Let's talk about China
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krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Some not so festive and not so surprising "news"
US and Japan draw up joint military plan in case of Taiwan emergency – report
In October, Japan’s government signalled a more assertive position on China’s aggressive posture towards self-ruled Taiwan, suggesting it would consider options and prepare for “various scenarios”, while reaffirming close US ties.
Earlier this month, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said Japan and the US could not stand by if China attacked Taiwan.
US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have long said that given the tens of thousands of troops the US has in Japan and its proximity to Taiwan, Japan would likely have to play an important role in any Taiwan emergency.
Japan is host to major US military bases, including on the southern island of Okinawa, a short flight from Taiwan, which would be crucial for any US support during a Chinese attack.
US and Japan draw up joint military plan in case of Taiwan emergency – report
In October, Japan’s government signalled a more assertive position on China’s aggressive posture towards self-ruled Taiwan, suggesting it would consider options and prepare for “various scenarios”, while reaffirming close US ties.
Earlier this month, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe said Japan and the US could not stand by if China attacked Taiwan.
US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have long said that given the tens of thousands of troops the US has in Japan and its proximity to Taiwan, Japan would likely have to play an important role in any Taiwan emergency.
Japan is host to major US military bases, including on the southern island of Okinawa, a short flight from Taiwan, which would be crucial for any US support during a Chinese attack.
ACG article on the recent clamp down :
www.anarchistcommunism.org
The Chinese State clamps down in Hong Kong and across China - Anarchist Communist Group
As the Chinese economy gets set to overtake that of the USA, the regime led by Xi Jinping aims to assert its authority. Under Xi’s predecessor, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese state bureaucracy opened up the country to both globalisation and the market. However, this was not a sudden change, but one...
www.anarchistcommunism.org
hash tag
Books, not bombs
Clearly, China is happy to publicise things when they want to BBC News - China: Public shaming returns amid Covid fears
China: Public shaming returns amid Covid fears
Four men accused of people trafficking are paraded through streets, to mixed reactions online.
www.bbc.co.uk
I think there are definitely people within the Communist Party getting cold feet about Xi's approach.
IMO Xi and his neo-authoritarian acolytes are imbeciles who didn't realise that China was on the receiving end of exceptional good will from the US and the wider world during the Deng - Jiang - Hu eras, due in part to the faith that China would eventually turn into a large Japan and friendly partner after joining the WTO.
All they saw is China getting stronger and stronger and thought "why can't we call the shots now? Our system is better than democracy". They really thought that all the minor compromises made by foreign companies to enter the Chinese market were foreigners begging to pay tribute to glorious China, and that the editorials in foreign media criticising austerity policies after 2008 by contrasting to how China evaded serious impact through Keynesian policies was evidence that the entire world was envious of China's political system and would rush to look to them if they only stepped forward. They also believed that the US political system was 100% in thrall to Wall Street who were making money from China, and therefore nothing would ever change.
They were winning the argument in 2016, with Trump, Brexit, European refugee crisis and terrorism wave, and I think the vast majority of the Chinese political class got on board around that time. Hence bolder moves like Hong Kong and the emergence of Wolf Warrior diplomats.
But now there does seem to be evidence that doubts are creeping in. The US hasn't collapsed and has been growing faster than China some quarters. The economic outlook for China is increasingly obviously bleak and the country is becoming increasingly isolated.
I think many are beginning to understand that Xi overplayed his hand badly and that there is urgent need for rapprochement.
Even some of the key intellectual figures of China's neo-authoritarian wave are starting to publicly express doubts, warning that China must stop US decoupling at any costs, including accepting a humiliating step-down:
Opinion | Why China should stop US decoupling at any cost
Those who advocate triumphalism and proactive decoupling risk causing ‘endless harm’ to China, says author seen as nationalism standard bearer.
amp.scmp.com
However Xi is also very powerful and there isn't any indication of an organised opposition to him, other than occasional grumblings appearing in public.
I think a lot is riding on the Winter Olympics - there are already diplomatic boycotts, but if it becomes a humiliating farce, with foreign athletes protesting, treated badly, contracting covid, or against a backdrop of disastrous Omicron outbreaks in a country which has refused to get effective vaccines purely for propaganda purposes (the lockdown in Xian has been a disaster with widespread reports of food shortages and people going hungry), then it could turn quiet grumbling about Xi's impractical nationalism into a consensus that he should not be allowed to serve a third term, and a new administration could try to ease tensions with the US and repair damage to international relations more generally while pinning all the blame on Xi, or, perhaps more likely, on some other official.
But if they manage to turn the Olympics into a propaganda victory, at least domestically, it could go the other way. I never thought they would be able to spin the emergence of Covid in Wuhan into a nationalistic narrative and somehow blaming foreigners for it but they managed it.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Only domestically and that was only possible through their tightly controlled media and internet. Nobody outside the controls of the CCP is buying their narrative that it’s a foreign import.
gosub
~#
I think they have muddied the water enough that on covid origins, probably best not to dwell. Nobody benefits, and it doesn't help anything
Yeah, that too - I think the sense of triumphalism from 5 years ago has started to fade and there's a bit of an "oh shit" moment. I think some people were expected to have overtaken the US as the leading superpower by now through a few audacious moves, but that is looking increasingly distant.
There are also a lot of people - a LOT - who have thoroughly drank the kool aid and are in denial about it. Or at least, they are unable or unwilling to see how Xi's government miscalculated by overestimating China's hand and misunderstanding the nature of their international relationships, and simply see it as other countries trying to attack China and keep them down.
I hope that the neo-authoritarians cannot survive the triumphalist bubble popping and we get some detente and a relaxation of Chinese censorship and ideological orthodoxy, but I'm also afraid that they can transform it into a ultra-nationalist politics of grievance and siege mentality - in which case, things could get really fucked.
gosub
~#
Agrred. Think the collapse of the property market there is going to hurt
Also, going off on a slight tangent, the failure of Battle of Lake Changjin internationally is also quite significant.
The China-Hollywood partnership has been used primarily by Chinese media companies to acquire technical knowhow and the ability to make movies with Hollywood-style production values. They seem to have become satisfied that they have achieved this objective and have recently been giving Hollywood the cold shoulder, refusing to allow movies specifically made to appeal to the Chinese market to be screened in China, e.g. Marvels Shang Chi movie.
They had some minor success with The Wandering Earth in particular and also Wolf Warrior and Operation Red Sea.
They had very high hopes for war movie Battle of Lake Changjin to do better than Wolf Warrior and pulled out all the stops for a blockbuster war movie experience with some of the most celebrated Chinese directors like Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) involved.
Here is a story in 3 acts to see how that went:
Overseas audiences excited about China's war epic released in the UK - Global Times
Actual performance of the movie internationally was significantly worse than Wolf Warrior and the others it hoped to build on.
www.boxofficemojo.com
Worldwide gross was $902,541,161.
Of which, China accounted for $899,400,000 and Hong Kong accounted for $2,596,393.
So really we're talking half a million gross internationally.
In the UK, it was the 154th highest ranking movie of the year, and was watched no more widely than the low budget Icelandic horror, Lamb.
Cue rage from "blogs" (really state media in disguise):
baijiahao.baidu.com
I just ran some of it through Google translate but the tone comes across as much angrier and more forthright in the original Chinese IMO.
What stings even more is that after heavily pushing Battle of Lake Changjin to be a box office success - helped by tricks like limiting release of foreign films, heavy state-directed promotion, compulsory school trips, taking entire government departments to see it, and cinemas incentivized or pressured to fiddle the Box Office figures (e.g. if someone paid to see a foreign film, they'd print a ticket for a Chinese political film and just write the name of the foreign film on the back of the stub, so you can see the film you chose but the money goes to the Chinese film) - it actually had the mantle of highest grossing movie of 2021 stolen at the last minute by the new Spiderman movie, which was not allowed for release in China.
This means that China has effectively burned bridges with Hollywood too early - with all the investment, they are still incapable of matching their international success of the early 00s with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero, or the critical success of the 90s with early award winning movies by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. So they have actually regressed in terms of soft power, whilst South Korea has leapt miles ahead of them with hits like Parasite and Squid Game, and not only that, but Spiderman has proved to Hollywood that they don't need the Chinese market and attempts to cater to it frequently backfire, and by spurning Hollywood too early they are no longer going to benefit from the indirect soft power of Hollywood trying to curry their favour and they might actually get films where the Chinese are the bad guys now.
This isn't how the script was supposed to go, and calls into question their ability to become a cultural superpower to rival the USA. I think the role of the tightening censorship and political control and declining international success in cinema despite investment will not be lost on at least some people, particularly within the arts. This is again a contrast to the confidence of 2016.
Good article about the China-Hollywood divorce here:
variety.com
The China-Hollywood partnership has been used primarily by Chinese media companies to acquire technical knowhow and the ability to make movies with Hollywood-style production values. They seem to have become satisfied that they have achieved this objective and have recently been giving Hollywood the cold shoulder, refusing to allow movies specifically made to appeal to the Chinese market to be screened in China, e.g. Marvels Shang Chi movie.
They had some minor success with The Wandering Earth in particular and also Wolf Warrior and Operation Red Sea.
They had very high hopes for war movie Battle of Lake Changjin to do better than Wolf Warrior and pulled out all the stops for a blockbuster war movie experience with some of the most celebrated Chinese directors like Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) involved.
Here is a story in 3 acts to see how that went:
Overseas audiences excited about China's war epic released in the UK - Global Times
Actual performance of the movie internationally was significantly worse than Wolf Warrior and the others it hoped to build on.
The Battle at Lake Changjin
www.boxofficemojo.com
Worldwide gross was $902,541,161.
Of which, China accounted for $899,400,000 and Hong Kong accounted for $2,596,393.
So really we're talking half a million gross internationally.
In the UK, it was the 154th highest ranking movie of the year, and was watched no more widely than the low budget Icelandic horror, Lamb.
Cue rage from "blogs" (really state media in disguise):
百度安全验证
baijiahao.baidu.com
I just ran some of it through Google translate but the tone comes across as much angrier and more forthright in the original Chinese IMO.
What stings even more is that after heavily pushing Battle of Lake Changjin to be a box office success - helped by tricks like limiting release of foreign films, heavy state-directed promotion, compulsory school trips, taking entire government departments to see it, and cinemas incentivized or pressured to fiddle the Box Office figures (e.g. if someone paid to see a foreign film, they'd print a ticket for a Chinese political film and just write the name of the foreign film on the back of the stub, so you can see the film you chose but the money goes to the Chinese film) - it actually had the mantle of highest grossing movie of 2021 stolen at the last minute by the new Spiderman movie, which was not allowed for release in China.
This means that China has effectively burned bridges with Hollywood too early - with all the investment, they are still incapable of matching their international success of the early 00s with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Hero, or the critical success of the 90s with early award winning movies by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. So they have actually regressed in terms of soft power, whilst South Korea has leapt miles ahead of them with hits like Parasite and Squid Game, and not only that, but Spiderman has proved to Hollywood that they don't need the Chinese market and attempts to cater to it frequently backfire, and by spurning Hollywood too early they are no longer going to benefit from the indirect soft power of Hollywood trying to curry their favour and they might actually get films where the Chinese are the bad guys now.
This isn't how the script was supposed to go, and calls into question their ability to become a cultural superpower to rival the USA. I think the role of the tightening censorship and political control and declining international success in cinema despite investment will not be lost on at least some people, particularly within the arts. This is again a contrast to the confidence of 2016.
Good article about the China-Hollywood divorce here:
Inside China and Hollywood’s Frayed Relationship: ‘We Need to Stop Trying to Keep the Status Quo, Because the Status Quo Is Gone’
Relations between Tinseltown and the world’s largest film market have entered a new, unprecedented chapter going into 2022.
variety.com
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hash tag
Books, not bombs
I have been thinking that stuff like this might have a little knock on effect Evergrande shares rise as they resume trading after suspension
"The developer is struggling to repay more than $300bn in liabilities by selling assets and shares. Nearly $20bn of international market bonds were deemed to be in cross-default by ratings firms last month after the company missed payments."
"The developer is struggling to repay more than $300bn in liabilities by selling assets and shares. Nearly $20bn of international market bonds were deemed to be in cross-default by ratings firms last month after the company missed payments."
gosub
~#
Disturbing videos emerge as 13 million remain in China's lockdown
Residents were reportedly removed from their homes at midnight and ushered into quarantine as China desperately clamps down. Read the latest.
Given the number of people they openly admit they kill (plus the ones they dont) versus their ''statistically impressive" covid numbers. I think you could probably prove that the CCP is more toxic than covid
gosub
~#
Dead cat bounce.....If the average apartment costs over40X average salary and most you can get is an 80 year lease, and China already has more empty apartments than the rest of the world combined. The fundamentals are fucked and when the music stopped it looked like a massive Ponsi scheme
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
I can't see the Olympics going that well if they think they're gonna stick to zero Covid, 10's of 1000's coming in, just the athletes and their teams, from all over the world, it's gonna be rampant.
gosub
~#
Sadly agree. However would you download the Digital RMB app cos you saw Eddie the Eagle or someone whose chosen to make a living sitting on a teatray buy a McDonald's with it? Also Visa must be doing their nut -don't they usually do a marketing tie in with olympics?
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Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
Where Eddie leads the world follows. Old Chinese saying that.
Yossarian
⏭️
They sealed off the "bubble" all Olympics-related workers, officials etc. will be in a few days ago - if they're lucky they might get to see their families again by April.
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
And still Omicron will flood in, all that agg for nowt.
Yossarian
⏭️
Yep, they haven't got a chance - a few community omicron cases detected in Shenzhen today, by the time the Olympics roll around they'll either have omicron everywhere or half the country will be locked down.
gosub
~#
Beijing locks down office building with workers still inside after single Omicron case detected | CNN
At an office building in China's capital on Sunday, masked Covid control personnel lugged boxes of pillows and bedding through the closely guarded entrance for white collar workers stuck inside, preparing for what may be days of lockdown as Beijing rushes to prevent the spread of Omicron ahead...
Shechemite
Be the sun and all will see you
He is indeed. China Uncensored are Falun Gong owned.
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