Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Europe is a chicken with it's head cut-off and they don't know it. They're trying to hang onto the only thing they have which is the romantic bullshit of their culture that they pushed while raping the world. That's why they're losing out and are being left behind in everything else that's moving and shaking the world today. Just look at that ugly inbred lot of the British royals. I read that the majority of the tourism industry of England is based around the royals. Look at their history and what they did and they're even uglier. The false romance is the only thing giving them attention. The royals don't inspire people looking at the future. Macron just advocated stronger EU action against China and now he's pushing for China to be at the next G7 meeting? Their actions are not intellectually thoughtful. It's more out of desperation without thinking.
I've been saying it for a while now, deflation by itself is inconsequential. What matters is what the deflation signifies. Japan's problem wasn't deflation, it was a lack of investment. Money gets pumped into the economy and immediately gets converted into foreign currencies to buy foreign debt for the carry trade because no one wants to invest in Japan. That's their problem. They have inflation now and their economy still sucks because deflation was not the cause of their malaise but merely a symptom. Inflation from rising input costs will not make anyone more willing to invest in Japanese industries.
IMO many people are missing China's grand strategy. If people understand where Xi is coming from, all the moves China has made in the past few years would make sense.
1) It starts with China's assessment that the West is declining and China is rising. To "win", China just has to maintain the current trajectory and outlast the West.
2) The current trajectory will inevitably cause some hardship in the West and lead to push back. As such, China needs to be prepared for a full-scale, full-spectrum (financial, industrial, military, informational, everything) conflict against the entire West (that's the US and all its allies). This is not so that it has to fight and win one, but to prevent a full scale conflict in the first place. Think of it like a MAD.
3) To accomplish this, China has worked to ensure full-spectrum resilience. RMB internationalization, CIPS, popping RE bubble, BRI, tech indigenization, preventing outsourcing of "older" industries, military/nuclear build out, GFW, etc. all needs to be looked at in this lens rather than the narrow lens of economic or territorial gains.
4) The key to victory is point number 1, i.e. maintaining the current trajectory. If an actual full-scale conflict breaks out, victory is no longer assured and there's a high likelihood of there being no victors at all. As such, the response to all provocations in general is to demonstrate the ability for MAD and nudge all parties involved to maintain the status quo.
Use these points to guide your analyses and everything will make more sense. Why doesn't China just nip the European manufacturing right now? Because it's well on track to nip itself. They're not gonna find an alternative to Nexperia China in weeks or months or in all likelihood ever before the European auto industry go bust from a general lack of competitiveness. China just needs to demonstrate that it can cause the destruction now, and let the Europeans pressure each other so the day of their destruction can come later rather than sooner. Sowing disunity is more important than causing short term destruction. One leads to a hastening of the current trends which favor China, the other can lead to a full scale conflict for which history has proven there are always many unknowns.
I'm pretty sure that Nexperia's chips could be substituted by firms like STM and Infineon, but this would be a very painful and laborious process. The Nexperia fiasco might cause a severe recession if China wanted to apply the pain, but it's not an existential pain. Europe, US, and Asia can find alternatives.
Like I said, this is the sort of thing that's best kept in a backpocket to compound on top of other sanctions if necessary.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
It says a lot that the West didn't decouple from China like they threatened. Number one is because they couldn't. Again the West thinks they can go back in time and think they'll change things to their favor. The number one reason why they went to China in the first place is because it was the best alternative. If they didn't go with China a lot of results would have changed for the worse. You think the US economy would have grown as much as it did if they didn't outsource to China exploiting cheap labor so they could have as much money they made? You think Apple would have become the giant it's known for today if they were denied from access to China to lessen the costs and make money from? What would've happened instead is the challenges it's facing today would've happened earlier.
The West "can" decouple from China.
1. If it does it abruptly, it'll be very painful, probably worse than 2008 Great Recession painful. Which means politicians won't allow it. Nobody wants to take the blame.
2. It can do it slowly and methodically. The West lacks the organization do so. Technically this is already what the West is trying to do, and you can see how pitiful our attempts have been so far. Pundits keep hyping up MP materials, ignoring that they cannot procure or produce all the REEs required for a modern economy.
3. It can accept that it won't be able to do it and stop seeking "strategic competition" with China, but this is unacceptable to the West who think themselves as superior.
So I guess waht I'm saying is yeah, they "can't".