Political Posts

[Pelagic]

10 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

 

At least those North Korean soldiers according to the available intelligence are located in Russia, not in the by Russia occupied parts of Ukraine.

 

Now that may perhaps eventually change at some time in the future, and what happens then?

 

Vladimir Putin is desperate, and can't keep up momentum in the Russian warfare, so cash and transfer of military technology to North Korea against North Korea providing more meat to fodder the meat grinder.

 

It's just a business deal between two business men, who don't give a damn about their respective citizens.

 

Please note that South Korea is on its toes now because of this.

 

For Russia troops are fungible. 10,000 NKs on the border with Ukraine somewhere in Russia allows them to transfer troops to occupied Ukraine. Or as some are suspecting they'll employ them in an offensive against Ukrainian held positions in Kursk.

 

Russian troops who volunteer to fight in Ukraine get paid around $4,000 a month which is part of the "allure" of joining the Russian military, as pay is significantly higher than what they can make elsewhere. And also why Russia has had some success recruiting non-Russians to join their military. I wonder if NK troops will be paid similarly or does that money just get kicked up to the NK regime.  There's also been some mention of Russian contract soldiers who signed up to fight in Ukraine not receiving benefits when fighting in Kursk (Russia) and their families being denied the death benefits they would have normally received. No doubt Russia faces an ever growing manpower shortage but perhaps there's some more nuanced issues with regards to the specific terms of contract soldiers that they think NK troops might help alleviate.

[Xerxes]

1 hour ago, John Hjorth said:

 

At least those North Korean soldiers according to the available intelligence are located in Russia, not in the by Russia occupied parts of Ukraine.

 

Now that may perhaps eventually change at some time in the future, and what happens then?

 

Vladimir Putin is desperate, and can't keep up momentum in the Russian warfare, so cash and transfer of military technology to North Korea against North Korea providing more meat to fodder the meat grinder.

 

It's just a business deal between two business men, who don't give a damn about their respective citizens.

 

Please note that South Korea is on its toes now because of this.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/defense-aerospace-report/id1228868129?i=1000674730063

 

[cubsfan]

^^^ Awful. Artillery was the big killer in WWII combat, accounting for, I believe 60% of casualties.

[John Hjorth]

13 hours ago, Warner said:

Navalny was indeed very brave and certainly dedicated to his cause. He deserves respect and admiration for this. He certainly did not deserve what he received from the Russian state.

 

But, the Russian state controls the domestic narrative and 75% of the Russian people did not know or care about him. This is really missing from the conversation. Navalny was more well know outside of Russia than inside because he had foreign support and funding. He had some support in the middle class, as these few in Russia in a way turned on Putin's gov't slightly in the past 10 years.

 

Everyone here blames all on Putin and what is left out is that he has a large apparatus in gov't that supports him and 99% of these agree with his policies. 

 

Russia does not want and will not accept to go back to the chaos of the 1990's. They are not going to throw their unabashed support around an unknown (and state media will ensure he is never known). They will stay with Putin until he decides who is the next leader in Russia as he represents stability and don't forget in his very very long time in power the lives of most Russians has improved.

 

I am not a Putin supporter, but we all need to be pragmatic and look at this from the Russian perspective.

 

@Warner,

 

Thank you for sharing, and thereby providing insights to Russian thinking [, in general] to CoBF members, also presented by you in a polite manner here.

[John Hjorth]

3 hours ago, Pelagic said:

For Russia troops are fungible. 10,000 NKs on the border with Ukraine somewhere in Russia allows them to transfer troops to occupied Ukraine. Or as some are suspecting they'll employ them in an offensive against Ukrainian held positions in Kursk.

 

Russian troops who volunteer to fight in Ukraine get paid around $4,000 a month which is part of the "allure" of joining the Russian military, as pay is significantly higher than what they can make elsewhere. And also why Russia has had some success recruiting non-Russians to join their military. I wonder if NK troops will be paid similarly or does that money just get kicked up to the NK regime.  There's also been some mention of Russian contract soldiers who signed up to fight in Ukraine not receiving benefits when fighting in Kursk (Russia) and their families being denied the death benefits they would have normally received. No doubt Russia faces an ever growing manpower shortage but perhaps there's some more nuanced issues with regards to the specific terms of contract soldiers that they think NK troops might help alleviate.

 

Awesome post, @Pelagic!,

 

Thank you! We'll eventually see how this turns out, over time.

 

I'm sure, we'll in the end eventually know, because the Russian State simply is incabable of controlling and limiting the flow of all kinds of information World Wide during a[n] <undefined> number of information channels out of control af the Russian State. [, the Russian State still 'anchored in the truth of the past'.]

[Spekulatius]

On 10/28/2024 at 10:34 AM, dwy000 said:

Have things gotten so bad in North Korea they're now selling soldiers?

They probably can’t feed them so they may have decided they can out them to use as relatively well paid mercenaries.

 

Peronally, I think the US and NATO should encourage  South a Korea to enter the chat, because they have something that almost no western nation has any more:

 

They can mass produce decent weapons alike ships, artillery, tanks,  rockets etc like from an assembly line as was the case in WW2 on fairly short notice. My guess is they can do that because  they are an in industrial powerhouse with deep supply chains within the chaebols.

 

I do believe that with US and eastern encouragement, funding and maybe some tech help, they could do wonders to overcome the advantage the Russians have in material quantity. And while the SK we pans are not always top notch compared to US or European ones, they are overall much better then the Russian ones. They have already delivered some weapon systems to Ukraine as far as I know , but not in large enough numbers to make a difference.

 

There is an added benefit that it would make Korea more resilient against NK and Chinese aggression.

Edited October 30, 2024 by Spekulatius

[John Hjorth]

Here is a fairly new YouTube video by Anders Puck Nielsen [Personally, he is growing on me] :

 

YouTube - Anders Puck NIelsen [October 28^th 2024] : Nuclear weapons and security guarantees for Ukraine.

 

 

 

[Sweet]

On 10/29/2024 at 12:23 AM, Spekulatius said:

because they have something that almost no western nation has any more:

 

They can mass produce decent weapons alike ships, artillery, tanks,  rockets etc like from an assembly line as was the case in WW2 on fairly short notice. My guess is they can do that because  they are an in industrial powerhouse with deep supply chains within the chaebols.

 

This is a major problem for the West.

[nsx5200]

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/why-china-wont-give-failing-economic-model

"Rather, his[Xi's] top-down approach to governance privileges ideological unity over populist concessions and favors state-led investment over individual fiscal support."

"Although ordinary Chinese citizens may have limited agency, collectively they can exert economic pressure on Beijing. By tightening their wallets and prioritizing savings, they effectively express a quiet but potent vote of no confidence in the country’s direction."

 

The power of the people is stronger than it seems in that top-down system.

[Castanza]

30 minutes ago, nsx5200 said:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/why-china-wont-give-failing-economic-model

"Rather, his[Xi's] top-down approach to governance privileges ideological unity over populist concessions and favors state-led investment over individual fiscal support."

"Although ordinary Chinese citizens may have limited agency, collectively they can exert economic pressure on Beijing. By tightening their wallets and prioritizing savings, they effectively express a quiet but potent vote of no confidence in the country’s direction."

 

The power of the people is stronger than it seems in that top-down system.

 

Mhmm and who controls the currency? Didn't China experiment with a currency that expires the other year? 

[nsx5200]

37 minutes ago, Castanza said:

Mhmm and who controls the currency? Didn't China experiment with a currency that expires the other year? 

Steering consumer spending through currency manipulation has its own set of systemic risks, which the Chinese government might not want to go down.

 

The Chinese digital currency that expires, was a promotional thing to jump start the adoption as well as running trials.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/07/15/a-2024-overview-of-the-e-cny-chinas-digital-yuan/

[Castanza]

The entire history of China pretty much boils down to them prioritizing the survival of they system. Sometimes in the short-term this comes at a cost to it's citizens, sometimes it benefits them. I just think it's really hard to make arguments about China turning over a new leaf. It's not a judgement, just an observation taking into account thousands of years of survivorship. 

[nsx5200]

7 hours ago, Castanza said:

The entire history of China pretty much boils down to them prioritizing the survival of they system. Sometimes in the short-term this comes at a cost to it's citizens, sometimes it benefits them. I just think it's really hard to make arguments about China turning over a new leaf. It's not a judgement, just an observation taking into account thousands of years of survivorship. 

You lost me.  What lead you to believe that somebody's arguing that China's turning over a new leaf?  If I was not explicit enough regarding my comment, then it's my fault.  I was pointing out that even in a heavily top-down system, there are feedback pathways, one of which is the collective power of the personal purse mentioned in the article.   A weak pathway, but nevertheless one that can grow to be more influential .

 

Your observation regarding China is applicable to all history.  East and West.  Dark ages, Russian/Ukraine, Israel/Gaza... most people are just trying to survive.  We see it in the U.S. as well, with tons of people barely getting by, leading to the rise of the demagogues.

[Spekulatius]

XI Jinping doesn’t believe in frivolous consumption, He wants to make more stuff and to export it. Good ole mercantilistic ideology. Now the problem is that China is already the largest exporter so how far can this model go ? Most countries are pushing back with tariffs for Chinese goods, so this model is not going to work. 
 

If you want a more sinister explanation what’s  listen to this podcast from Grant with guest David Murrin. Scary if he is even half way right:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-grant-williams-podcast/id1508585135?i=1000674400029

[formthirteen]

 

 

https://research.gavekal.com/article/prejudice-and-china/

[nsx5200]

57 minutes ago, formthirteen said:

https://research.gavekal.com/article/prejudice-and-china/

Thanks for the article.  Here's the NotebookLM summary of it:

Quote

Briefing Doc: China's Industrial Rise and Western Blind Spots
Main Themes:

China's rapid industrial advancement: The document argues that China has significantly progressed across various industries, surpassing Western counterparts in efficiency, productivity, and cost-effectiveness.
Western underestimation of China's capabilities: The author posits several reasons for this blind spot, including COVID-related travel restrictions, preoccupation with internal issues (DEI, ESG), historical prejudice, and media bias.
Potential for China's continued growth: The author believes that despite challenges like the real estate bust and potential trade conflicts, China has strong potential for continued growth, particularly if domestic confidence is revitalized.
Most Important Ideas/Facts:

Chinese industrial dominance:
"The idea that China is suddenly setting the standards that others must now strive to meet is a sea-change compared with the world we lived in just five years ago."
China installs almost twice the number of industrial robots as the rest of the world combined.
China is the global leader in the nuclear industry.
China graduates more engineers each year than the entire OECD.
Western Blind Spots:
COVID and Ukraine: "The simplest, most obvious, and likeliest explanation why most CEOs and investors missed how China leapfrogged the West in industry after industry over the last five years: during that time, no one from the West bothered to visit China."
Prejudice: "To any self-respecting Western capitalist, the word 'communist' implies inefficiencies, poor products, and technological backwardness."
Media bias: "The simplest explanation is that the media is in the “bad news” game." and "In an equity-market-obsessed culture, the performance of the stock market index is quickly equated with the performance of the economy at large."
China's future prospects:
"The Chinese economy today is a coiled spring." Productivity gains are currently manifesting as trade surpluses and capital flight, potentially due to low domestic confidence in the government.
Stimulus and confidence: The success of recent stimulus measures in revitalizing domestic confidence is crucial for future growth.
US-China relations: Improved relations and potential easing of trade tensions could significantly boost China's economic prospects.
Quotes:

On Chinese competitiveness: "Today, we are seeing the results. [Chinese companies are] producing better products for less money—which is what capitalism should be about."
On media influence: "So yes, at a time of record debt and swelling budget deficits, the US government proposes to spend US$325mn a year paying “independent” media (the irony!) to push stories about the negative impact that China may be having around the world."
On the future of Chinese growth: "If [Chinese investors] do, the unfolding bull markets in Chinese equities and the renminbi could really have legs."
Investment Conclusions:

The document suggests a shift in the narrative surrounding China's investment potential. While many have deemed it "uninvestable", the author argues for a reassessment, emphasizing China's growing importance and potential for strong returns. The success of stimulus measures, domestic confidence, and US-China relations are key factors to watch.

The article hits many of the points that Luke's been saying.

 

The biggest criticism that I have with that article is that it's looking at mainly the Chinese advancements that was built on the past period where China was more free market based and ignore the systemic change with Xi, which changes the trend.  We do see some rollback of those changes, such as the tact that the Chinese government took recently to try to resolve the Chinese Indian border dispute (https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/asia/india-china-border-agreement-intl-hnk/index.html).

 

Like what the article quote from Munger: "show me the incentives, and I will tell you the outcome.”

 

If the Chinese people feel like they can not benefit from the labor of their hard work, they will simply be less productive, which we see from hard economic numbers, and not from simple news reporting or blog postings.  At the end of the day, the hard numbers speaks a lot more than word in articles...

[Spekulatius]

We can’t even believe the numbers coming from the Beijing as economic data for sure is massaged to meet the CVp’s goalposts,

I am in the China is important  but uninvestible (for the most part) camp.

[formthirteen]

14 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

I am in the China is important  but uninvestible (for the most part) camp.

 

You can invest in China, but you can't profit from China's success.

 

 

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-china-is-like-the-19th-century

 

Quote

China, similarly, has not necessarily been a leader in scientific progress, even as it has become an economic juggernaut. China has won just one Nobel Prize in science, and doesn’t seem to have done much better with other scientific prizes. China has just two Breakthrough Prizes (compared to several dozen for the U.S.), no Turing Awards, no Fields Medals, no Kavli Prizes, no Abel Prizes, and no Draper Prizes.2 As late as 2016, Xi Jinping stated that China’s science and technology foundation “remains weak.” Chinese students and scholars often study abroad at foreign institutions for their training, not unlike how U.S. scientists would often study in Germany 100 years ago.

 

Quote

One 1925 novel on immigrant life described how acquiring newly available goods inevitably resulted in a desire for more of them. An immigrant family replaces their rags with real towels, then gets dishes and tableware “so we could all sit down at the table at the same time and eat like people," and continues to want more and more:

“We no sooner got used to regular towels than we began to want toothbrushes… We got the toothbrushes and we began wanting tooth powder to brush our teeth with, instead of ashes. And the more and more we wanted more things, and really needed more things, the more we got them.” 

 

 

 

https://scholars-stage.org/everything-is-worse-in-china/

 

Quote

 

Are you sickened by crass materialism? Wealth chased, gained, and wasted for nothing more than vain display? Are you oppressed by the sight of children denied the joys of childhood, guided from one carefully structured resume-builder to the next by parents eternally hovering over their shoulders? Do you dread a hulking, bureaucratized leviathan, unaccountable to the people it serves, and so captured by special interests that even political leaders cannot control it? Are you worried by a despotic national government that plays king-maker in the economic sphere and crushes all opposition to its social programs into the dust? Do you fear a culture actively hostile to the free exercise of religion? Hostility that not only permeates through every layer of society, but is backed by the awesome power of the state?

 

These too are all worse in China.

 

 

[Luke]

22 hours ago, nsx5200 said:

Like what the article quote from Munger: "show me the incentives, and I will tell you the outcome.”

In diplomacy broadly, Xi himself is also leading from the front. He is the most traveled PRC leader ever, and he has welcomed the most foreign visitors to Beijing, at a greater frequency than any predecessor. He has invested more money in diplomatic outreach. The foreign affairs budget has increased; there are more Chinese embassies and consulates around the world than before. It flows from Xi’s core political agenda.

 

Xi probably wants to be remembered as someone who restored China to its rightful place in the world, whatever that might mean in terms of concrete achievements. The general vibe—and he has already delivered on this part—is a China that gets global attention, a China that is recognized by governments around the world as an important political and economic power, and that is dealt with as such. You could even spin the perceived negatives of “wolf warrior” diplomacy as positives, because if the West is taking China seriously, then you know China is strong, because China is seen as a threat.

 

There is a saying that Mao Zedong achieved jianguo [建国, founding the new Chinese republic], Deng Xiaoping fuguo [富国, enriching China], and Xi has presided over qiangguo [强国, strengthening China]. If we say Xi’s objectives are for China to be economically powerful, militarily powerful, internationally respected, you can argue he’s done much of these three elements, especially the last two.

 

From the article I linked one page ago. 

 

China's current trajectory, in my opinion, is a lot better than Europe or the US, from an economic perspective, an inner political perspective, from a foreign political perspective...just extrapolate the technological development the last 15 years another 15 years into the future, they are growing significantly more than G7 and they actually have competitive manufacturing which is non-existent elsewhere which is why nobody can survive without tariffs anymore. They also, as can be seen via BRICS, have a large part of the global south supportive of them. Where are all the important resources? Not in Europe...a little bit in the US...a lot in SA and Africa...who is heaving the strongest diplomatic outreach and investments over there...? Contrary to all the permanent FUD in western media, the bull train China chuggs along steadily...very very long. 

 

Edited November 2, 2024 by Luke

[Luke]

Now you can come up with the same soap opera of "can we trust their numbers" "can we trust the VIE" "wont Xi just steal the money of the companies" "but they have communism right?"...

 

Just have a walk through whats possible in that country: 

 

 

[Luke]

So while the west lives in total denial, politics live in total denial and try to find who is guilty for the misery of their economies (true for trump in the US, true for the right wingers in france, netherlands, germany etc), China is increasingly getting ahead while being safer, cleaner, cheaper...while having access to cheap energy and ressources...by regulating their markets so competition achieves the resulting development and superior products...just wait! 

[UK]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/russia-ukraine-war.html

 

American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains, and the sense of pessimism in Kyiv and Washington is deepening.

 

Edited November 2, 2024 by UK

[Spekulatius]

1 hour ago, UK said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/russia-ukraine-war.html

 

American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains, and the sense of pessimism in Kyiv and Washington is deepening.

 

That indeed seems to be the case. The Russian steamroller in action and the Ukraine does not have enough material and men to counter it.

[John Hjorth]

2 hours ago, UK said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/russia-ukraine-war.html

 

American military and intelligence officials have concluded that the war in Ukraine is no longer a stalemate as Russia makes steady gains, and the sense of pessimism in Kyiv and Washington is deepening.

 

1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:

That indeed seems to be the case. The Russian steamroller in action and the Ukraine does not have enough material and men to counter it.

 

And then we have :

 

AP News - World News [October 22^nd 2024] : US defense chief promises Ukraine what it needs to fight Russia but goes no further.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Now how the h*ll does all that add up?

[sfbm21]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

Now you can come up with the same soap opera of "can we trust their numbers" "can we trust the VIE" "wont Xi just steal the money of the companies" "but they have communism right?"...

 

Just have a walk through whats possible in that country: 

 

 

This puts new york to shame. what politics can do to any country. I wonder why chinese folks come to us?