The supposed big continental alliance is China-Russia-Iran.
However China must be careful to not take sides in the Middle East conflict. And China might not feel certain that any investments in Iran can be safe enough.
The whole region in general is ready to blow up
If they can also get Turkey and Pakistan to join, that will be more than sufficient power. Iraq follows Iran when push comes to shove and Syria will follow Iran + Iraq. China should be openly willing to support Iran if it gets Turkey+Pakistan+Iraq+Syria onside as well. Otherwise its not worth the prize of pissing off the rest of the ME. The next 1-2 weeks will probably see the formation of the geopolitical alliances that will last well into the 21st century. As sad as this may seem, this is actually the most exciting time in human history since the fall of the soviet union.
Yes thats the way I see it. China-Russia-Pakistan-Turkey-Iran these are the main countries.
However if China wants a full strategic competition then I wouldn't count on these countries too much on the economic front.
These countries all have poot financial management and are full of corruption (only exception is Pakistan which is currently improving)
China needs strong,.independent countries, not welfare states dragging it down in the mud.
Plus its good to not completely antagonise the rest of the Middle East countries. Saudi Arabia already laid Aramco (oil company) to serve China's energy needs, and Israel is a very innovative country which China benefits from working with it. Man Middle East is so complex its better for China to stay out of openly supporting one country over another
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Theses countries have economies that are relatively easy for China to "uplift" since they mostly have problems which china has largely solved. Their use is more from being over-weighted on a military front, vs China, which is underweighted in military but over-weighted in economy. They help buy china time to preserve access to resources and providing ready consumer/industrial markets while at the same time China can buttress them by being a backstop against economic sanctions. The middle east element is most difficult because picking up Iran probably also involves the most trade-offs compared to turkey or pakistan. If at least a few of GCC states could remain neutral (i.e. Qatar or Dubai) it would help since picking up Iran will antagonize Saudi Arabia.
I can answer this. Now I disbelieve the Korea numbers. There is absolutely no way Korea scores lower than Japan or S Europe.
However, in the case of Japan, there is a culture of not leaving before the boss. So if the boss works overtime and you have nothing left to do, you still have to stay in the office.
Many salarymen therefore are clocking in overtime, but they are on social media or playing phone games during these working hours. The good thing is they earn overtime, the bad thing is it affects their social lives. This counts as working hours but is completely unproductive, hence the low productivity ratio in Japan.
However Japan is starting to tackle this problem in recent years and mandating that such practices be eradicated.
If you notice the last train in Japan is always around midnight, it's because the government wants the country's office workers to go home before midnight and not work beyond that. Companies hate paying taxi fare for employees, hence they are forced to release the employees in time for the last subway train. I'm not sure about now, but this was prevalent in early 2000s and before.
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