Peregrine
-
Posts
555 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Peregrine
-
-
21 minutes ago, wabuffo said:
Russia is dealing from a position of economic weakness. China isn't.
I wonder what the poor performance of the Russian military says about the PLA's capabilities. They rely on Russian military technology and like the Russians, rely on conscript armed forces that have not been involved in a military conflict since 1979 (much like the Russians whose last real military invasion was in the late 70s in Afghanistan).
Meanwhile the US military has been honing its lethal fighting skills almost continuously since the 1991 Gulf War. It's easy to project a myth of invincibility until you actually have to use it and it turns out that its a Potemkin village in the face of a superior American force.
As for China. More than any other country, China depends on the US's stewardship of the global trading system where the US Navy keeps all of the shipping routes around the world safe and clear for merchant shipping. Is it an accident that China's rise has coincided with the Pax Americana that pushed all of China's historic rivals to the sidelines militarily (Japan, Russia, etc)? I don't think so.
China has large demographic and geographic problems that limit it's potential. It's aging (and male-skewed) population will rapidly decline by 30-40% over the next few decades (we can't be sure since China fudges its numbers - my guess is their population is smaller than they claim). It needs to import energy and food because its agricultural lands are limited and flood-prone. It is bordered by potentially hostile countries on all sides that force it to spend enormous sums on its military just to defend its borders & sea lanes.
The US on the other hand still has favorable demographics and will also benefit from immigration. It's population is slated to continue growing well into this century. It is self-sufficient in energy and food production thanks to the world's largest agricultural breadbasket located in its Midwestern states. It is bordered by two oceans and two friendly countries on either side of its two land borders. Not needing to defend its borders, it can forward project all of its military force globally.
Choose your fighter.
My bet - the United States will continue to be the pre-eminent global hegemon well into the next century as its rivals (Russia, China) decline due to poor governance systems, demographics and geography.
It's an accident of history that the best governance system the world has ever seen (a free market-oriented constitutional republic) landed on Plymouth Rock and took over the world's best geography (the continental United States) but a fortunate one for the world.
Bill
p.s. - I sincerely hope that the world comes to its senses & goes back to the Pax Americana where everyone can trade freely and co-exist peacefully.
China is the second largest economy by US-denominated GDP and the largest by purchasing power parity and got there from subsistence agriculture in less than 50 years, so I wouldn't be so quick to write them off. In any case, it is inextricably tied to the global economy and will become even more so as its economy grows. But agreed that they have a lot of issues.
On your broader point about picking and choosing sides: if the world goes back to the hegemonic ways of the Cold War it will ensure economic devastation. This is not something that I think we should be inviting.
-
19 minutes ago, CorpRaider said:
yeah they're getting wrecked. They lost more troops in the first week than we did in a decade+ in afghanistan. They still don't even have air dominance. China would get the same or worse with Taiwan I speculate. Taiwan has been preparing since WW2. This is already a disaster for China.
A bit stunning that so many think that war/invasion is inevitable. Russia is dealing from a position of economic weakness. China isn't. Even Putin doesn't think that China needs to use force.
-
25 minutes ago, ValueArb said:
These takes are aging badly. Where the russians have made progress is entirely in the south, where they are poised to linkup Crimea with a landbridge. But the long term trends are not in their favor. They've blown almost their entire inventory of precision weapons and long range missiles, they fired hundreds of Kalibers the first nights and have only fired a few the last few nights. They have been unable to establish air superiority over a massively outmanned Ukraine Air Force, and continue to lose helicopters and jets, with little signs they can replace them.
The russians are failing to encircle cities, their troops are getting trapped deep in the Ukraine without resupply. They sent in a 40 mile convoy to resupply the troops outside Kyiv at the beginning of the week, and the resupply convoy is stuck and getting shredded. They have turned to bombing civilian targets in the cities with dumb bombs to maximize terror and damage.
Their entire logistics are unable to support the operation, in part because of endemic corruption. There is a great twitter thread on their truck tires, cheap Chinese knockoffs of quality Michelin military tires that are falling apart just days in. It's clear from the tire failures that the Russian maintenance groups did not do the monthly repositioning and retesting of the truck tires that's mandatory to keep them from having the sun destroy their flexibility and durability.
Their troops are hungry, cold and low on ammo, and their armor is slowly being attritted by Javelins and MLAWS, and their troops by ambushes and snipers. In some cases they abandoning even their best equipment and latest tanks to try to walk out. There is no way 150,000 troops can hold a country of 45M people, they have probably lost close to 10,000 troops already and will lose thousands more a week as long as they stay.
Their entire plan was to sweep into Kyiv and appoint a puppet government while the population either welcomed them as liberators or placidly allowed it. Instead they got Vietnam times 100.
Can you send a link corroborating this?
If this is indeed the case, I hope that this leads to peace negotiations soon.
-
1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:
I think you are very wrong with your assessment, but leave it at that. It is impossible to know right now and hopefully we will never find out.
I do think the US equities will beat Chinese equities going forward in the long run (>5 years).
You seem to be very confident in saying "very wrong with your assessment" while at the same time saying "it is impossible to know right now".
-
9 minutes ago, zippy1 said:
That what exactly Taiwanese are against. We are a real democracy. We are just different than you, ok?
I know next you will say what Taiwanese want do not matter.
Typical thuggish argument….
anyway, if you think shorting Taiwan is a good investment idea. Go ahead.
If you had started shorting Taiwan following your 2018 visit, it would be less profitable than shorting Shanghai Shenzhen and Heng Seng. So go ahead…Lol what? I never once said that what Taiwanese want don't matter or that shorting Taiwanese stocks is a good idea. I'm all for democratic norms and have hope that the entire world will trend in that direction over time. This has nothing to do what what you or I or anyone else wants. This has to do with what's likely to happen. Learn to read.
-
9 hours ago, nsx5200 said:
If you actually follow what is actually practiced, Hong Kong citizen have essentially lost their Democratic rights since. The Hong Kong citizens no longer can elect officials that have real power(lost of the second system, for all intent and purposes). Yes, on paper, it’s still two systems, in reality, it’s not. Similar to the Texas abortion non-ban. On paper, it’s not a ban, in practice, it’s more or less a ban. To argue otherwise is to deny reality. Here’s a sample of that type of analysis.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown
If you have other credible sources that shows otherwise, you’re welcome to share. I concede that there’s a high probability that I may have missed another angle to it and welcome challenges to that.
If you think that China would have ever allowed Hong Kong to elect a chief executive who was not aligned with Beijing, then you are gravely mistaken. All 4 chief executives since the hand-over were pro-Beijing and vetted by the CCP.
-
10 hours ago, nsx5200 said:
A minor, but significant detail: that article was written in 2019, pre Hong-Kong take-over.
The 2019 protests began because of an extradition bill which would allow China to detain and extradite alleged criminals from Hong Kong. The bill was subsequently withdrawn in October of that year after weeks of escalating protests.
There was certainly no "take-over" in 2019 (the official hand-over happened in 1997) and Hong Kong is still under the "one country, two systems" legal distinction. I really don't know where some of you get your news from.
-
14 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:
My experience in China is data (mostly Suzhou, some Shanghai) but I think China is very glizzy from far away and get's shabbier as your look closer. A lot of the new buildings were very crappy build when you look closely.
I was walking around one day in Suzhou because I could not haul a taxi back to the hotel and found a whole underworld of what I think were migrants living in cardboard boxes and shanties next to a bridge. I felt like I have made a wrong turn in Oakland.
China has massive income inequality. With 1.4 billion people, most people are still very poor. But the relevance to young Taiwanese isn't how the average Chinese person is doing - it's how well those living in coastal cities are doing because that's where they're most likely to relocate to find work.
This article provides some context: https://supchina.com/2019/02/26/young-taiwanese-are-dreaming-of-careers-in-china-but-not-unification/
"81 percent do not support Xi’s “one country, two systems” model"
Yet,
"According to a 2018 survey by Taiwan’s 1111 online job bank, 76 percent of Taiwanese said they would be interested in working in China, citing linguistic and cultural similarities and a stronger economy."
-
5 minutes ago, zippy1 said:
Every Chinese friends told me that, which is what we like actually.
It wasn't just antiquated in a quaint way. I was literally shocked to see banking being done by pen and paper and it took me 1 hr to exchange 500 USD into Taiwan dollars in the year 2018.
-
2 minutes ago, zippy1 said:
Would it be ok to ask you how many years ago the conversations took place?
I think the attitude shifted a great deal over the past couple years.
With the current geopolitical situation, many Taiwanese companies are moving back to Taiwan.
Due to Covid-19, most of the companies in the Hsinchu Science park had record earnings last year.
Engineering students are now given job offers 18 months before the graduation.
The job market is excellent for engineers. Many companies have to boost their pay just to keep the current staff.
Maybe your view reflects what the attitude was before 2018. But I don't think it reflect current attitude any more.
2018 - visited Taipei. Had never gone before so was quite stunned to see how antiquated the city was, especially given my preconceived notions about how advanced and modern Taiwan was.
-
50 minutes ago, zippy1 said:
Maybe you all can look at the last election's result to gauge what Taiwanese think.
If TSMC, MediaTek and a host of Taiwanese companies can make the most advanced semiconductors in the world, do you think the Taiwanese are that dumb to not notice what happened in Hong Kong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Taiwanese_presidential_electionLike I said in my response to you in the other thread, I have no doubt that all what you say is true.
There's an economic reality:
China's GDP: $US 15 trillion
Taiwan GDP: $US 0.66 trillion
And even more relevant:
Shenzhen GDP/capita: $USD 23k
Taiwan GDP/capita: $USD 20k
In a little more than 30 years, a marshland transformed into one of the biggest and most economically vibrant cities in the world and surpassed Taiwan by both GDP per capita and total GDP.
Agreed that Taiwan has a vibrant semiconductor industry but how many can they employ? Semiconductor companies involve huge CAPEX with very little labor. TSMC only employs ~50k people. It's the future of the young people that decides the future direction of a country.
-
3 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
How many Taiwanese do you know? The ones I know don't think reunification is inevitable at all. They would never want to live in China. They move to the USA not China, if they can.
Many. Though the ones I know lean more toward the affluent/business class, so perhaps there's some innate bias there.
-
Didn't realize that there was a topic on this already. But I'll repost this from the Sberbank thread (along with some added thoughts):
For those comparing what's happening now to what might happen between China and Taiwan, I think there's a big difference:
Ukraine has been leaning toward the West for a long time because of what they foresee as better economic opportunities. China does not have this problem with Taiwan...in fact, the reverse is true.
It's economic strength that draws countries closer to each other. Russia, unfortunately, has a weak economy and is increasingly seeing former satellite states forge closer bonds with the West. I can understand why Putin, who grew up in the Cold War and sees things through black and white dichotomies, feels increasing anxiety.
Despite their antipathy for the Chinese communist party, most moderate Taiwanese view unification as inevitable. Moreover, it may well in the end by largely a symbolic gesture as China's economy grows larger and larger and draws Taiwan closer to its orbit.
I visited Taipei a few years ago and was astounded by how antiquated their society was - their banking system was still pen and paper, the population is old and in the words of the locals, the economy had been in stasis for 20 years. The contrast is night and day compared with China's Tier 1 cities. Taiwan's young also sees this and are making conscious choices to move to China in search of better jobs.
-
10 minutes ago, Gregmal said:
On an individual level though, idk but I’ve always thought that once your life quality was cemented, the rest just kind of isn’t as important. So like, if $2m covers your shit for the foreseeable future, why in the world would you be such a baby with respect to dealing with volatility on the rest? If you don’t need the money tomorrow why do you care what it does tomorrow? It’s so dumb logically.
There is not rational explanation for this except that humans are irrational.
-
Well, he pretty clearly has very strong conviction. Whether he's right or not is a different story.
-
I find the responses of China taking a hard line wrt Evergrande to be pretty funny. To me, it's crazy how long they've let Evergrande hang around for so long. This company even tried to build an EV company.
-
I don't really get this talk about NYC fading. Urbanization has been a global trend ever since human civilization began and has outlasted basically everything. Now, some may decamp for cheaper and smaller cities or suburbs but there will be others who make up the gap. There's a reason why people (especially the young) have always gravitated towards the largest cities.
-
I think what Munger said about Ma and Ant is on the money. Ant was doing loan originations while offloading 100% of the credit risk to other banks - there's a big moral hazard and misalignment of incentives in that kind of lending model. And it was becoming larger and larger with no checks and balances on its growth. The Chinese government is right to be nervous about seeing something like that outside of its regulatory purview.
Not sure if I agree on his view on business travel and offices though. Perhaps it'll be depressed in the near to medium-term but teleconferencing has been around for a long, long time and it never replaced in-person meetings. In China, things have more or less returned to the way things were pre-pandemic.
-
On 6/11/2021 at 9:36 PM, Spekulatius said:
It is not just politicians, it is homeowners as well. I have yet to see a homeowner who welcome when single family homes are replaced by multi family homes or a commercial development. There simply is self interest at work.
Perhaps sharing economics in a smart way with the city and neighbors might help, but I doubt even that. The more expensive homes gets, the harder rezoning/ repurposing get’s ironically.
This is the big factor IMO. NIMBYism exists everywhere. I don't think the situations in Toronto and Vancouver are all that different from other cities that's 1) attracting a lot of net migration; and 2) experience chronic obstacles to increase housing supply.
-
A good and balanced article on COVID politics: https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/23/put-straw-man-pandemic-denial-out-of-its-misery/
Hopeful that slowly and surely more balance is being brought to the public discussion.
-
Australia’s second-largest state, Victoria, once the country’s COVID-19 hotspot, said on Friday it has gone 28 days without detecting any new infections, a benchmark widely cited as eliminating the virus from the community.
The state also has zero active cases after the last COVID-19 patient was discharged from hospital this week, a far cry from August when Victoria recorded more than 700 cases in one day and active infections totalled nearly 8,000.
The spread of the virus was only contained after a lockdown lasting more than 100 days, leaving some 5 million people in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, largely confined to their homes.
I'm not so sure that their lockdown is entirely responsible for their low case count. Australia is in summer right now and it's becoming increasingly clear that this virus is highly seasonal.
We didn't hit zero in the US during summer. The numbers actually went UP as we entered summer coincident with lifting restrictions.
The summer increase in the US was almost entirely relegated to the sunbelt stats, where it was so hot that people had to gather indoors. Perhaps seasonal isn't the right word but rather the conditions that force people to gather in enclosed settings.
-
Australia’s second-largest state, Victoria, once the country’s COVID-19 hotspot, said on Friday it has gone 28 days without detecting any new infections, a benchmark widely cited as eliminating the virus from the community.
The state also has zero active cases after the last COVID-19 patient was discharged from hospital this week, a far cry from August when Victoria recorded more than 700 cases in one day and active infections totalled nearly 8,000.
The spread of the virus was only contained after a lockdown lasting more than 100 days, leaving some 5 million people in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, largely confined to their homes.
I'm not so sure that their lockdown is entirely responsible for their low case count. Australia is in summer right now and it's becoming increasingly clear that this virus is highly seasonal.
-
Thanks!
Looks like personal responsibility is a really great theory:
US air travel sets a pandemic-era record despite calls to stay home for Thanksgiving
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/covid-air-travel-thanksgiving-trnd/index.html
Not to mention several politicians who got caught breaking their own rules to have Thanksgiving gatherings. I don't blame the public for becoming increasingly jaded by political leadership.
-
@Eric - thank you for sharing your episode and glad you and your family are OK. Do you have any idea how your stepson get infected?
First, a bulk thank-you for the well-wishers. We continue to not get any worse.
All of my stepson's friends appear to be well and their families too. So maybe I got it at Costco where I wore a mask and spoke to nobody except from behind a window at checkout. Maybe my wife caught it ordering at the counter the one time in a restaurant in El Dorado Hills that prior weekend.
But my stepson says he was showing symptoms all week, but then again my wife says he's a hypochondriac. I really don't care.
Anyhow, we should have immunities for a while and we've booked ourselves six days on Oahu in late December -- we'll need to be tested again (ouch!) before the flight per travel restrictions.
I seldom know how I get colds...it just happens I guess. There are times when I get sick despite not knowing anyone around me who is and other times when I don't get sick when the people I live with are.
Anyway, hope you enjoy your trip!
Short Taiwan?
in General Discussion
Posted
Re: "biting the hands that feed them"
It can be argued that the US has become a lot more antagonist toward China on trade than vice versa with the anti-trade rhetoric, barriers, tariffs and what not.
Re: "US would do just fine"
I'm not sure you understand just how integrated China is with the world economy right now.
Re: would China prosper if everyone arms up?
Hell no. And neither would anyone else.
Re: US as the police dog of the world
That's precisely the reason why many are against the US.