per year dropped by thirty percent. How is that not serious? One of the ten million born last year will turn 18 at a time when over twenty million are retiring per year.
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  10.  @HFrevive  >>you’re right, but think deeper, if you know, he knows everyone knows, why doesn’t the ccp do something, at least put out some encouraging policies, nothing<< Because anything that could be done involves short to medium term pain for benefits that wouldn't come until after the current senior leadership has died of old age. >>Another data i saw is that 16-24 unemployment rate ( excluding students) is 14%. That means there’s still a huge over supply in man power<< Not unusual, and more an indication that the really young are generally useless until they've had that bit of experience and maturity. >> maybe they will do something around 2025 but not now<< This isn't something you can just turn a tap on and off on. Really, that 25 year lag means something should have been done even earlier than now. Let alone another five years time. >> Honestly think about long term, china is all about long term<< If you think that, then you should be able to tell me what happens when the CCP loses power and how another party will gain it. For China's long term stability, it's a pretty basic question. From my end, though, this is a government of very short term thinkers doing whatever they think will buy them another few months or years in power, at the expense of China's long term prospects. Only the CCP matters. >>We are 1st for 70% of human history and we are still around<< The Cultural Revolution did a first class job of severing that connection to the past.
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  11.  @HFrevive  I've been going around it for seventeen years, recently moved out of Hong Kong and married a northern Chinese girl. If I were far from the truth, you'd be offering more than the assumption that had it under control.
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  12.  @HFrevive  you ramble a lot, but that you can't answer a simple question (what happens when the CCP falls. All governments do, you know) made in response to a post that relies on the CCP being long term thinkers with China's best interests at heart really tells anyone all they need to know. It should be a super easy question to answer.
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  13.  @HFrevive  still evading. The US govt fell late last year. There were some morons in fancy dress, but overall it was very peaceful. Edit: ok, technically it fell at the start of this year. Either way..... There's a good chance it'll fall in three years time. If not in eight (to say nothing of the mid terms) These will all have a level of peace the Chinese people will only be able to dream of when the CCP falls.
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  14.  @HFrevive  a switch (as you call it) is an option in the USA and my own country. An option that's not available in the PRC. There, it's simply a fall. With no peaceful means of establishing the next government. You should be worried that you're either unable or not allowed to answer this very simple question. After all, you're in the middle of whatever unspeakable (if it wasn't unspeakable, you would answer the question as readily as I answered your counter question) thing will happen.
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  15.  @HFrevive  you can talk about my arrogance if you like, but the fact remains the i can tell you what happens when a govt in my country falls. I've seen it happen many times. All you can reply with when the question is directed at the PRC is evasion and bluster about how this extremely normal event is impossible. Democracy isn't perfectly stable, what it is is a system that's designed to peacefully deal with instability. Thanks to the CCP, what I regard as a perfectly normal regular occurrence is something that you can't even bring yourself to think about. You should be scared. Oh, and as far as my Chinese goes, I've been hearing for the best part of two decades how Chinese are special in this way or that. You're not special. For the record here, their behaviour and your responses fit in better with the idea that the leadership doesn't care about anything beyond their time in power than your belief that they're wonderful long term thinkers who have everything under control. Whether it's dealing with the massive decline in births (seriously, 30 percent over five years. That's catastrophic) or preparing China for a peaceful transition to a post CCP world.
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  16. Congratulations on being in the same boat as North Korea.
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  17. In the five years since, each year, annual births have declined. Overall, annual births are down 30 percent from the post two child policy peak in 2016. From 17 million to 12 million. Clock is ticking.
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  18.  @jebise1126  this is one of those things they wanted to start years ago. It takes eighteen to 25 years to turn a newborn into someone useful. So someone conceived today won't be useful until 2040 at the earliest.
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  19.  @jebise1126  I'm used to ideas this bad being presented as serious suggestions by the fifty cent army 😛
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  20.  @jebise1126  it's a numbers thing for if it's enough. And they can't afford to do anything slowly. Given the delay in reaching adulthood, this is a problem right now
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  21. They can't make the effects of old age illegal.
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  22.  @accountthatillusetocomment3041  the generation that's retiring is the generation that was educated during the cultural revolution. They're educated to do jobs that rely on physical force, rather than mental ability. They can't keep working. This idea of yours is akin to Hitler ordering his soldiers to fight harder. Was he able to do it? Yes. Was it possible to obey? No.
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  23. The result of the one child policy has gone too far. Now despite it being loosened five years ago, the annual number of births is still plummeting year after year.
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  24.  @burung81  we're talking about demographics here. Without a major war or plague, it's one of the most predictable things going. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the govt couldn't look at the current very birth rates and trends and map out the inevitable consequence of that? Is the time it takes for a child to grow to adulthood a mystery? As far as the PRC's need for people to look into their internal affairs goes... I'm currently in a hotel in quarantine after moving back to my home country because of the PRC's "internal affairs"
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  25. When the govt was trying really hard to make Communism work, people were starving to death in their tens of millions. When they (grudgingly) accepted Capitalism, people's incomes skyrocketed and poverty plunged (Even if the govt has defined poverty to be about 3/4 of the global extreme poverty limit) As for central planning saving the country goes, when has that ever worked on a moderately developed economy?
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  26. Low hanging fruit. Getting a devastated economy to grow rapidly (percentage wise) is easier than getting a healthy economy to. Plus what's needed is more obvious. You can see this by how the PRC's growth rate has slowed as the easy stuff has been done and the situation becomes more complex In absolute numbers... Going from the pre CCP virus results. 2.3 percent of 60k is more than 6 percent of 10k.
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  27.  @jx5519  considering it has 4x the population, that's not exactly surprising. Plus, again, slowing down with a rapidly ageing population, massive environmental damage and a political system that has no peaceful means of changing who's in power. Not to mention that the brain drain is continuing.
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  28. If you cause the value to decline, things can get interesting if there's a rush to sell before the value declines, leading to a faster value decline, leading to a bigger rush. And it's very, very, very rare to see the CCP choose short term pain. It's why the highly predictable demographic crash completely blindsided them.
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  29. If you know someone is going to break any agreements made, you stop making agreements. This includes financial agreements. When you know the only thing that's going to stop a nation from taking what's yours is force, then you start building alliances. The PRC has put itself into a position where an alliance of the entire developed world, including almost every single neighbouring country is forming. How do you think its (limited) money and military power is going to hold up against that. As far as the US's credibility goes: 1. You should ask yourself why it still has more credibility than the PRC. 2. You're kind of projecting here. The PRC is a racist nation that has a strong tendency to plunder other nation's resources (the South China Sea isn't PRC territory) 3. If the PRC had credibility, you wouldn't be focusing on money (again, the PRC doesn't actually have much. Not when you consider the scale of the problems it's facing) and military as the only important things.
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  30. We tried being nice to the PRC. It was a mistake. A collossal, collossal mistake. After Tian'anmen square, we should have lost any illusion as to what kind of barbarian runs the PRC and we should have treated them as such. However, we were stupid enough and shameless enough to believe the best of them.
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  31.  @alexlo7708  what?
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  32. If a massive population isn't using resources efficiently, it won't be able to support that massive population. A small country doesn't need to care (as much) about efficiency. Because inefficiencies don't have as big an impact. A massive country like the PRC, however, is dead if it's not overall run efficiently.
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  33. ​ @watchman835  the key words here are "so far" It's been better than under Mao. But that's a pretty low bar. The production per person is about $11k USD. Again, better than under Mao, but still quite terrible vs a developed country. It's also just coming out of a phase where an unusually huge proportion of the population was working. Thanks to the plummeting birthrates, that's no longer going to happen. To put it another way: Up until now, each person had to: A. Be more efficient than under Mao B. Produce enough to support itself and half a kid. Now we're getting into a stage where each person needs to be able to support itself, its parents, maybe its grandparents and half or a whole kid. To say nothing of the decreases in local resources due to inefficient management of things like water, land, excessive pollution, rapidly mounting debt and so on. Do you see the difference?
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  34.  @watchman835  Really? You couldn't even manage to absorb that much? You think that reply is long? That's pretty sad. You're right, though. Discussing topics that require some level of thought and understanding with people who think that "better than Mao" is good enough is a waste of time. Hopefully there'll be better brains to follow yours :-)
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  35.  @watchman835  that's certainly the attitude the leader of a future failed state would have. Or the sort of person who couldn't read well enough to understand a few short, simple paragraphs. Should I explain why it's a bad idea? Or should I remember that I'm talking to someone who's proud he can't understand a few simple paragraphs?
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  36. For most of their lives they were really poor. They're still really poor, just nowhere near as poor as they were. Add that to that the best place to invest money has been the property sector, and, well, that turns out to have not been a good idea.
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  37. Tsai said Taiwan is independent and has been since 1912 in early January 2020. Why should a country that's independent need to declare independence?
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  38. Because there's this myth that they're well run countries with a future that too many western leaders believe.
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  39. Plus, the PRC isn't a developed country. There was a race to get rich before they got old. That race has been lost.
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  40. Where it exists to this day. Smaller, but still an independent country, as it has been every single day since 1912 (37 years before the secessionist PRC was founded)
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  41. The problem China has is long term benefits are too far away for them to bother with. Think of Xi's age. Any advantages from a sudden influx of children wouldn't be felt until after his death. While in his life, he'd have to deal with the cost of this long term investment.
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  42.  @dark_fire_ice  oh I know, but that doesn't change that in the time frame that matters (how long before the CCP leaders die of old age) they're not beneficial. They're not as bad as the elderly, but they're still not beneficial.
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  43. I'd done some quick math on this. Basically to Cover the birth shortfall between now and the last year of the one child policy, they'd need to attract something like 3/4 of global migrants. To a country that's fairly culturally homogeneous, doesn't have much money (per capita counts here), and speaks a language that's both very difficult and isn't really spoken outside of China. (Not counting Chinese emigrants and their families)
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  44. Does that contradict anything in the video?
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  45.  @manuelweichelt528  ok. So the video is accurate, just the people in China have similar views. Fair enough. Obviously not including the views of the Hong Kong Chinese in there. From their POV the West is relatively wonderful. Or the Taiwanese, for that matter. Funny how much it changes when there's freedom of speech and information.
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  46.  @manuelweichelt528  a major difference is that we can change the party in charge without a civil war. And when our politicians are defeated, they can go into peaceful retirement without worrying about what will come next. What happens when the CCP falls?
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  47.  @manuelweichelt528  it's fundamentally a system that's designed to be abused. Without any meaningful checks and balances. Which is why what we have today is a government that's locked its country into a suicide pact. Despite the opportunity Hong Kong presented as a testing ground for policies to help a post CCP China. Which is why the PRC will fall when the CCP does.
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  48.  @manuelweichelt528  you need a perfect man in a system designed to promote murderous thugs.
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  49. The best thing the Chinese communist party did for the Chinese people was allow in some capitalism. Which says all you need to know about that govt.
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  50.  @KenJackson_US  Mao wanted to replace it entirely with Pinyin, but found he couldn't go that far.
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