What is happening in China, the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and with Chinese overseas?
You are the only resident Chinese, so you tell. We probably need one more Chinese here. Or a Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, or Japanese.
Btw, have you seen the Russian film "Mongol"?
You are the only resident Chinese, so you tell. We probably need one more Chinese here. Or a Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, or Japanese.
I volunteer. 再见.
The Republic of China is maintaining it's independence. That means Taiwan for ex-colonists to whom geography is an eh, what thing. ???
If the Crimea thing goes into UN security council, China will support Russia's veto. It would make sense too - for them.
The governing party, Guomindang (Kuomintang), maintains Taiwan's dependence. Both Guomindang and the Communist Party of China maintain that Taiwan and Mainland China both are parts of China, there is just a slight disagreement between the estranged parties about who should rule that country.
There is a sizeable minority in Taiwan that want the island as a separate country, something neither the two parties above nor the US want. I used to think that these two would drift apart eventually, now I am inclined to think the opposite. That said, it can be nicer to be king of a smaller hill.
Li has declared War on Pollution (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/05/us-china-parliament-pollution-idUSBREA2405W20140305).
Given the precedents of War on Crime, War on Drugs, War on Terror, this augurs well.
ex-colonists
U.K is Rome ex-colonist .
so why did you repeat dat "ex-colonist" thingy everytime ?
every where ?
ex-colonists
why did you repeat dat "ex-colonist" thingy everytime ?
Let me give you a hint. Coming from an ex-colonialist country, he doesn't :heart: ex-colonialists. Furthermore, he thinks that all Americans are ex-colonialists.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSm8yn21Lkxf3gk1wVPLFjKuO3-gr0kgO7CV9A-Z4OkoqfQ97Av8Q)
Quite the fancy dresser, though, I'll give him that.
For an ex-teacher you do reveal some inadequacies my dear man. I have never followed the pattern that I hate all ex-colonists from the land of nut jobs. It's the structure and practice of the place that is the problem. You seem incapable of understanding the difference and that you have allowed yourself to fall into the odd trap of many of your compatriots in, well surprising not understanding (maybe 'cause you don't want to....hhhm?)! Years ago as is known, i visited the place twice and stayed with a couple I met on my first trip for 2 days of my holiday. Did I enjoy my two holidays? Yes, I did but wouldn't want to live in the place. Many quite normal people visited dictatorships including the Third Reich and enjoyed themselves whilst not being happy with what was being done. I mean many towns and cities have went belly up financially and against the wall but hasn't stopped visitors! Differentiate my Michiganian. I do wish you would get out more and some fresh air. Indeed, I would walk slow to aloow you to keep up.
For an ex-teacher you do reveal some inadequacies my dear man.
Couldn't agree more.
Sir , Sometimes i dont understand 'Mericans Way .
'Mericans have Power , but AFAIR 'Mericans never make some Colony stuff like ROme or U.K Did in the past .
You mean like The Phillipines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phillipines#American_period)? :right:
Or any state until it became a "state admitted to the Union". And places like American Samoa or Puerto Rico right now. Plenty of colonisation throughout United States' history and ongoing.
What's Going on in China? (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=243.msg12957#msg12957)
Nothing. They born yellow as usual.
You mean like The Phillipines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phillipines#American_period)? :right:
seems legit
For an ex-teacher you do reveal some inadequacies my dear man.
Couldn't agree more.
John 8:7 (King James Version)
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.
To be human is to be inadequate, and that holds for our Scottish and Portuguese friends.
Sir , Sometimes i dont understand 'Mericans Way .
'Mericans have Power , but AFAIR 'Mericans never make some Colony stuff like ROme or U.K Did in the past .
:up:
You mean like The Phillipines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phillipines#American_period)? :right:
In that wonderful time when Western countries that possessed functional navies were carving up the globe. I've been to the Philippines...Filipinos love us! :love:
Our crowning glory in the Pacific? American Samoa, a lush paradise of 76 sq. miles. We've protected them from those villains of the Pacific, the New Zealanders.
In March 1889, a German naval force invaded a village in Samoa, and by doing so destroyed some American property. Three American warships then entered the Apia harbor and prepared to engage three German warships found there.[4] Before guns were fired, a typhoon wrecked both the American and German ships. A compulsory armistice was called because of the lack of warships.[4]
Sir , Sometimes i dont understand 'Mericans Way .
'Mericans have Power , but AFAIR 'Mericans never make some Colony stuff like ROme or U.K Did in the past .
Nor do Mericans fight the barbarian with the sword like ole ROme did. We got civilized, have moral standards and values, whatever they might stand for.
Assuming that wiki.answers.com is telling us the truth:
There are 761 US Military Bases across the planet. 156 Countries with US bases. 46 Countries with no US presence. 63 countries with US Military Bases and Troops. 7 Countries with 13 New Military Bases since 09/11/2001. In 2001 the US had 255,065 Troops Posted Abroad.
source (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_US_military_bases_are_there_worldwide)
There are 761 US Military Bases across the planet. 156 Countries with US bases. 46 Countries with no US presence. 63 countries with US Military Bases and Troops. 7 Countries with 13 New Military Bases since 09/11/2001. In 2001 the US had 255,065 Troops Posted Abroad.
It's not much, but we do the best we can with limited resources to blitzkrieg the world.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRmR7xGmIsYn2m5iVCNgcCIzzfjZBShtHbFyMaZNqhAr8uSDCB6)
Colonization and imperialism
imperialism : Rome's style .
Put some Doll Government to some land .
i/e Imperialism by Rome in Ancient U.k :beard:
Colonization :
I/e 'Stralia , 'Murica , South africa , etc
'Stralia and 'Murica Native People is not Whity . :left:
and today , AFAIR i dont see many West People in Philipino :monkey:
-------------------------
not sure too bout diz ...
maybe i should ask some of my Pinoy friends . :wait:
zzz :doh: my OCD is tingling :sst:
Allow me to Shed some : Match-tology , Claimotology and Fictionology .
Rome did dat Imperialism thingy in UK and another Land .
then UK did that to everywhere , included in 'murica .
so 'Murica must be did that too , even in Smoother Way . :spock:
but , Imperialism only Valid if there is KingDom .
in this case , 'Murica isnot even a Kingdom .
then how they did that ?
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi59.tinypic.com%2F21147ir.jpg&hash=a6d45eb961af6d5c282162be4093b3e6" rel="cached" data-hash="a6d45eb961af6d5c282162be4093b3e6" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i59.tinypic.com/21147ir.jpg)
Are you real? Dear, oh dear.
but , Imperialism only Valid if there is KingDom .
in this case , 'Murica isnot even a Kingdom .
then how they did that ?
Rome made its proportionally biggest conquests during the republican era. This is how United States does it too.
Besides, when you compare the constitutions of Rome and United States, then United States is effectively an empire, with a term-limited emperor. Presidential constitution where the head of state and head of government are one and the same person is close enough to kingdom or empire. The republican Rome had two consuls.
United States is effectively an empire, with a term-limited emperor.
And an empress.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ffellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com%2F2014%2F01%2Fmichelle.jpg&hash=306b6b759fe4fb874d8d310d344babe5" rel="cached" data-hash="306b6b759fe4fb874d8d310d344babe5" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/michelle.jpg)
The U.s is not even Close to an empire .
the Congress can Impeach aka Fired the President .
while in Ancient Kingdom, No one can touch the King ::)
if some one want to sit at their chair , they must elliminate them . :queen: :king: :knight: :ninja:
while in the U.S , everyone can be the King aka President .
if won the Election
Okay, so let me get this straight:
In 1792, the French colonial empire ceased to be one.
In 1804, suddenly the French colonial empire popped back into existence.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world confidently uses words like rijk (Dutch, cf. German Reich) or imperium to refer to an area of dominion, regardless whether the leadership consists of a monarchy or not.* For example, the Delian League (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delian_League) has also been called the Athenian Empire.
Both the US and the EU in some ways behave imperialistically. Some have called the EU a neo-Holy Roman Empire. But unlike all empires before it, the EU is more comparable to the Foundation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(novel)).
* Well, maybe not completely. Some German guy made the word rijk/Reich a bit less neutral than the word empire. But that's only an issue post-WW2.
Old-style colonies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonies_in_antiquity) are not around that much anymore.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Ff%2Ff4%2FAntikeGriechen1.jpg%2F1280px-AntikeGriechen1.jpg&hash=fffbd1df150d4f41c83bdea1c210ff82" rel="cached" data-hash="fffbd1df150d4f41c83bdea1c210ff82" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/AntikeGriechen1.jpg/1280px-AntikeGriechen1.jpg)
is Selling some stuff is some kind of imperialism ? .
i sense , Western Tradition is create new tech then sell it to another land .
they give you stuff that not exist in your land .
so after you addicted , then you will be depended to them :eek:
Here's an interesting overview page: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/EUmpire.html
All previous empires grew by conquests through force and violence. But now there seems to be a fundamentally new kind of empire: the European Union. Its hesitant and peaceful growth has been fueled not by imposing its will on its neighbors, but by making them want to join, and accepting them only under certain conditions.
That is exactly what I meant when I compared the EU to the Foundation.
Here's an interesting overview page: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/EUmpire.html
All previous empires grew by conquests through force and violence. But now there seems to be a fundamentally new kind of empire: the European Union. Its hesitant and peaceful growth has been fueled not by imposing its will on its neighbors, but by making them want to join, and accepting them only under certain conditions.
That is exactly what I meant when I compared the EU to the Foundation.
Do you think it will work with Ukraine? Take your pick, eastern or western.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ff00.inventorspot.com%2Fimages%2Fputin%2520the%2520puppet%2520master.jpg&hash=beda4b854609c7f44fc6530f86ef3745" rel="cached" data-hash="beda4b854609c7f44fc6530f86ef3745" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://f00.inventorspot.com/images/putin%20the%20puppet%20master.jpg)
The U.s is not even Close to an empire .
the Congress can Impeach aka Fired the President .
while in Ancient Kingdom, No one can touch the King ::)
Nonsense. I bet you didn't know that some empires actually elected their emperors.
while in the U.S , everyone can be the King aka President .
More nonsense. Hint: running for president costs money. Shitloads of money.
Okay, so let me get this straight:
In 1792, the French colonial empire ceased to be one.
In 1804, suddenly the French colonial empire popped back into existence.
And the roman empire only became one in byzantine times when they went to more or less official monarchy :right:
Indeed, Augustus utilized a loophole in the Roman constitution so that, in modern terms, he was president for life.
if Rome was a Republic .
then U.S was an Imperialis :up:
now that makes a sense .
I hope that's not a straw man :beard:
Concessions in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_China)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcolonialwarfare18901975.devhub.com%2Fimg%2Fupload%2Ffyuuyfyu_1.jpg&hash=afaf6ff3fc7a19ccf27cfdafeba7e438" rel="cached" data-hash="afaf6ff3fc7a19ccf27cfdafeba7e438" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://colonialwarfare18901975.devhub.com/img/upload/fyuuyfyu_1.jpg)
International
Shanghai International Settlement (merger of British and American concessions; 1863-1945)
Beijing Legation Quarter (1861-1945)
Gulangyu Island (1903-45)
Austro-Hungarian
Austro-Hungarian concession in Tianjin (1902-17)
Belgian
Belgian concession in Tianjin (1902-31)
British
Hong Kong colony (1841-1997)
Weihaiwei leased territory (1898-1930)
British concession in Tianjin (1860-1943)
British concession in Hankou (1861-1927)
British concession in Jiujiang (1861-1927)
British concession in Zhenjiang (1861-1929)
British concession in Shamian Island, Guangzhou (1861-1945)
British concession in Amoy (1852-1930)
British concession in Shanghai (1846-63; merged to form Shanghai International Settlement)
French
Kwang-Chou-Wan leased territory (1898-1946)
French Concession in Shanghai (1849-1946)
French Concession in Shamian Island, Guangzhou (1861-1946)
French Concession in Hankou (1896-1946)
French concession in Tianjin (1861-1946)
German
Kiautschou Bay leased territory (1898-1914)
German concession in Hankou (1895-1917)
German concession in Tianjin (1895-1917)
Italian
Italian concession in Tianjin (1902-47)
Japanese
Taiwan colony (1895-1945)
Kwantung Leased Territory/South Manchuria Railway Zone (1905-45; obtained from Russia)
Kiautschou Bay leased territory (1914-22; obtained from Germany)
Japanese concession in Tianjin (1898-1943)
Japanese concession in Hankou (1898-1943)
Japanese concession in Chongqing (1901-31)
Japanese concession in Suzhou (1897-1943)
Japanese concession in Hangzhou (1897-1943)
Portuguese
Macau colony (1557-1999)
Russian
Russian Dalian (1898-1905)
Russian concession in Tianjin (1900-24)
Russian concession in Hankou (1896-1924)
Chinese Eastern Railway, Harbin (1896-1952)
United States
American concession in Shanghai (1848-63; merged to form Shanghai International Settlement)
American concession in Tianjin (1860-1902; merged to form British concession in Tianjin)
The Chinese tend to think that wherever Genghis Khan stepped is China. What they forget there is that Genghis Khan was not even Chinese, but a conqueror of China along with the rest of his conquests.
Same with Russians. Their early statehood stems from Viking rulers, and the Romanov dynasty stems from an originally Prussian (that's Prussian, not Russian) prince. And most of their state territory is acquired by conquest. It's not their native land.
Same with Brits. They are shaped by Norman conquest themselves.
Same with United States.
Etc.
None of them has properly their land, country, or interests where they claim to have them.
That reminds me of the TripleA (http://triplea.sourceforge.net/) Pacific scenario where you can play Japan (or against it). Unfortunately the AI isn't particularly strong, but getting a group of humans together is nigh impossible.
Genghis Khan didn't conquer China, Kublai Khan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kublai_Khan) did, starting the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368).
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Something similar happened with the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), when invading Manchus took advantage of a protracted Ming civil war. The red line above is the Qing boundary.
I'm not sure if laudanum-induced hallucinations are really the best source for historical facts. :P
Genghis Kahn may not have conquered all of China, but Kublai Kahn started his conquests of the remainder from Northern China iirc.
if Rome was a Republic .
then U.S was an Imperialis :up:
Well, the US founders did take a few hints from the roman republic.
Seriously, roman emperors had little to nothing to do with late medieval / early modern absolute monarchs. For starters, the emperors were chosen by the senate. What made them 'emperors' was the fact that they were customarily appointed consul and censor for life - the two highest offices the republic had. And they were not exactly beyond recall either.
Then, 'ancient kingdoms' is completely meaningless without context. For example, early germanic kings were military leaders elected by the warrior class, and could be recalled for any reason. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inge_I_of_Sweden) is an example.
Genghis Khan didn't conquer China, Kublai Khan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kublai_Khan) did, starting the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368).
...which makes it even more irrational for the Chinese to regard Genghis Khan as some kind of hero of their own.
How about modern heroes?
Mao Zedong- No need to explain that one.
Yang Liwei- an astronaut and People's Republic of China's first man in outer space.
Fei Junlong- an astronaut piloting Shenzhou VI, a PLA Air Force PLAAF pilot, flight trainer and technology inspector.
We've been through astronaut idolatry, too.
Apparently the Chinese don't have their version of the Kardashians.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fa.media.gossip-tv.gr%2Fitems%2Fcache%2F4cd607f25d5b9560bdc7b1145ffc9582_M.jpg&hash=26279aa5c8b552d5866b51bbb0f8cf2b" rel="cached" data-hash="26279aa5c8b552d5866b51bbb0f8cf2b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://a.media.gossip-tv.gr/items/cache/4cd607f25d5b9560bdc7b1145ffc9582_M.jpg)
I'm not sure if laudanum-induced hallucinations are really the best source for historical facts. :P
No, but pop music is.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ycCLXLiZWs[/video]
Genghis Kahn may not have conquered all of China, but Kublai Kahn started his conquests of the remainder from Northern China iirc.
Northern China has been a contested area for a long time, the Great Wall was put up there for a reason, but the Song dynasty wasn't on their last song until later.
Zhou Yongkang case set to expose the scale of the rot in China's elite politics (http://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1450790/zhou-yongkang-case-set-expose-scale-rot-chinas-elite-politics)
Less than 18 months after becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping is poised to cage the biggest political "tiger" - a corrupt top official - in the history of the People's Republic.
Although rumours of the imminent fall of former internal security chief Zhou Yongkang have been swirling for months, many observers remained unsure whether Xi would prosecute Zhou and thus break the party's long-established unwritten rule of immunity for sitting or retired members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
But doubts about Zhou's fate have now been dispelled by a recent flurry of uncensored news stories in the Chinese media that revealed shocking details of corruption involving Zhou's family and former subordinates.
It has been reported that the authorities recently searched the homes of Zhou's two brothers. Though these stories have yet to implicate Zhou directly, it will only be a matter of time before the Chinese government officially charges him with corruption.
Whispered reports are even more lurid. Zhou is said to have plotted to murder his first wife, and there are rumours that at the height of last year's scandal involving disgraced former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai , he attempted to assassinate Xi in the leadership compound at Zhongnanhai.
Based on what the Chinese press has disclosed thus far, it is clear that the Zhou case will be the ugliest and most sensational scandal involving a senior party leader that the country has ever seen.
It will make Bo, an ally of Zhou and a former Politburo member who was sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption, look like a petty thief.
Concessions in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_China)
And so what?
Zhou Yongkang case set to expose the scale of the rot in China's elite politics (http://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1450790/zhou-yongkang-case-set-expose-scale-rot-chinas-elite-politics)Less than 18 months after becoming general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping is poised to cage the biggest political "tiger" - a corrupt top official - in the history of the People's Republic.
Although rumours of the imminent fall of former internal security chief Zhou Yongkang have been swirling for months, many observers remained unsure whether Xi would prosecute Zhou and thus break the party's long-established unwritten rule of immunity for sitting or retired members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
There never was such unwritten rule. Mao re-arranged his close circle every once in a while, like Stalin. After Mao's death, his ambitious last wife was brought down from power. Etc. The question is not (only) that of corruption, but whether the top notch in the party has the balls to be dictatorial or is he more collegial.
Concessions in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_China)
And so what?
These historical concessions are relevant when considering what the Estonia-China border would look like after Russia's collapse.
...which makes it even more irrational for the Chinese to regard Genghis Khan as some kind of hero of their own.
They do? I haven't seen any Chinese (except possibly by a Mongolian by kinship) claim of ownership of Genghis Khan. The Möngke and Kublai Khans seem to have had more of the Chinese attention.
China and the US have a similar background. Both had a frontier culture with a Wild West sparsely populated by commonly hostile tribes, and a "civilized" East with a much higher population and generally higher technology (though the technology gap was much smaller than in North America).
The difference is that in China, after another of those protracted civil wars, one of the "Indian" tribes won the war, which from an imperial point of view turned out to be good. Kublai Khan and the rest of the Yuan dynasty subdued the competition. Furthermore the Mongols reconnected Eurasia, to the benefit of the Chinese and particularly the Europeans (Marco Polo (http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/People/2014/03/13/Marco-Polo-stuntman-and-Jet-Lis-body-double-Ju-Kun-was-also-on-Flight-MH370/) and all that).
The Yuan/Ming transition, like today's People's Republic/Republic (Beijing/Taipei), had two parallel claimants to China, until Yuan lost the mandate of heavens.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F17%2FChinese_dynasties_timeline_en.png&hash=1a7e97c8bf988bf6169bfeb7ddfaa9ec" rel="cached" data-hash="1a7e97c8bf988bf6169bfeb7ddfaa9ec" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Chinese_dynasties_timeline_en.png) (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Chinese_dynasties_timeline_en.png)
The history of China is the history of empire, but China never had colonies.
There never was such unwritten rule. Mao re-arranged his close circle every once in a while, like Stalin. After Mao's death, his ambitious last wife was brought down from power. Etc. The question is not (only) that of corruption, but whether the top notch in the party has the balls to be dictatorial or is he more collegial.
Not in the Party. Mao lost his power base in the Party after the Great Leap Forward, but fought back using the Cultural Revolution to destroy the Party. The Politburo, the top leadership of the Party, dwindled to insignificance under Mao. If you want to see what China had been like under Mao, look to North Korea, where family dynasty beats Party. Or, if you prefer historical parallels, the Roman Emperors and the Senate.
By Deng the Party was back in power. He institutionalised the current rules, with two term limits and division to prevent another
emperor Mao. The Party is a self-recruiting elitist organisation, and there are power factions at the top. Exactly which factions there are and their relative power is a matter of conjecture.
...which makes it even more irrational for the Chinese to regard Genghis Khan as some kind of hero of their own.
They do? I haven't seen any Chinese (except possibly by a Mongolian by kinship) claim of ownership of Genghis Khan. The Möngke and Kublai Khans seem to have had more of the Chinese attention.
Not much of a difference really - Genghis Khan and his sons, same irrational idolisation of the dynasty not of Chinese descent.
China and the US have a similar background. Both had a frontier culture with a Wild West sparsely populated by commonly hostile tribes, and a "civilized" East with a much higher population and generally higher technology (though the technology gap was much smaller than in North America).
I would not call this similar background. The "frontier culture" is the single accidentally common feature. Everything else is different. The Chinese actually have their heartland in the territory of China and kept encroaching to other lands around it, and never had true faraway colonies, never were a global power until now when the usual suspects feel threatened by it. China has common background with Russia, not with United States.
China has common background with Russia, not with United States.
If you had any idea of how many Chinese restaurants there in the US, you wouldn't say that.
There are 78 in Grand Rapids alone.
China has common background with Russia, not with United States.
If you had any idea of how many Chinese restaurants there in the US, you wouldn't say that.
There are 78 in Grand Rapids alone.
That's not background. That's front or surface.
These historical concessions are relevant when considering what the Estonia-China border would look like after Russia's collapse.
You made me go look for what "concessions" are we talking about. I thought it was the British domination of Opium trading, something of that sort, but wikipedia has "enlightened" me.
The sovereignty of the last two European territories in China, Hong Kong and Macau, although not concessions but rather colonies,
That's a falsity.
Macau, unlike Hong Kong, was given perpetually to us. It's not a colony but an integral part of our territory.
Sold by traitors that will be punished by History and Men and Chinese illegal occupation terminated.
No wonder such a falsity Saxon propaganda as wikipedia to keep on broadcasting lies.
No wonder such a falsity Saxon propaganda as wikipedia to keep on broadcasting lies.
Are you sure enough that Wikipedia is controlled by Saxons?
If so it should be renamed to Widukind in no time :knight:
No wonder such a falsity Saxon propaganda as wikipedia to keep on broadcasting lies.
Are you sure enough that Wikipedia is controlled by Saxons?
If so it should be renamed to Widukind in no time :knight:
Yes, you are correct Krake, I apologize - Not strictly Saxons but Anglo-Saxons, sort of cousins of yours.
I picked up a Chinese news tit-bit. There was a riot in Taipeh and people stromed a government building over recent meetings about business between the Republic of China and the mainland government.
and people stromed a government building
Strömed a building?:)
In Russian , we have a word "стрёмный" - meaning "scary":)
What's wrong with this picture?
A Russian teaching a Scot how to speak English!
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fgigaom2.files.wordpress.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fscratching-head.jpg%3Fw%3D300%26amp%3Bh%3D200%26amp%3Bcrop%3D1&hash=02b9271b5991d1193145b058ff3f9d0b" rel="cached" data-hash="02b9271b5991d1193145b058ff3f9d0b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/scratching-head.jpg?w=300&h=200&crop=1)
That did make me laugh so thanks. Mainly due to it coming from a land that has big problem still with that. You failed so retirement a joy.
Shanghai Shenhua Football Club renamed Shanghai Greenland Football Club (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Greenland_F.C.) after being bought by the Greenland group (China Greenland to Invest $2 Billion in London Developments (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-07/china-greenland-to-invest-2-billion-in-london-property-projects.html)).
Fan club didn't like that (http://wildeastfootball.net/2014/03/shanghai-shenhua-fans-xi-jinping-protest-banner-confiscated-amid-ruckus/).
A banner quoting Chinese president Xi Jingping on the importance of tradition and culture, brandished by Shanghai Shenhua fans protesting their club’s name change, was confiscated by police amid angry scenes at Hongkou Stadium on Saturday night.
At the end of Saturday’s Yangtze Delta Derby against Hangzhou, which resulted in a miserable 3-1 defeat for Shenhua, members of the club’s biggest fan’s group, the Blue Devils, raised a large banner which quoted a line from Xi Jinping’ speech made at a Politburo collective study meeting last month, and widely reported in the Chinese media.
The banner read 抛弃传统等于割断精神命脉 (paoqi chuantong dengyu geduan jingshen mingmai) which translates roughly as “abandoning tradition is tantamount to severing your spiritual lifeline.” The link to Shanghai Shenhua’s current predicament – the protest against new owners Greenland removing “Shenhua” from the club’s name – was clear for all to see , including Hongkou’s police who stormed into the north terrace to confiscate the banner.
Inside the stadium, Greenland bussed in 3,000 of their own employees, kitted out North Korean style in identical Greenland FC shirts. A swathe of security personnel segregated these fans from the Blue Boys fans group on the south terrace – a larger swathe in fact, than the size of the detachment used to separate the Hangzhou fans from the rest of the home support.
With ten minutes of the match remaining, the Greenland fans’ section was almost empty – pictures appeared on Weibo mocking their lack of commitment “Does your boss now you are knocking off work early?” joked one Shenhua poster. By contrast, both the north and south terraces, home to Shenhua’s two main fan groups, were jam packed even after the final whistle.
Does anyone remember those alleged state sponsored Chinese hackers Mr.Obama used to bristle with anger?
The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL. Among the American intelligence service's targets were former Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommunications companies.
source (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-spied-on-chinese-government-and-networking-firm-huawei-a-960199.html)
That's some significant allegations of industrial espionage.
But the NSA made a special effort to target Huawei. With 150,000 employees and €28 billion ($38.6 billion) in annual revenues, the company is the world's second largest network equipment supplier. At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as "Shotgiant," against the company, which is considered a major competitor to US-based Cisco. The company produces smartphones and tablets, but also mobile phone infrastructure, WLAN routers and fiber optic cable -- the kind of technology that is decisive in the NSA's battle for data supremacy.
A special unit with the US intelligence agency succeeded in infiltrating Huwaei's network and copied a list of 1,400 customers as well as internal documents providing training to engineers on the use of Huwaei products, among other things.
Source Code Breached
According to a top secret NSA presentation, NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies. Because Huawei directed all mail traffic from its employees through a central office in Shenzhen, where the NSA had infiltrated the network, the Americans were able to read a large share of the email sent by company workers beginning in January 2009, including messages from company CEO Ren Zhengfei and Chairwoman Sun Yafang.
"We currently have good access and so much data that we don't know what to do with it," states one internal document. As justification for targeting the company, an NSA document claims that "many of our targets communicate over Huawei produced products, we want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products." The agency also states concern that "Huawei's widespread infrastructure will provide the PRC (People's Republic of China) with SIGINT capabilities." SIGINT is agency jargon for signals intelligence. The documents do not state whether the agency found information indicating that to be the case.
The operation was conducted with the involvement of the White House intelligence coordinator and the FBI. One document states that the threat posed by Huawei is "unique".
One of the concerns launched against Huawei products was that they could have spying backdoors. They didn't mention that the spies would be American.
When I wrote to President Chian Kai Shek years ago, I am sure he was much comforted by my letter. Ah the thinks we do to help.
That's some significant allegations of industrial espionage.
Shouldn't surprise anyone who's been reading the news. Here's (http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelspecial/d-8870381.html) one from 1996.
When I wrote to President Chian Kai Shek years ago, I am sure he was much comforted by my letter. Ah the thinks we do to help.
I things that's true.
Year of the horse (http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/01/chinese-new-year-bbc-welcomes-year-of-the-whores-in-caption-fail-4286753/)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fim.ft-static.com%2Fcontent%2Fimages%2Fd2c8a344-b44c-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.img&hash=ac5b815fb492ba1294d0c6dc0f229d86" rel="cached" data-hash="ac5b815fb492ba1294d0c6dc0f229d86" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://im.ft-static.com/content/images/d2c8a344-b44c-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.img)
China’s struggle for a new economy (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1e4472ae-b348-11e3-b09d-00144feabdc0.html)
Outside China, pessimism has been growing about the ability of the colossus to sustain its rapid growth. Worriers are paying particular attention to excessive capacity, investment and debt. I share the view that making the transition to slower and more balanced growth is an extraordinarily hard challenge even by the standards of those China has already met. Yet betting against the success of Chinese policy makers has been a foolish wager. When a superb horse meets a new obstacle, the odds must be on the horse. But even the best horse may fall.
Yang Weimin, a vice-minister in the government, laid out the country’s new “guidelines for comprehensively deepening reform” in an invaluable background paper. This notes several new conditions.
First, China is an upper-middle-income country, with gross domestic product per head of $6,700. It is now tackling the rarely achieved task of becoming an advanced economy.
Second, the international environment is less favourable than it used to be, partly because the high-income economies are so structurally weak and partly because the Chinese economy has become so much larger relative to all others.
Third, the economy has itself changed. The potential growth rate has fallen to 7-8 per cent, partly because of a shrinking labour force; excess capacity has become massive even by Chinese standards; financial risks have risen, driven by excessive local authority borrowing, housing bubbles and growth of shadow banking; the country is now more than 50 per cent urbanised but its cities suffer a range of ills, including pollution. Finally, the resource-intensive growth pattern is hitting limits, notably of water, which is not a directly tradeable commodity.
The “Decision on Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reforms” agreed last November is the response. It is the blueprint for the next round of reforms. It proposes, notably, substantial institutional and political reform, including a transformation of “imperative and administrative governance” to “governance by law”. The market is to play a “decisive” role in resource allocation. The government is, in turn, to be responsible for “macroeconomic regulation, market regulation, public service, social administration and environmental protection”. Westerners would recognise all that.
I don't know about China, but I have it on good authority that over in Algeria an awful lot of water used to be lost due to old and low quality (i.e. leaky) pipes.
:chef: This is a tiny part of what's going on in China...the genius and joy of Chinese cooking. :chef:
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_l5hIAWubk[/video]
I don't know about China, but I have it on good authority that over in Algeria an awful lot of water used to be lost due to old and low quality (i.e. leaky) pipes.
China is projected to invest a truly staggering amount in water, and that is not a country that is a stranger to huge projects. The world will need to do the same thing, according to McKinsey water investments in the scale of 10 trillion USD will be needed by 2030 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/17/mckinsey-world-needs-57-trillion-in-infrastructure-by-2030-yes-trillion-with-a-t/).
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fblogs%2Fwonkblog%2Ffiles%2F2013%2F01%2Fmckinsey_estiamtes.jpg&hash=6a3b07468a94fd38ec50074e821c78a1" rel="cached" data-hash="6a3b07468a94fd38ec50074e821c78a1" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2013/01/mckinsey_estiamtes.jpg)
China is projected to invest a truly staggering amount in water, and that is not a country that is a stranger to huge projects.
But it's not huge projects that were the issue there. The huge project was to build a dam in a wadi and to filter it, etc. Improving the end-user infrastructure is a huge project in the form of a great many tiny projects. Basically it's the difference between just pumping in more and more water and greatly increasing the efficiency of what you've got.
But it's not huge projects that were the issue there. The huge project was to build a dam in a wadi and to filter it, etc. Improving the end-user infrastructure is a huge project in the form of a great many tiny projects. Basically it's the difference between just pumping in more and more water and greatly increasing the efficiency of what you've got.
Some huge projects, huge number of smaller projects.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lib.utexas.edu%2Fmaps%2Fworld_maps%2Fwater_scarcity_2025.jpg&hash=48024863c778903a6990c3732769ee95" rel="cached" data-hash="48024863c778903a6990c3732769ee95" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world_maps/water_scarcity_2025.jpg)
The above map is a projection for 2025, physical scarcity means an actual shortage of water, economic scarcity implies no shortage of water, but of water infrastructure.
Northern China is one of the thirstiest regions in the world, and a fast growing one. There is a massive water diversion project in China (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South%E2%80%93North_Water_Transfer_Project), leading water to the north. Even on that grand scale, it will not be enough.
Netizens in China speculate on Merkel's map gift to Xi
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, presented the visiting Chinese president, Xi Jinping, with a map of China from the 18th century on Xi's third stop on his European tour on March 28. China's internet has since been abuzz concerning the meaning of the gift.
Merkel presented the map as she received Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan at her private residence in Berlin. Upon handing over the gift, Merkel said the map was the first precise map of China drawn in Germany in 1735.
---
Others said the gift is "very meaningful" in the light of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine and that the map is a move by Germany to remind China of its past wounds following its period of expansion
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1101&MainCatID=11&id=20140401000058
Domes give kids chance to exercise in clean air (http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-03/28/content_17387360.htm)
With Beijing education authorities urging schools to cancel outdoor activities when pollution level alerts hit orange, some international schools in the capital are building facilities to ensure children can exercise in cleaner air.
The color-coded alert system, in order of increasing severity, is blue, yellow, orange and red.
In order to ensure children do not have to cut down their outdoor activities due to air quality, international schools in Beijing are spending tens of millions of yuan building air domes - large enclosed areas with filtered air.
The Western Academy of Beijing, an international school in Chaoyang district, constructed a campus dome in January that covers 1,000 square meters.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.asiaone.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Foriginal_images%2FMar2014%2F20140328_sports_chiandaily.jpg&hash=9bb8bff694e8ea8bcf4b2ccd33cacf8b" rel="cached" data-hash="9bb8bff694e8ea8bcf4b2ccd33cacf8b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://news.asiaone.com/sites/default/files/original_images/Mar2014/20140328_sports_chiandaily.jpg)
Ah! we had such a bubble in our local stadium. Not because of air, I suppose...
This isn't fog.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gocnhinalan.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F03%2Fimage011-300x161.jpg&hash=370781beb7d98394136b423bb95be082" rel="cached" data-hash="370781beb7d98394136b423bb95be082" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.gocnhinalan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/image011-300x161.jpg)
Which explains why people are buying this...
http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/6110755/people-china-are-lining-bags-fresh-mountain-air (http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/6110755/people-china-are-lining-bags-fresh-mountain-air)
Looks like L.A. when I lived there as a child.
This isn't fog.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gocnhinalan.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2013%2F03%2Fimage011-300x161.jpg&hash=370781beb7d98394136b423bb95be082" rel="cached" data-hash="370781beb7d98394136b423bb95be082" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.gocnhinalan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/image011-300x161.jpg)
Which explains why people are buying this...
http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/6110755/people-china-are-lining-bags-fresh-mountain-air (http://www.globalpost.com/photo-galleries/planet-pic/6110755/people-china-are-lining-bags-fresh-mountain-air)
Mel Brooks was a prophet:
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fmimg.ugo.com%2F201203%2F7%2F8%2F3%2F219387%2Fcuts%2Fperriair_480_poster.jpg&hash=d9ae743805adffc5b085f7869e3dee6c" rel="cached" data-hash="d9ae743805adffc5b085f7869e3dee6c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://mimg.ugo.com/201203/7/8/3/219387/cuts/perriair_480_poster.jpg)
There are times when sucking air is useful.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Frf%2Fimage_296w%2F2010-2019%2FWashingtonPost%2F2012%2F01%2F29%2FStyle%2FImages%2FHEAallergy2.jpg%3Fuuid%3DgbeiYkrGEeGij9OsRwY3-w&hash=671c76b056d3571df5facb3826a83273" rel="cached" data-hash="671c76b056d3571df5facb3826a83273" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_296w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/01/29/Style/Images/HEAallergy2.jpg?uuid=gbeiYkrGEeGij9OsRwY3-w)
Bemusing as I have just returned home from buying a cordless vacuum for upstairs and no woman came with it.
Sad, that!
There's lots of vacuum upstairs, but I'd strongly advise you against getting cordless.(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F3%2F3e%2FTeddies_in_Space.jpg&hash=df272dc19e5aea09c5d16a6c31261cf9" rel="cached" data-hash="df272dc19e5aea09c5d16a6c31261cf9" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Teddies_in_Space.jpg)
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 C.
The Russians used a pencil.
Unfortunately those ugly facts are at it again, The Write Stuff (http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp), but an interesting piece of technology history anyway.
China is going to kill us all.
China is going to kill us all.
and eat us.
China is going to kill us all.
and eat us.
Oh yes, but in thin slices
while you are still alive. You don't need photos of them doing it, do you?
Police search landfill for HK$28 million painting 'after cleaners mistake it for rubbish' (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1470196/police-search-landfill-hk28-million-painting-after-cleaners-mistake)
(https://www.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486w/public/2014/04/09/a843724530b3a7b993f2265551dfa58e.jpg)
Cleaners at the city's Grand Hyatt hotel are suspected to have dumped a painting that had just sold for more than HK$28 million with rubbish that was then taken to a landfill.
The Chinese ink wash painting, Snowy Mountain, by Cui Ruzhuo went under the hammer for HK$28.75 million, the second highest price among 22 of the artist's works sold during a two-day sale in the five-star Wan Chai hotel.
A police source said officers scrutinising closed-circuit TV footage yesterday saw a security guard kick the packaged artwork over to a pile of rubbish.
Cleaners were then seen disposing of the rubbish, which is believed to have been taken to landfill in Tuen Mun.
The source said police had been to the landfill but could find no trace of the painting.
A police spokesman today said the case had been classified as "theft", adding that no arrests had been made.
The cleaners actually made the dauberpainter honoured by putting his poo..work among THE FOUNDATION OF A LIVING SPACE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS!:cheers:
Well now Belfrager if China is going to kill us all they will possibly be clever enough to get what owed from the US of A. Bang goes our protection......
Pollution in China, particularly the city of Linfen. And I thought Grand Rapids was bad.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4DtOhe2LfQ[/video]
Btw, have you seen the Russian film "Mongol"?
Sure, it was quite enjoyable. Too bad a
Mongol II is unlikely.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWt-FXJhLdI[/video]
Too bad a Mongol II is unlikely.
Why?
To quote IMDB trivia (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416044/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv)
Originally, 'Mongol' was the first part of a projected trilogy. However after the difficulty making this film, director Sergey Bodrov decided not to make the sequels. Several months after shooting wrapped however, he changed his mind again and decided to conflate his scripts for parts 2 and 3 into one script, and just do the one sequel, entitled 'The Great Kahn'. It was originally scheduled to be released in late 2010, but the project was held back for several months. In Noevember 2010 however, it was announced that all work on the film had ceased, and was unlikely to resume.
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Director Sergey Bodrov and Production Designer Dashi Namdakov visited Mongolia's chief shaman in the capital city of Ulan Bator, so that they could ask permission to film a movie about Genghis Khan's life. The shaman told them that of all the people who have talked about making such a film, they were the only ones to ask his permission.
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Some locations were so remote that the crew had to build roads to access them.
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The film took 14 months to shoot, and had a crew of 400 people (300 Chinese and 100 Russians), and over 1500 extras. Because there were so many different nationalities working on the film (Germans, Mongols, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhstanis), a team of over 30 interpreters were on set at all times.
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The quotation used at the beginning of the film is a genuine Mongolian proverb: "Do not scorn a weak cub. He may become the brutal tiger."
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The film was financed with money from Germany, Russia, Kazakhstan and the United States.
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The film was shot primarily in Kazakhstan and China. In China, the primary location was Inner Mongolia, a Mongolian province within China's borders which has more Mongolians living in it than Mongolia itself.
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Prior to appearing in the film as Börte, actress Khulan Chuluun was studying to be a journalist, and had never acted before. Director Sergey Bodrov had sent casting director Gulshat Omarova to Mongolia to look for actresses for the role, but she was unable to find any. Disappointed with her failure, she went to the Chinese Embassy to renew her Visa so as to travel back to China. Whilst she was in the embassy, she saw Khulan by sheer accident, and approached her to ask about playing the role.
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Prior to filming the scenes of Temudgin (Tadanobu Asano) and Börte (Khulan Chuluun) together, director Sergey Bodrov kept the two actors apart, and never allowed them to meet, as he didn't want them to be too comfortable with one another, due to the fact that they are supposed to have separated for several years in the film.
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During the shooting of scenes involving a lot of extras, it was discovered that many of the extras were drinking alcohol between takes, which was causing problems amongst the mixed nationalities when shooting began. As such, the production purchased some footballs and the extras played soccer amongst themselves. However, after several weeks, they became bored with this, and soon returned to drinking, until second assistant director Zhao Meng had the idea to hire some female dancers and singers, and bring them onto location to perform for the extras.
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In resume, everything film making should be about. Magnifique.
Less Chinese suicides (http://www.economist.com/news/china/21605942-first-two-articles-chinas-suicide-rate-looks-effect-urbanisation-back?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/pe/backfromtheedge)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.static-economist.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimagecache%2Ffull-width%2Fimages%2Fprint-edition%2F20140628_CNP003_0.jpg&hash=309674b95d968aa556ef8824029fe5e7" rel="cached" data-hash="309674b95d968aa556ef8824029fe5e7" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20140628_CNP003_0.jpg)
IN THE 1990s China had one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Young rural women in particular were killing themselves at an alarming rate. In recent years, however, China’s suicides have declined to among the lowest rates in the world.
In 2002 the Lancet, a British medical journal, said there were 23.2 suicides per 100,000 people annually from 1995 to 1999. This year a report by a group of researchers from the University of Hong Kong found that had declined to an average annual rate of 9.8 per 100,000 for the years 2009-11, a 58% drop.
Paul Yip, director of the Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention at the University of Hong Kong and a co-author of the recent study, says no country has ever achieved such a rapid decline in suicides. And yet, experts say, China has done it without a significant improvement in mental-health services—and without any national publicity effort to lower suicides.
The most dramatic shift has been in the figures for rural women under 35. Their suicide rate appears to have dropped by as much as 90%. The Lancet study in 2002 estimated 37.8 per 100,000 of this age group committed suicide annually in 1995-99. The new study says this declined to just over three per 100,000 in 2011. Another study of suicides, covering 20 years in one province, Shandong, found a decline of 95% among rural women under 35, to 2.6 suicides per 100,000 in 2010—and a 68% drop in suicides among all rural women.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.static-economist.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fimagecache%2Foriginal-size%2Fimages%2Fprint-edition%2F20140628_CNC229.png&hash=b3ef7b951e6be125079c9bba5fb83dc9" rel="cached" data-hash="b3ef7b951e6be125079c9bba5fb83dc9" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/print-edition/20140628_CNC229.png)
If China's suicide rate has dropped so much, surely a similar graph could be drawn for cities?
AFAIK
suicidal thoughts usually related to mental illness .
i/e bipolar
so..
what kind of China government did about that mental health issues ?
Suicide rates fluctuate a lot. Some of it due to the challenges of collecting statistics, particularly in areas where suicide is taboo. Suicide can easily be classified as accidents or even not be counted for. Different methodologies could easily account for discrepancies.
All that notwithstanding, this may be a real effect. There have been reports on very high suicide rates among rural women not only in China, but also India and Pakistan (that I have heard of). There might indeed be cultures of suicide.
Of course that rural condition by itself is not a cause of suicide. That graph is manipulative.
It most been done to attract more cheap labour to cities. Come meet happiness...
Seems there was trouble and protests in the Republic of China because their government in Taipei were discussing trade with the mainland.
Of course that rural condition by itself is not a cause of suicide. That graph is manipulative.
It most been done to attract more cheap labour to cities. Come meet happiness...
Misery is not in itself a cause of suicide. The mechanisms of suicide are complex, there are several factors that have to coincide. Thus no universal Theory of Suicide, we have unreliable statistics compounded by unreliable and poorly understood mechanisms.
Personally I find it fascinating the claim that the more happy and content the general population is, the more miserable the unhappy discontents are. More practical, it seems that small changes that reduce the means of suicide for those in such a state that they would consider it have a large impact. Changing the (sub)culture can have an effect too. Many cultures romanticise or otherwise empower suicide, and they have higher suicide rates, e.g. Goth and Emo cultures, but you get issues of causality and so on. Force-feeding them ABBA would probably not help.
Agrarian societies tend to be stacked in favour of men, and Chinese rural women have had their share of misery. There is plenty of misery in the cities as well, but women are more empowered there. This is part of a global phenomena. Traditionally men went to the city to find work to supplement their rural income, this has been turned around and women in greater numbers than men leave the countryside for education and work, and they stay there, leaving the aging men behind while the women take over the cities from within.
Agrarian societies tend to be stacked in favour of men, and Chinese rural women have had their share of misery.
Remember watching a documentary in the interior of China where society was matriarchal and polygamist.
The woman had all the property, houses and cattle, and she also worked. Her men just sit at the house entrance and smoked.
They lived happily.
Chinese repressive authorities wanted to finish with their lifestyle. No wonder suicide rates to raise at such remote locations.
China is a big place, the size of the USA, twice the size of the EU, and with a lot more variety than either. However matriarchy is rare, so when you refer to that it is fairly easy to guess the tribe in question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo), in the region where China, Indo-China, and India meet.
Here's a British program on another Chinese tribe.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZgUyjzPSh8[/video]
Here's a British program on another Chinese tribe.
"
Where did a million Chinese millionaires comes from"
:)
I'm tired of millionaires, wherever they come from they're all equal. What a plague.
I'm tired of millionaires, wherever they come from they're all equal.
If one is tired of spaghetti, presumably you've had too much of it.
How many millionaires have you met to make you tired of them? I've met one, and that was only once. I'm not tired of him. Hell, it was only once, so how can one become tired of having met one millionaire once. You are an amazing person.
You are an amazing person.
Yes I am, thank you. :)
How many millionaires have you met to make you tired of them? I've met one, and that was only once. I'm not tired of him. Hell, it was only once, so how can one become tired of having met one millionaire once.
Is it so difficult to find millionaires there?
Had you told me that before and I would had made a meet-a-millionaire business there. On a second thought, glad I didn't, that would make me one more irritating millionaire.
You see, I have this thing against new money and social alpinism.
Taiwan: Kaohsiung rocked by underground blasts (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/08/02/2003596471)
A series of suspected gas explosions that shook Greater Kaohsiung from late Thursday night to early yesterday morning claimed at least 26 lives and injured 269 people.
The blasts tore through the city’s roads and dug a 100m trench up to 1.8m deep. At least 1.5km of roadways were damaged.
Cars and fire trucks were trapped and overturned in the rubble. Vehicles were hurled through the air, landing on the roofs of houses. Flames erupted from manholes after their covers were blasted off, with gouts of fire reaching 15 stories high.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ftwimg.edgesuite.net%2Fimages%2FReNews%2F20140801%2F420_254dde0198dcc4079825dd7829c9551a.jpg&hash=e0bf09ff0f946b7407b59f46a572c7d9" rel="cached" data-hash="e0bf09ff0f946b7407b59f46a572c7d9" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://twimg.edgesuite.net/images/ReNews/20140801/420_254dde0198dcc4079825dd7829c9551a.jpg)
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gzJtYkVtsw[/video]
Chinese construction at it's best...
I also like the amount of buildings that's tries to compete with the Pisa Tower.
Highways through houses also seems to me an original and creative concept.
I wait for the day we have here a Chinese...
No construction anywhere can withstand the force of a large gas explosion. Why there was an explosion in the first place is a different question that a lot of Taiwanese will be asking.
Deadly days. Across the Strait and beyond Shanghai there has been a huge factory explosion in Kunshan. We're talking Gaza (if not Syria) level of fatalities.
No construction anywhere can withstand the force of a large gas explosion.
I'd say there's too much lens distortion to tell one way or the other.
I also like the amount of buildings that's tries to compete with the Pisa Tower.
Don't let you misguided by the perspective distortion of the photo. (another example (http://gimp.pixtuts.com/images/tutorials/perspective-destortion/perspective-distortion-begin.jpg))
Highways through houses also seems to me an original and creative concept.
Highway with cross-walk? That doesn't seem to be a highway.
Multi-lane roads are a necessity in big-city traffic unless you ban cars.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.telegraph.co.uk%2Fmultimedia%2Farchive%2F01432%2Fchina_1432267c.jpg&hash=dafb0fa9e4b84687e7bb9bbcfb1d0c5d" rel="cached" data-hash="dafb0fa9e4b84687e7bb9bbcfb1d0c5d" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01432/china_1432267c.jpg)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nikdaum.com%2Fnews%2F09shanghai786.jpg&hash=0ecfcdbf44efd3cab0f1e4ca569276a3" rel="cached" data-hash="0ecfcdbf44efd3cab0f1e4ca569276a3" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.nikdaum.com/news/09shanghai786.jpg)
Can't find the image of a highway that goes through a hole in the middle of a house....
Can't find the image of a highway that goes through a hole in the middle of a house....
Iirc those images are from the PRC, not the ROC. :P
Iirc those images are from the PRC, not the ROC. :P
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=reporttm;topic=243.115;msg=24740)
I don't know what PRC and ROC means. I also don't know what lirc means.
You shouldn't use acronyms, that's an American mania and obsession. :P
That and reducing people's names to half.
If I recall correctly those images are from the People's Republic of China, not the Republic of China (Taiwan).
The fallen buildings are from the People's Republic of China.
Never, ever buy a Chinese construction. Or anything else.
Have you ever smoked Chinese contrafaction cigarettes? it even has pieces of plastic inside.
We (at least Frenzie and me) had this discussion in one of the better threads in old D&D. The construction is actually impressively good. Given the stress the building was exposed to, it has held up quite well.
The foundation work, or the lack of it, by the developer is a wholly different story.
We (at least Frenzie and me) had this discussion in one of the better threads in old D&D. The construction is actually impressively good. Given the stress the building was exposed to, it has held up quite well.
The foundation work, or the lack of it, by the developer is a wholly different story.
:faint:
Ok, now you know it, just buy the upper part of Chinese constructions... they are really good at it. Who cares about foundations anyway...
You know, I was a real estate developer for more than twenty years, here something like that would put you in prison immediately.
As was the case in China. In 2010 the developer got life in prison and confiscation of personal property, as did the second largest shareholder and government official. Four others got 3-5 years.
As was the case in China. In 2010 the developer got life in prison and confiscation of personal property, as did the second largest shareholder and government official. Four others got 3-5 years.
I see, besides being magnificent builders they also have advanced and efficient justice systems. What a paradise.
How could I be so wrong about them for all those years...
.........................
One day I should visit them. Who knows, I can fall in love with a sweet Chinese girl and have a lot of adorable little half-Chinese Belfragers... :)
That would be a nice way of getting old.
:sing:
I wait for the day we have here a Chinese...
Eager for a new cooking recipe? :)
The Portuguese had established a management culture of violent domination and abuse in India. However, this did not go down well with Brazilian locals, who captured and ate their Portuguese ‘owners’ in complex ceremonies.
Joking aside - it's interesting to watch different perceptions of China depending on what they are based on - mass media or personal cognitions gathered at the face.
This is also a rather wide topic, covering the entire sinosphere, Chinese in Siberia aren't the same as Chinese in Indonesia.
For part Portugese you should go to Macau, the Macanese have a significant Portuguese mix-in. Macau is also expanding with the lease of Hangqin island, potentially quadrupling in size, though starting small.
Macau's expansion into Hengqin gives Hong Kong cause for reflection (http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1503690/macaus-expansion-hengqin-gives-hong-kong-cause-reflection)
Hong Kong frets about lagging behind whenever our neighbours roll out eye-catching policies or take steps different from ours. That explains why a request by the Macau government for more land on the mainland island of Hengqin for development immediately fuelled calls for the city to follow suit. The suggestion may sound far-fetched for the conventional-minded, but it triggers reflection on our development strategies and competitiveness.
The two cities share similarities. Both have moved from being colonial outposts of Western powers to modern cities with special autonomy under Chinese rule. Cross-border integration in both places is growing, as is the social tension it causes. Yet the two are different, not just in terms of size, population and strengths. The different socio-political situations mean the two governments have different priorities.
Prompted by a fast-expanding economy, tiny Macau has come up with the novel idea of spilling some of its facilities and commerce onto the neighbouring island, over which it has no jurisdiction. This includes paying HK$1.2 billion to rent a square kilometre of the island for 40 years for an extension of the University of Macau. A request for more land for development has already been made to Beijing.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbcmAtQnF3Q[/video]
As for sweet Chinese girls the competition is rather hard, and looks set to be harder.
it's interesting to watch different perceptions of China depending on what they are based on - mass media or personal cognitions gathered at the face.
This guy spent three month traveling with his bike in China. (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=PS&doc_id=14024&v=18e)
See the photographs, read a few entries and compare with all that video propaganda...
Just as an example...
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crazyguyonabike.com%2Fpics%2Fdocs%2F00%2F01%2F40%2F24%2Flarge%2FIMG_20140619_074145_derelict.jpg%3Fv%3D0&hash=e333c7f88e750a482d474359ceb384db" rel="cached" data-hash="e333c7f88e750a482d474359ceb384db" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/pics/docs/00/01/40/24/large/IMG_20140619_074145_derelict.jpg?v=0)
This guy spent three month traveling with his bike in China. (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=PS&doc_id=14024&v=18e)
See the photographs, read a few entries and compare with all that video propaganda...
Nicely designed website comfortably watchable with old Opera :) Opera fast forwards to the next page :love:
By the way, you liked the penal system. Did you know it's the deadliest in the world (i.e. most death sentences and they implement it as if on production line too)? And the family policies practically prohibit reproduction.
By the way, you liked the penal system.
The contrary.
Did you know it's the deadliest in the world (i.e. most death sentences and they implement it as if on production line too)?
And families have to pay for the bullet if they want to get the corpse... marvelous China, indeed...
They use the death penalty as a control method against overpopulation. Like ecofascists, only in practice, not just talking :)
Two countries in the sinosphere have topped the statistics for death penalty, PRC for the number of executions in total, Singapore for highest rate per capita. However neither publish the number of executions, so those numbers are estimates. Singapore has a review/moratorium in effect, PRC is also reforming its penal code, and reducing the number of death penalties actually carried through. Even so, China is still executing more people than the rest of the world combined.
China Rethinks the Death Penalty (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/opinion/china-rethinks-the-death-penalty.html)
In 2006 a group of reform-minded justices began formally advocating moderation in punishment. Led by Xiao Yang, then the Supreme People’s Court chief justice, they pushed the maxim “kill fewer, kill cautiously.” The following year, the high court began reviewing all capital cases, creating a strong disincentive for lower courts to hand out death sentences. The substitution in many cases of suspended death sentences — which in practice means offenders spend about 25 years in prison — was the result.
The shift met resistance from hard-liners who warned of a spike in crime. But pandemonium did not ensue. Some criminologists now argue that the harsh campaigns of the past in fact sparked violent crime, by making criminals reluctant to leave witnesses behind.
Chinese police continue to carry out punitive campaigns. But arrests made during such operations no longer automatically mean death. Even Chen Jun, a migrant worker convicted in a prominent 2008 case of stabbing the Canadian model Diana O’Brien more than 20 times, was given a suspended death sentence. The stabbing happened a mere month before the Beijing Olympics, as the police were cracking down on crimes big and small. Interviews I conducted over the past year with former police investigators, Mr. Chen’s family and Ms. O’Brien’s mother reveal that, in his case, the authorities were eager to show restraint. Instead of retributive justice, his trial suggested an emphasis on reparation and societal harmony.
China’s penal practices are far from enlightened. Even if Mr. Liu’s assertion of halving executions is true, China still executes about 3,000 people a year, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, compared with 39 in the United States in 2013.
But even a preliminary drop in executions is encouraging, allowing people like Li Yan a real shot at justice. Chinese judges and policy makers should continue to heed public calls for restraint. Perhaps, with time, they might even return to China’s benevolent roots.
Capital punishment is a form of population reduction is a meaningless statement. Apart from the convicts above child-bearing age or not in any relationship that would likely end up with a child, the number is too tiny to have any impact.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Flh4.ggpht.com%2Fo-akUIvl8lpS8JKgJlUiRuQmM0IEnWLwyXJseub5wEh3M3UBDZHeqNocdsQkJ1HTkPkrvgZkezgZHnS7zkA7dfq1VDNhcHfe9kdP62oPAg%3Ds660&hash=637833f1c218a1ed971c689a3e12d8f7" rel="cached" data-hash="637833f1c218a1ed971c689a3e12d8f7" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://lh4.ggpht.com/o-akUIvl8lpS8JKgJlUiRuQmM0IEnWLwyXJseub5wEh3M3UBDZHeqNocdsQkJ1HTkPkrvgZkezgZHnS7zkA7dfq1VDNhcHfe9kdP62oPAg=s660)
I've spent a few days at what would be reported as a Shanghai ghost town, and it has been highly enjoyable. It could best be described as the Chinese idea of the American idea of Venice*, and of course it is much better than the original. Being a ghost town, there are no tourist crowds to contend with. Instead of being grimy and run down, it is brand new, well, maybe not that new, but fresh and unused. It's a town with the cellophane still on.
Like planned residences of its ilk, it has a dozen galleries, but only a single food store, FamilyMart (which does not have milk and bread, but is very well-stocked on instant noodles, red wine and condoms). The other open services are just the needed ones, a restaurant, a coffee bar, and a pub.
An army of migrant workers, often retired, keeps the greenery and the canals immaculate, the guards posted every hundred meters or so ensure the empty streets aren't beset by imaginary assailants and mendicants. when they are not busy keeping an eye on the few dozen residents (for a fleeting moment including me) and real estate agents.
This paradise will be lost. The first phase of construction is over, the second is well on its way. On the other side of the wall can seen the next world. While this world is small-town Eurochimerica with planned diversity, the next is row upon row of identical mock-tudor-mock-baroque townhouse clones rammed together. Nearly sold out of course. Worse than the developer re-think is Shanghai encroaching, what used to be in the utmost wilderness is now urbane. Prices, which had collapsed to a third of the original offer is creeping up towards old levels. Worst of all, people are moving in. Eventually they will make the place their own, the developer will have sold the last unit, and the immaculate hedge trimmers may return home.
* For the Norwegian idea of the American idea of Venice, see The Longest Journey (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=122.0)
* For the Norwegian idea of the American idea of Venice, see The Longest Journey (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=122.0)
It also features in Dreamfall.
Chinese idea of the American idea of Venice
Beautiful... the American idea of Venice....if that weren't bad enough, you needed to add even worst, the Chinese idea of the American idea.
Poor Venice.
APEC is going on in Huairou, Beijing, which means that the airport security is considerably higher (and slower) than usual, but am at the airport well before the plane leaves, so no trouble.
China-US gulf widens as ‘marginalised’ Obama heads for Beijing summit (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/09/us-china-gap-marginalised-obama-summit)
(The blue skies of Beijing are overhyped, I'd say the pollution is slightly higher than average, way above a couple weeks ago (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=520.msg28947#msg28947), though still probably good for this time of year. Media reality being what it is, expect stories about how unnaturally blue the sky is, to the shock and awe of the gawking Beijingers who have never seen anything outdoors of that colour. Never let ugly facts ruin a good story.)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.51766.com%2Fqlxjq%2F20040924indexbig.jpg&hash=fd9836b63b5288f641e6dded0d02f452" rel="cached" data-hash="fd9836b63b5288f641e6dded0d02f452" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://img.51766.com/qlxjq/20040924indexbig.jpg)
Among the not-so-surprising Breaking News, wheels have been in motion for over a year, but still momentous: China arrests ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30352458)
Ex-security chief Zhou Yongkang, the most senior Chinese official to be investigated for corruption, has been arrested and expelled from the Communist Party, state media report.
The Supreme People's Procuratorate, China's top prosecuting body, said it had opened a formal probe against him.
Before he retired two years ago, Mr Zhou was the head of China's vast internal security apparatus.
Bloomberg made a beautiful infographic, How to Catch a Tiger in China (http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2014-08-04/how-to-catch-a-tiger.html?hootPostID=3bee456a4afdf242767ea4946b2f22ad)
I also appears that the President is now getting his sights on military corruption at high levels involving vast amounts of money and laundering
Chinese corruption targets Zhou, Bo formed 'clique' to challenge capitalist policy, says state media (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-15/chinese-politicians-formed-banned-clique-state-media/6019638)
China's state media has linked the country's former security chief Zhou Yongkang, who is awaiting trial, with disgraced leader Bo Xilai in a conspiracy to wind back capitalism in the country.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.net.au%2Fnews%2Fimage%2F6019702-3x2-940x627.jpg&hash=cfb638e2d31d6b80cbc5e8477a29201e" rel="cached" data-hash="cfb638e2d31d6b80cbc5e8477a29201e" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/6019702-3x2-940x627.jpg)
It is the first time that reports have officially surfaced that the two most high-profile politicians to fall in recent years had formed a "clique" that also threatened the Communist party's warnings against factionalism.
The two men "celebrated their political rapport" and vowed to "play a big game", the China Daily said, citing a lengthy report in Hong Kong's Phoenix Weekly magazine.
And today: China's spy chief Ma Jian in corruption probe (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30843817) :wine:
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbcimg.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F80251000%2Fjpg%2F_80251620_456389040.jpg&hash=9019b635e3783735e2fa2f60445951b7" rel="cached" data-hash="9019b635e3783735e2fa2f60445951b7" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/80251000/jpg/_80251620_456389040.jpg)
China has confirmed it is investigating a powerful intelligence chief, Ma Jian, for corruption.
The Communist Party's discipline watchdog said Mr Ma was suspected of "serious violations" of the law.
Mr Ma is the latest high-ranking figure to be targeted in an ongoing crackdown on corruption among party officials.
He is vice-minister in the Ministry of State Security, which oversees foreign and counterintelligence operations.
No further details were given in the one-line statement on the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection's website, but the wording used typically applies to a corruption probe.
interesting that Communism and democracy have something in common - corruption.
What's Going on in China?
Nice infographic, How to Catch a Tiger in China.
Nobody knows what's going on in China.
Many many years ago, I remember reading a small book at my father's personal library called "And when China wakes up?"
Written at the Seventies by a French ex ambassador in China that married a Chinese woman and lived all his life there.
Prophetic.
What's Going on in China?
Nice infographic, How to Catch a Tiger in China.
Nobody knows what's going on in China.
Many many years ago, I remember reading a small book at my father's personal library called "And when China wakes up?"
Written at the Seventies by a French ex ambassador in China that married a Chinese woman and lived all his life there.
Prophetic.
China though communist has such a disparity in wealth. China could be on a verge of a revolution or umplosion. Their will be a power grab within someday.
There is a power grab just about every day. That is the rationale for having (s)elections, they are so much less disruptive than revolutions.
Whether the Communist Party of China will retain the Mandate of Heaven depends mostly on the Party itself, the Party and especially the central leadership is fairly popular. There is no reason currently why there should be a revolution, even with the fastest growing middle class anywhere, and the middle class is famously finicky. If the Party can rule sanely and popularly (not always the same thing) and keep Party discipline and avoid too excessive excesses, they might govern for a long time. If they can't, they would have themselves to blame.
An excellent summation.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141467/andrew-j-nathan/modern-chinas-original-sin (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141467/andrew-j-nathan/modern-chinas-original-sin)
On May 3, 2014, about a dozen rights activists met in a private apartment in Beijing, where they held a seminar marking the 25th anniversary of the protests and crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Since that night, most of the activists have disappeared. At least one of them, Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer, has been formally detained (the prelude to a criminal charge) for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
In a way, none of this is surprising. China is an authoritarian regime. Whoever challenges it takes a risk. But what is surprising is that this small group of activists had held the same kind of meeting for several years without getting into trouble. The fact that they weren’t as lucky this year is one sign among many that repression in China has not only not eased in recent years but is getting worse./quote]
Nobody knows what's going on in China.
Many many years ago, I remember reading a small book at my father's personal library called "And when China wakes up?"
Written at the Seventies by a French ex ambassador in China that married a Chinese woman and lived all his life there.
Prophetic.
Did he know for sure his wife was a woman? (I mean, I hope the book you refer to was not by Bernard Boursicot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Boursicot).)
Always the same when a country acts like a bully.
Civil liberties do not have a positive trend. This goes back to the run-up to the last national selection in 2012, where the leathership seemed more jittery than I've seen before, and it hasn't stopped since. The 10 years of Hu didn't challenge the status quo in nearly the same way. The last selection campaign was ruthless, and the tiger hunting season isn't over yet, but we are at the stage where the new generation leadership traditionally is in full control. Dissent wasn't exactly encouraged, but it was tolerated/ignored as long as it wasn't organised, or harming somebody's profits (a dangerous gambit).
I would say that the China, for all its other advances, is more totalitarian today than five years ago. Instead of China taking up more of Western liberal traditions it rather seems that the West and the Rest have been taking up of more of Chinese people management techniques. Whether this is the inevitable one step back after those couple steps forward, or the first step in a series remains to be seen.
However, in good taoist tradition, this trend may contain a more powerful opposite. This article I think sums it up: Struggling for Justice: China's Courts and the Challenge of Reform (http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13495/struggling-for-justice-chinas-courts-and-the-challenge-of-reform)
In November 2012, the Chinese Communist Party's 18th National Congress introduced a new elite to govern the country for the next 10 years under the leadership of party General Secretary, and soon to be President, Xi Jinping. Among the confusing welter of subsequent developments, three trends appear to have emerged relating to law, justice and the courts.
First, repression of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of expression has become even harsher than under the previous administration led by Hu Jintao, with the courts as well as the police and procuracy serving as the evident tools of the party's new elite. Almost daily accounts on the Internet and in social media report examples of arbitrary conviction of nongovernmental reformers, human rights proponents, political dissidents, religious figures, minority protesters and other activists, as well as gross mistreatment of the accused and their would-be lawyers, witnesses, families and supporters, both inside and outside the courtroom.
Second, legislation relating to criminal justice has, by and large, nevertheless continued to improve. One of the earliest acts of the new administration was to endorse and promulgate a substantially amended criminal procedure law that, as already indicated, in many respects promises increased fairness in the court system. At its most recent meeting, the NPC Standing Committee finally abolished the pernicious system of "re-education through labor," the most infamous of several supposedly "noncriminal" administrative punishments that have undermined the power of the courts by authorizing the police to condemn people to detention in a labor camp without necessary judicial involvement. As Zhou Qiang, China's newly appointed chief justice, alerted the courts last fall, one of the immediate consequences of this legislated progress toward the rule of law would in all likelihood be a very significant increase in court burdens, since many cases formerly disposed of through "re-education through labor" would soon be prosecuted as minor crimes and require court approval.
The third trend is the most interesting for our purposes. It is the recent effort of high-level law reformers within the party as well as the judiciary to transform relevant party and government ideology, policy and disciplinary systems in ways that will reduce the huge existing gap between repressive practice and enlightened legislation in the administration of criminal justice. This effort is centered in the new leadership of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) headed by Zhou, who, unlike his predecessors, combines high-ranking status within the party with impressive legal skills and a zest for reform.
Zhou and his colleague, Deputy Chief Justice Shen Deyong, are obviously seeking to rescue the traditionally poor reputation of the national court system. The credibility of the courts has recently been further damaged by, among other things, the many recently publicized wrongful convictions. Even Xi and his choice to head the party's Central Political-Legal Commission, former Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu, have publicly and repeatedly recognized the urgent need to instill popular confidence in the courts.
Indeed, in January 2013 they initiated the current campaign to bolster the courts, and in late February Xi delivered a speech to a study session of the party Politburo devoted to problems of the rule of law. Xi urged the judicial organs to cope with "the deep issues that interfere with judicial justice and restrain judicial capacity." The courts and the procuracy must be allowed to carry out adjudication and prosecution independently and impartially, he stated, and he made clear that this would require restraint on party organizations at all levels, which "must act within the boundaries of the constitution and the laws."
Xi's remarks opened the way for a series of speeches by Zhou and Shen during the spring and summer that focused on correcting and preventing wrongful convictions. In May, in a long article published in the SPC's newspaper that elaborated on his speeches, Shen boldly set forth both the spirit and detailed prescriptions of the new campaign. In addition to stressing the importance of judges and their commitment to professional standards, Shen wrote that China must abandon the presumption of guilt that infects practice. "We would rather wrongfully release a person than wrongfully convict someone," he added. The presumption of innocence, he stated, forbids convicting an accused where the evidence is insufficient and then giving him a less severe punishment as a kind of compromise, a practice that I have personally encountered in advising in Chinese human rights cases.
Shen emphasized the value of judges complying with legal procedures, especially the presumption of innocence, and applying science and technology to evidence in order to avoid unjust outcomes. "From the perspective of preventing wrongful conviction," he stated, "defense lawyers are the most trustworthy and reliable force" and their legal rights must be respected. Shen frankly admitted that injustices often resulted from Chinese courts taking orders from outside sources, abandoning their principles or being sloppy in their work.
Not long after Shen's essay, the Ministry of Public Security announced its support for the campaign. Then in July, the Central Party Political-Legal Commission (CPLC) issued its stunning "Provisions on Earnest Prevention of Miscarriage of Justice," one of the most important official human rights documents to appear in China in recent years.
With none of the ideological cliches that too often mark party and legal documents, the provisions, after a brief confirmation that they are based on the instructions of Xi Jinping and the CPLC leadership, set forth the goal of preventing miscarriages of justice through "strict adherence to legal procedure." This would "punish crime in accordance with law, respect and safeguard human rights, increase the credibility of the judicial system, and uphold social fairness and justice." Though a tall order indeed, the candid recognition of the failings of the criminal justice system revealed in the 15 articles that followed and their specific recommendations for improvement certainly suggested the seriousness with which China's most authoritative legal institution viewed the situation.
I think that although a one-party dictatorship it has at the same time completely changed the aspects of society. The place is completely different from the even more frugal days of the little red Book attitude. Although there are occasional outbursts I do not see any great change for some time as the modernity is appealing to the population more than bothering about politics. We know there are cruel camps but the Germans in the days of the Third Reich seen many who were not stupid just going along with things as society improved then 'Strength Through Joy', etc.
So with all modern things for people to buy and use they will as I say just stick with the regime for a while.
Hong kong is resisting and all you need is one territory thrashing back at their government.
The Hong Kong/Mainland relationship is more complicated than that. The government of Hong Kong has never been democratically elected. Hong Kong was a directly-ruled colony of Britain until it was transferred to China in 1997 (for the 50 years "one country, two systems" transition), with the promise of democratic elections somewhere in the horizon. There will be a first ever public election for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong in 2017. However, the candidates will be vetted in Beijing, which means that the elections will not be all that free.
The biggest issue don't seem to be democracy as such, but the proximity of Mainland China. The border between the two isn't fully open, but it is semi-permeable, meaning it isn't too hard for Mainland Chinese to visit Hong Kong.
And they do in huge numbers. The rich and super-rich go to Hong Kong, often richer than the native rich and super-rich, dropping a lot of money, but also driving up prices. The migrant workers go to Hong Kong looking for a means of living, which in the view of many locals cause social problems, and drive down the wages while driving up the housing cost. Masses of tourists go to Hong Kong, dropping a lot of money, but they are still tourists, and nobody likes tourists. I love Hong Kong, but life's too short to stand in line for Hong Kong tourist attractions (then again, Europe is a tourist attraction, it isn't really that much worse).
A majority polled tended to be against the student movement, for a practical reason that it is bad for business, and a real worry that Hong Kong is losing out to Shanghai. The Hong Kong-Guangdong (Canton) has lead to a lot of the prosperity in Hong Kong, and in Guangdong, but Shanghai is up-and-coming.
Beijing too is in a bind. It certainly wouldn't want any contagion from unrest in Hong Kong, HK students that participated in the demonstrations are barred from entering the mainland. On the other hand Hong Kong and particularly Singapore is in the direction they want the mainland to go. Harming that model would make little sense. Furthermore, both the Communist Party in Mainland China and the Kuomintang/Guomindang Party in Taiwan agree that Taiwan and Mainland China should be reunited, though they differ on which party should do the reuniting. Trouble in Hong Kong would be a deterrent for such a plan.
I would say that the Hong Kong people were quite content with British rule but what superseded it was another awkward step for them.
Did he know for sure his wife was a woman? (I mean, I hope the book you refer to was not by Bernard Boursicot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Boursicot).)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=reporttm;topic=243.145;msg=33507)
Alain Peyrefitte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Peyrefitte)
Quand la Chine s'éveillera... le monde tremblera.
A pretty good collection of some of the paradoxes in today's China.
China's super-rich communist Buddhists (http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30983402)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbcimg.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F80588000%2Fjpg%2F_80588226_624_monk-skyscraper.jpg&hash=05d4bff8706cb9cbd82692b086a91619" rel="cached" data-hash="05d4bff8706cb9cbd82692b086a91619" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/80588000/jpg/_80588226_624_monk-skyscraper.jpg)
Xiao was introduced to the BBC by a Chinese businessman, 36-year-old Sun Kejia - one of an unknown, but reportedly growing number of wealthy Chinese, drawn in recent years to the mysticism of Tibetan Buddhism.
The increasing popularity of religion in general in China has been well documented and is often explained in terms of China's rapid economic expansion.
Millions of Chinese today may now have the kind of wealth that previous generations could only dream of, but economic growth has been accompanied by seismic social upheaval and many of the old certainties have been swept away.
"I was once confronted with great difficulties and problems in my business," Sun says.
"I felt they couldn't be overcome by human effort and that only Buddha, ghosts and God could help me."
Sun, Xiao and Geshe Sonam next to Xiao's shrine in his apartment
So Sun became a follower not of merchant bankers or money managers, but monks - Tibetan monks in particular. And he has indeed since earned his fortune, which he estimates at more than $100m.
He now runs a chain of Buddhist clubs, and pays from his own pocket for Tibetan gurus like Geshe Sonam to come and preach there, giving them badly needed funds for their missions and monasteries back in Tibet.
But while Sun's invited guests - businessmen, party officials and property owners - find comfort and spirituality, he finds something else.
"What I want is influence," he says.
While not very polished roadside/trainside collage, it's hard to describe the amount of construction that isn't just going on, but has been going on continously for a decade or more. China is one big construction site, with half the construction in the world happening in the country and by McKinsey estimates half the GDP growth to 2025 will be in China.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpwXRZsn_Bc[/video]
McKinsey estimates
:lol: :lol: :lol:
With all the progress in China kind of tells us how a people can get by with a dictator shop when there is some much going on to satisfy.
???
I think he said that life is a distraction from the state.
It is anyway life in a state of constant change. It is five years ago soon I first went to China. Would a person today recognize the same place five years ago? Yes, I think so, but depending on where he were, most of what he knew would be gone or under construction.
Why intelligent people admits to Chinese keep on doing environmental crimes it's a mystery to me.
Usual inability of tt92 to understand anything simple.
My sister just returned from a trip to China. Nowhere in China did she see "Made in China" stuff. It's all "Made in USA", "Made in Germany" etc. In Guangzhou she bought shoes "Made in Italy", size 250. What a wonderful world.
The Chinese know better than to buy Chinese products. :jester:
Yes, as long as the Chinese are under the apprehension that European products are quality products, it helps European export industry booming. Countries like Germany, France and Sweden have profited greatly from this.
There is an irony to the high streets of Guangzhou (earlier known as Canton), that next to Guangzhou are the factory towns of Dongguan, among other things the shoe capital of the world. Not far from where those Italian shoes are sold, there are wholesale/export markets with huge sales volumes.
Another thing going on is that the airline which lost that flight has discovered running into double figures not properly trained and now suspended until they are.
Another thing going on is that the airline which lost that flight has discovered running into double figures not properly trained and now suspended until they are.
What? :confused:
:jester:
Why intelligent people admits to Chinese keep on doing environmental crimes it's a mystery to me.
CO2 Emmisions Per Capita (http://www.thenewecologist.com/2009/10/the-worlds-biggest-polluters/)
China 4.5 Tons per capita - Ranked 44
Don't be manipulative Krake, that's because they're a lot of them. In absolute terms they're already in front of the biggest polluters of all times, Americans.
Why the world accept both to pollute so much is simple, because they have huge armies.
When you have an huge army you can poo a lot...
Wonder who of us both is manipulative?
Two people leave less shit behind than 150. Shouldn't be too hard to comprehend. :left:
Well considering that the plane tragedy was known world-wide with pictures of the pilot trying to avoid buildings before hitting the river says much about Yanks knowing little of the world. Think tt92 should be an ex-colonist as due to the size of his brain thinks echo when he tries to use it.How long before you both give a cuddle?
???
Did rj just ask me for a cuddle?
It depends on how you look at it. China's per capita carbon emissions overtake EU's (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29239194)
But in an interesting development, China's emissions per head of population exceeding those of the European Union for the first time.
While the per capita average for the world as a whole is 5 tonnes of carbon dioxide, China is now producing 7.2 tonnes per person, to the EU's 6.8 tonnes. The US is still far ahead on 16.5 tonnes per person.
"We now see China's per capita emissions surpassing the EU," said Dr Robbie Andrew, from the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway, who was involved in the research.
"They are still nowhere near the US or Australia, but the fact that they have surpassed the EU will be quite surprising to a lot of people."
Future beats the past
This development will shine an interesting light on global climate negotiations where China has often used its relatively low per capita emissions to argue that it is on the same page as other developing countries, and that restrictions on its use of carbon were not justified.
China's rapid industrialisation over the past 20 years has seen the construction of huge numbers of mainly coal fired power stations.
This build-up means that the emissions that China is committed to in the future, now exceed the total of everything it has emitted to date.
Prof Corinne Le Quere from the University of East Anglia, who is also involved with Carbon Project, said that a significant proportion of China's emissions were in fact, driven by demand from consumers in Europe and the US.
"In China about 20% of their emissions are for producing clothes, furniture even solar panels that are shipped to Europe and America."
"If you look at the emissions in Europe with that perspective, they would be 30% higher if we accounted for those goods that are produced elsewhere."
The other major emissions growth is seen in India. In 2013 the country's carbon grew by 5.1%, and it is now on track to overtake the EU in 2019.
"India has enormous problems, if the current government could sort out the issues with toilets that would an enormous achievement," said Dr Andrew.
"They have so many things to focus on in that country, to ask them to pull back on emissions, is a big problem."
For 2014, the carbon record is likely to be broken again as emissions are likely to hit 40bn tonnes, 65% above 1990 levels.
The researchers involved say the recent rise is due to the global economic recovery combined with a lower than expected increases in carbon intensity, especially in the developing world.
So, what happened? For one thing, fresher data. Old statistics for China in particular is pretty much useless. The way of accounting also seems somewhat different, but I haven't verified this. China is growing very fast. As is India and other countries, their size make them important, but per capita they won't catch up for a decade or so. However, they will catch up.
The West had pretty much monopolised economic growth and carbon emissions in the post-WWII period, but in the near future most growth in economic production and carbon emissions will happen in Asia (in percentage terms Africa is higher, but they won't matter for some time).
Looking ahead, it is no longer Europe and North America that matter, it is India and China. Once these two countries had 4/10 of the world's population, they still have 1/3, but more importantly now they are getting rich enough to influence the world, as in the amount of carbon they burn.
Which leads us to the most useful metric, carbon intensity, how much carbon you burn for each dollar of value you produce. Rich countries tend to well here, have a low carbon intensity, as while they burn more carbon per head, they also produce much more money per head. Over the last 40 years the world carbon intensity has almost halved, which is good news, but not good enough, as the emissions in the same period have more than doubled.
So, what happened? For one thing, fresher data. Old statistics for China in particular is pretty much useless.
This list (http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/TOP-20-CO2-emitters-per-capita#tspQvChart) is from 2013.
Wonder if during the last year there have been dramatic changes.
It's hard to find a complete and updated per capita list for 2014 and one might wonder why...
The numbers are roughly similar to the group BBC referred to (http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/?q=en/emissions), which seems to use different sources.
Not having reliable figures for 2014 in February 2015 is not very surprising, international statistics tend to have a much longer lag than that, which is a problem if you want up-to-date information.
Two trends are not very encouraging. One was mentioned above, that the improvements in carbon intensity for the emerging countries were less than hoped for. The other is that the rebound from the economic crisis (which led to a slight fall in carbon emissions) has not led to any real improvement in carbon intensity either, and that at a period when the energy prices were higher than now.
Which leads us to the most useful metric, carbon intensity, how much carbon you burn for each dollar of value you produce.
Carbon intensity a shit. What hurts the planet is simply the total amount of carbon, not any ratios.
I really believe that you've been hired by conglomerates to shut up DnD "fighters for freedom". Or just to be well paid, something like that.
Not me.
I am not an envious person at all tt92 and breaking in between you and sanguinemoon is Ic an assure you not on so you lovies feel free to cuddle away whilst I do it with my Taiwan or to be correct the republic of China.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pBK34t8XTI[/video]
So you buy a highly expensive siheyuan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan) in the historical centre of Beijing. Unfortunately such an old historical building isn't big or grand enough for someone of your stature. But the rules for such buildings don't allow any form of expansions. Bummer.
So you apply to build a basement, and get refused by those thick-headed bureaucrats. But you try to build one anyway, and get fined. Then you decide to go all out to dig a 18 meter (60 feet for you imperials) deep five storey underground complex, and wouldn't you know, that grand plan too collapses.
Sinkhole reveals deep disregard for the law (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-01/29/content_19434233.htm)(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chinadaily.com.cn%2Fopinion%2Fimages%2Fattachement%2Fjpg%2Fsite1%2F20150129%2Fa41f72773d1b1633b5c202.jpg&hash=fe2d8219a139569a1601886e84a6a90f" rel="cached" data-hash="fe2d8219a139569a1601886e84a6a90f" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20150129/a41f72773d1b1633b5c202.jpg)
The residents of Beijing are no strangers to sinkholes.
They have seen sinkholes resulting from the construction of subways, the collapse of underground infrastructure, even inexplicable natural phenomena.
Yet none of them had been like this one caused by an illicit building project under the home - a home away from home, to be precise - of a lawmaker from Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, East China.
The 15-by-5-meter, and 10 meter-deep hole caused the collapse of the proprietor's own quadrangle as well as part of another next to it on Tuesday. Fifteen households had to be evacuated due to safety considerations.
The accident temporarily halted public transport and water supply along a historical street in uptown Beijing, all because the moneyed entrepreneur lawmaker wanted to dig an 18-meter-deep, five-level basement under his Beijing home.
Historical courtyards, mostly old quadrangles, in the historical districts of Beijing are subject to strict government protection. Part of the proprietor's home is under grade-II protection according to Beijing's regulations. Which means all building projects related to it must be approved by the relevant authorities.
The lawmaker has not consulted them. Not because he was not aware of the need. His 2010 attempt to renovate the property was stopped by the district authorities, and he was fined.
Last July, the authorities again summoned the owner, ordering him to stop the new basement project, which he had started without approval. Again, he was fined.
This lawmaker from Xuzhou is reminding us, again, of exemplary lawlessness.
We are curious what has motivated him to openly ignore an explicit local legislation. We are ashamed to be talking about a lawmaker's disregard of the law. We have no idea what has brought him the seat on the local legislature.
But more likely than not, it was money.
In fairness to the lawmaker, he should not be the only one blamed. His project has proceeded for a while. And the urban management authorities have received repeated complaints from the lawmaker's neighbors. Even without those reports, signs of building activities have been obvious at the site.
Strangely, the urban management officers, who are infamous for treating helpless street vendors with unnecessary force, have appeared forceless throughout. We just wonder why they have been so unlike themselves in this case.
It could be mentioned that in a location like this the square meter price is likely around 16000 USD/m2 (or $1500/square foot). In any case it looks like this lawmaker has dug himself in deep.
There have been many books and movies about tunnels collapsing due to people failing to (properly) build supports. I guess they haven't been translated into Chinese.
I loved this phrase: "is reminding us, again, of exemplary lawlessness".
(jax, is the quoted material reasonable translation? Or just Google-ese? :) )
It is likely fully or in part translated from Chinese, by a Chinese. China Daily has close ties to the Communist Party, but it isn't an organ of the Communist Party. In that it is similar to Global Times, but the latter has two faces. In the Chinese version it is significantly more nationalistic, a very rough equivalent might be Fox News. Global Times will be the dog that barks the loudest. China Daily would be more a not-quite Washington Post.
In the language of China Daily this was pretty much an all-out attack, not only on "This lawmaker from Xuzhou". No matter which faction he belongs to, he would expect a call from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. His goose is cooked, as it should be.
It is a dangerous balance for the overly corrupt politician. He would want to flaunt his wealth to show his power, and thus maximise his bribes, but he wouldn't want to get any undue attention to his ill-gotten wealth. In the days of Internet this is extremely tricky, one picture on social media of a too-shiny watch could mean your career is over or worse. Even shopping trips abroad aren't sacred any more, they have Internet there too.
Getting caught in conspicuous consumption is bad enough, but conspicuous destruction is harder to get away with. Non-government approved wanton destruction of historical property would incur severe wrath, and this wasn't in the sticks somewhere, though Xuzhou is rich and powerful by its own standard. This was in walking distance from Zhongnanhai.
Not really in China, but because of China…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/world/in-a-test-of-wills-japanese-fighter-pilots-confront-chinese.html
Re., your quoted NYT's piece, I spent time in Naha, Okinawa, about 57 years ago, well before it was turned over to the Japanese in '72.
Now the Okinawans want independence, à la Salmond's failed attempt.
http://news.qq.com/a/20150412/010105.htm
I'm not sure what this is. Final exams or something?
Can't be the Big Final, gaokao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Higher_Education_Entrance_Examination), it's too early (and in June the weather would be way too hot to take it outdoors anyway).
Since the gaokao determines your academic career, essentially your future, the stress level is very high. And since the exams are on the same days in a province, those days have an impact on society. The months ahead of the exam are usually the worst in a student's life. Thereafter there's a chance of learning, not merely cramming.
Inside a Chinese Test-Prep Factory (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/inside-a-chinese-test-prep-factory.html)
Vigilante justice: How cheated Chinese investors captured the head of Fanya Metals Exchange (http://qz.com/485876/vigilante-justice-how-cheated-chinese-investors-captured-the-head-of-fanya-metals-exchange/)
Since the gaokao determines your academic career, essentially your future, the stress level is very high. And since the exams are on the same days in a province, those days have an impact on society. The months ahead of the exam are usually the worst in a student's life. Thereafter there's a chance of learning, not merely cramming.
It's an absurd system of
"education". To the extent that it significantly impacts a student's future, it's worse than absurd. But I doubt that it determines who wins and who loses.
Did these folks win because they did well on tests? I don't think so.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2013/03/11/forbes-china-30-under-30-meet-30-young-entrepreneural-disruptors-in-china/ (http://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2013/03/11/forbes-china-30-under-30-meet-30-young-entrepreneural-disruptors-in-china/)
Yes, the test-oriented education system is considered a serious weakness in China, and they are looking to the US for how to improve it. They have a huge number of students with great grades that haven't really learnt anything.
From trials to triads China, Hong Kong, and Macau have arrested 51,000 in a coordinated raid in their annual war on organised crime (4k in Hong Kong, 11k in Guangdong, 4k in Macau, plus about 32k drug users in the Mainland).
Mass triad crackdown nails more than 51,000 in Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China (http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1860743/mass-triad-crackdown-nails-over-51000-hong-kong-macau-and)
An annual cross-border police crackdown on organised crime activities, postponed last year due to the Occupy protests, has hit back harder this year - with 51,000 suspects arrested in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong.
In Hong Kong, police raided more than 7,500 premises, including vice dens, gambling venues and residential flats.
A total of 4,343 people, including 1,177 mainlanders, were arrested for various offences such as drug trafficking, gambling and illegal lending.
Officers confiscated about HK$102 million in cash, illegal drugs and contraband and froze more than HK$2.1 million in crime proceeds during the three-month operation that ended last week.
Well done on the criminal purge.
Just wait until Chinese starts purging all of us...
And they will do it with a choice of a po face or innocent looking smile.
Good we'll have an option... :lol:
:D
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m91zBt94Ll0[/video]
Five year plans as pop music.
Kill them all... before they kill us all. Inevitable.
Meanwhile those cripto-comunist-nazis-capitalists changed the one children imposition. Now on Chinese can have two children.
They will double faster than rabbits. Not even nature catastrophes can finish with them.
Even with 2 children it will still be a challenge for them over time with an increasing ageing population and there will be a shortage of home workers.
Not to worry, RJ: They can import Scots workers… :)
You were happy to have them and in history ran our Empire so thanks for the unwitting compliment. 8)
Chinese will kill you all dear Anglo Saxons. Simple as that.
So stop playing when I say serious things. Learn.
Meanwhile those cripto-comunist-nazis-capitalists changed the one children imposition. Now on Chinese can have two children.
They will double faster than rabbits. Not even nature catastrophes can finish with them.
The one child policy had minimal demographic effects, its expected partial repeal will have much less.
The effects have primarily been social and economic. China has built up a significant bureaucracy to control family size. Now it can be retained while its capability for damage has been restrained. Parents of childbearing age are predominantly urban and educated. Few desire 3+ children, of those that do, most would pay the child fine.
The one child policy had minimal demographic effects, its expected partial repeal will have much less.
And that was the best you have to say about a moral crime...
No one has legitimacy to prevent people having the number of children they want to.
F**k the "demographics".
There's nothing more irritating than people always arguing with abstract pseudo concepts in order to destroy real people lives.
Typicall of leftists and amoral capitalists as well.
Sometimes I disagree very much with you. Wich of course is good for a discussion forum.
Trends in population decline have been ongoing for decades, so the change in government policy is unlikely to have much of an effect.
Chinese families have been getting smaller for decades and not just because of the country's reviled family planning policies. Before the 1950s, the average household in China had more than 5.3 people. But the report shows that number dropping to 3.02 in 2012 from 3.96 in 1990. Since 2000, the decrease in birth rates has not been the primary driver of the shrinking family size, with geographic mobility and changes in social mores playing bigger roles.
Three demographics increasingly stand out: unmarried young workers, couples who have delayed or foregone childbirth, and elderly empty-nesters. One hundred sixty million Chinese households, or 40 percent of the nationwide total, now consist only of one or two people. In the decade between 2000 and 2010, when urbanization was at full throttle, the number of solo households doubled and the number of two-member households increased by 68 percent, according to the report.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-05-22/opinion/ct-china-family-smaller-perspec-0522-20140522_1_family-planning-commission-development-report-chinese (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-05-22/opinion/ct-china-family-smaller-perspec-0522-20140522_1_family-planning-commission-development-report-chinese)
==============
No one has legitimacy to prevent people having the number of children they want to.
F**k the "demographics".
Tell that to the Chinese government. You may not want to pay taxes, but the Portuguese government may have something to say about it.
Your argument sounds very "Popish".
Your argument sounds very "Popish".
It means sounding very right.
Some people absolutely require an Authority Figure, to support their opinions; else, they'd have to -you know!- think and learn… It's just too much trouble; plus, you then have to convince those who disagree with your views that you're right. Why bother with all that, when you can pick a big Kahuna and say he says whatever? You win!
But I do have a problem with the contention that China's One Child policy had no demographic effects… That's just too counter-intuitive.
(Consider mating habits, household economies, sexual predation and deviation…)
No effect is an exaggeration, but the effect is a very minor one compared with the other factors: better health, better education, access to birth control, urbanisation... Even with the one-child policy China has a total fertility rate of about 1.4, the highest in East Asia. We can take from that that Japan, the Koreas, Taiwan, Hong Kong needed no such policy to get fewer children, that the one-child policy de facto has been a two-child policy, and that while Chinese women and men have been relatively fertile, the number is still below the replacement rate. And there's this (http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/china-1-child-policy/china-more-kids-or-more-stuff).
The policy probably had its greatest effect in the early years when people were less healthy, less wealthy, less educated, more rural than now. That was also when it was at its most brutal.
No effect is an exaggeration, but the effect is a very minor one compared with the other factors: better health, better education, access to birth control, urbanisation...
What all that matters if, by law, you can't have more than one children?
What all that matters against the abuse of the State restricting how many children you want to have?
That's the problem, let's stop diverging.
China is an abortion and homicidal State. A nightmare against human dignity.
You seem to enjoy dis/cussing so much you don't even need someone to discuss with. I can't recall anyone in this thread finding this policy commendable (but if you read comments on this topic elsewhere on the Webyou will many Westerners on right and left side of the aisle who applaud it, and they are quite aggressive about it too).
OaklandFTL enquired whether it was functional, that's not the same as an endorsement. The same goes for enforced sterilisation, or sterilisation without informed consent, something among others India, Scandinavia, and the US has done in the past.
Poverty can and will lead to perverse reactions from governments… Specially, dealing with demographic pressures. That's one of the reasons I applaud the only system of economics known to dramatically produce wealth.
If China overtakes the U.S. or Europe as an economic powerhouse, I won't feel bad about it: China will then have become proficient in creating wealth.
(Note: Wealth that is restricted to elites -especially, political elites- doesn't really count. For example, Saudi Arabia cannot provide an example for a better future… What of the many sub-Saharan African nations? I worry.)
As jax said, my nation at one time promoted "preventative" sterilization*; it now offers, by law, abortion-on-demand… Belfrager, I agree with you that these are perverse policies. Morally.
But as you must know, governments don't always act in moral ways. (To make matters worse: The current Pope seems more than a little confused, about what is moral.) What China had to deal with, decades ago and still, is a very difficult problem… Europe faced something similar, and found the good enough answer in perpetual war.
While it's true that China's stop-gap was akin to every progressive proscription they bought themselves some time…
(I doubt that many Chinese think that the Cultural Revolution was a great success, either.)
I know, Bel, this question will offend you but I'm going to ask it anyway: How many children does Pope Francis have?
(Doesn't it say in Genesis, "Go forth and multiply"…? Didn't he read that part? :) )
——————————————————————————————————————————
• A Supreme Court justice opined -in writing!- that "three generations of idiots [were] enough"! And he's still an idol, of the progressive Left!
(Doesn't it say in Genesis, "Go forth and multiply"…? Didn't he read that part? :) )
That was all about math...multiply and divide, add and subtract. But...
http://www.historyandheadlines.com/vatican-city-orgy-50-prostitutes-entertain-papal-palace/ (http://www.historyandheadlines.com/vatican-city-orgy-50-prostitutes-entertain-papal-palace/)
You seem to enjoy dis/cussing so much you don't even need someone to discuss with.
Kind of speaking alone in the streets but in a writing way? :)
You're wrong, I'm just an humble content creator producing material to you to play with, what I think i's a different mater.
Anyway, it made you touch the point:
OaklandFTL enquired whether it was functional, that's not the same as an endorsement. Killing is highly functional in fact, do we adopt it? course not. Do we do analysis about the benefits of morally wrong actions?
There's only one thing to do, to criticize it, criticize it, criticize it.
This is not discussing with myself.
I know, Bel, this question will offend you but I'm going to ask it anyway: How many children does Pope Francis have?
About one thousand millions. :)
That must teach you how to interpret scriptures.
I see the President of the People's Republic of Chna and the Republic of China met in Singapore. One report said they had not described each other as President to keep a nice and friendly atmosphere.
Yes, the Communist Party and the Kuomintang/Guomindang have a good working relationship, even though they were on opposite sides in the last civil war. But while Xi will retire in 2022 according to plans, Ma's party looks set to lose the presidency and general elections next year based on current numbers, Guomindang is trailing badly.
I know, Bel, this question will offend you but I'm going to ask it anyway: How many children does Pope Francis have?
About one thousand millions. :)
I thought those were sheep. ;)
More than one thousand million of them has even Xi.
As for Pope Francis, we never will know if or how many children he has. ;)
In actual practice jax the civil war is not technically over!
As for the Kuomintang being in trailing mode that has happened before at natioanl elections o the Republic of China and then the next time they bounce back. One of the problems is ahat when the nationalist Party at Taipeh loses there is an opposition who when they were in power actually raise the temperature between the 2 Chinas. They wanted to declare the islands (all of them as the Republic of Taiwan and tensions rose dramatically. There is a history context in that as Taiwan was Province of China stolen by Japan for a while and got a heavy migration when Chian Kai Shek lost the main Civil War and the remnants fled to the place. In time they tended to dominate. At least in the wee China there are political parties and freedoms which is more than can be said for the big brother over the Straits.
More photos of the "airpocalypse"
http://www.buzzfeed.com/franciswhittaker/23-eerie-photos-of-the-smoggy-airpocalypse-engulfing-chinese
Got out of Beijing just before this one, as did a couple families on the same plane to Zhuhai (near Macau). The husbandfolks shipped their wives, children and parents to Zhuhai for the winter and then returned on same plane back to Beijing to work after getting a lungful of clean South Chinese air. On the half-miserable days just before the advantages of high-rise living were clear. You look down twenty floors to gray misery at the ground level, you look ahead to see a city in poor visibility, you look up and you can see the blue sky.
Doesn't help on a bad day, as can be seen in the pictures from Shanghai. The building is over 600m/2000', 128 floors, tall and still engulfed (at least it could seem that way in the picture from ground level). On a really bad day looking out the windows is much the same as the climax of The Demolished Man.
That particular airpocalypse had a somewhat freakish ending. Wind change pulled the pollution off-switch. From immensely polluted one day it was replaced with pure cleaner-than-Stockholm air the next. Picture on the right is December 1, picture on the left December 2 (SCMP) (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1885785/beijing-air-pollution-strong-winds-finally-blow-thick-pall).
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn1.scmp.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2F486x302%2Fpublic%2F2015%2F12%2F02%2Fforbiddencity-onedayafter.jpg%3Fitok%3D0h1YvyRj&hash=5444d8ed48e1b75e0308fc556f783061" rel="cached" data-hash="5444d8ed48e1b75e0308fc556f783061" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn1.scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/486x302/public/2015/12/02/forbiddencity-onedayafter.jpg?itok=0h1YvyRj)
What's going on in China? Anybody else here like Chinese food?
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fphotos2.meetupstatic.com%2Fphotos%2Fevent%2F9%2Ff%2F3%2Fa%2F600_353740762.jpeg&hash=40e674cda099a5c110227857ecd6ceb5" rel="cached" data-hash="40e674cda099a5c110227857ecd6ceb5" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/9/f/3/a/600_353740762.jpeg)
I occasionally go to a Chines restaurant but don't eat Chines food.
That's like going to a Russian restaurant for a Big Mac.
Well Russians DO got into McDonald's for a Big Mac.
On a more of course productive note I occasionally visit a very posh Chines restaurant in Glasgow city centre and I I like their traditional fish n' chips and their breast of chicken and chips. The ambience is good and the manager is an ex-Boys' Brigade Chines man from the movement in Singapore. 'Nuff said.
Anybody else here like Chinese food?
There's Chinese food and there's... Chinese food. I suppose western Chinese food served in restaurants is not the same food Chinese eats in China.
There's a couple of clandestine restaurants here in Lisbon (basically a Chinese person that opens his house to serve meals for a small fee) where it seems that one can experience real Chinese food. Never been there.
BBC made a very neat program about this year's spring festival.
[Video]https://youtu.be/E2yULysEClg[/video]
[Video]https://youtu.be/Jdi4XocIjkM[/video]
[Video]https://youtu.be/JVDzsL_u3GE[/video]
Not in China, thank you!
No joke. April Fools' Day has been banned in China.
The ancient tradition of hoaxing and playing practical jokes on the first day of April has fallen victim to China’s crackdown. Like democracy and free speech, it is a Western concept that simply isn’t welcome here.
“’April Fools' Day’ is not consistent with our cultural tradition, or socialist core values,” state news agency Xinhua announced on social media Friday. “Hope nobody believes in rumors, makes rumors or spreads rumors.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/01/no-joke-april-fools-day-has-been-banned-in-china/?tid=pm_world_pop_b (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/01/no-joke-april-fools-day-has-been-banned-in-china/?tid=pm_world_pop_b)
The Chinese are mucking up what is left of our steel industry with their deliberate low prices.
Didn't the EU impose some kind of import tax on metals for that?
Didn't the EU impose some kind of import tax on metals for that?
https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/import-regulations-metals-and-minerals-sector (https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/import-regulations-metals-and-minerals-sector)
I'm sure that's useful to many people, but I meant something more like this. :P
The EU launched new probes today (12 February) into imports of Chinese steel, warning it would not allow “unfair competition” to threaten Europe’s industry already crumbling under a flood of cheap imports.
European steelmakers are reeling from a global glut and last week Luxembourg-based world leader ArcelorMittal blamed China for a colossal $8-billion (€7.1 billion) loss in 2015 while thousands of jobs are being cut.
“We cannot allow unfair competition from artificially cheap imports to threaten our industry. I am determined to use all means possible to ensure that our trading partners play by the rules,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said in a statement.
What about this?
The European Union announced Friday that it would impose new tariffs of up to 13% on Chinese imports. Chinese companies have been accused of selling unwanted steel in Europe for less than it costs to produce and export, suffocating local rivals.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/29/news/economy/steel-china-europe-dumping-tariffs/ (http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/29/news/economy/steel-china-europe-dumping-tariffs/)
Yes, that's probably what I recall. :P
What was going on in China a long time ago?
==========
Back in 2004, archaeologists excavated two pits in northern China that looked a lot like homebrewing operations. Constructed between 3400 and 2900 B.C. by the Yangshao culture, each pit contained the remnants of a stove and assorted funnels, pots and amphorae.
Now, Jiajing Wang of Stanford University and colleagues report that the pottery shards contain residue and other evidence of starches, chemicals and plant minerals from specific fermented grains. The ancient beer recipe included broomcorn millet, barley, Job’s tears and tubers — that probably gave the beer a sweet flavor, the team writes May 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings predate the earliest evidence of barley in China by around 1,000 years. Beer may have been consumed at social gatherings, and brewing, not agriculture, spurred the introduction of barley to China, the researchers argue.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/evidence-5000-year-old-beer-recipe-found-china (https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/evidence-5000-year-old-beer-recipe-found-china)
What was going onbrewing in China a long time ago?
Ftfy. :devil:
We missed you. :hat:
I missed me, too, but my wife found me in the nick of time!
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fimgc-cn.artprintimages.com%2Fimages%2FP-473-488-90%2F70%2F7055%2FKRYL100Z%2Fposters%2Fmick-stevens-just-in-the-nick-of-time-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg&hash=9ad27b86db14e125d6d888085b91792c" rel="cached" data-hash="9ad27b86db14e125d6d888085b91792c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://imgc-cn.artprintimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/70/7055/KRYL100Z/posters/mick-stevens-just-in-the-nick-of-time-new-yorker-cartoon.jpg)
Hm, I see. Gotta replace those shirts and pants.
Back to China. What's on the menu? Bow Wow.
http://www.reuters.tv/v/bW9/2016/06/21/china-s-dog-meat-festival-begins-despite-outcry (http://www.reuters.tv/v/bW9/2016/06/21/china-s-dog-meat-festival-begins-despite-outcry)
I like Chinese to eat dogs. Why not.
I like Chinese to eat dogs. Why not.
Did you know the Swiss eat dogs? http://www.tdg.ch/vivre/societe/suisses-continuent-manger-chiens-chats/story/10121142
I'm with the Swiss. It's no more or less cruel than eating just about any other kind of mammal.
PS I almost never eat mammal, but every so often I'll go for some liver or udder or something. The parts most so-called meat eaters think are icky. Tongue is also very good, and I wish bones were easier to get to use to make pea soup and such. But the only meat I eat semi-regularly is fish, mostly stuff like herring (usually maatjes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soused_herring), sometimes in vinegar) and smoked mackerel.
I like Chinese to eat dogs. Why not.
The neo-traditionalists (The Lychee and Dog Meat Festival is only a few years old) don't stand a chance against the onslaught of the middle class. You are not truly middle class until you have a pet, and then you can't stand the thought of someone eyeing your baby for its nutritional value.
Thousands have gathered in this Guangxi city for the annual event, but millions of angry Chinese have petitioned or campaigned have it ended. Angry animal lovers are an unstoppable force, witness the dead gorilla a few weeks ago, and they are richer and better connected than these relatively poor culinary dog lovers in the outskirts of the country. In its current form this festival is doomed. I suspect it will become a Lychee and Donkey Meat Festival soon. Donkey is a common dog substitute. More meat, less fuss.
“Living in a high-rise requires a special type of behavior,” one of the leads tells Laing late in High-Rise. “Quiescent. Restrained. It helps if you’re slightly mad.” That last bit seems like a massive understatement, given how his building’s inhabitants descend into rabid chaos throughout the film. “Quiescent and restrained” also seems like an understatement when describing Laing. Hiddleston narrates the film in the third person, in Ballard’s prose: “As he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building. (http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/28/11518494/high-rise-movie-review-tom-hiddleston-jeremy-irons)” On the page, that removal from first person seems like natural storytelling. On the screen, with Hiddleston’s level, chilly voice speaking about Laing as if he were someone else entirely, it reads like the self-mythologizing of a sociopath. And that seems entirely intentional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYmY2tBYins
Donkey is a common dog substitute. More meat, less fuss.
The idea of killing a majestic donkey bothers me much more than some annoying yappy dog. :P
Better yet, how about a nice meal of the noble cat.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fglossynews.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F06%2Fchinese-eat-cats.jpg&hash=579c1d46ffda28f6c136a4ec6fc181ec" rel="cached" data-hash="579c1d46ffda28f6c136a4ec6fc181ec" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://glossynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/chinese-eat-cats.jpg)
Dog eat Dog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8T8lZCGIIU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8T8lZCGIIU)
New Singles Day (11/11), new record. Four times as much merchandise is shifted during Singles Day than during Black Friday.
Alibaba sells a record-breaking $17.8 billion on Singles Day (http://mashable.com/2016/11/12/alibaba-singles-day-results/)
China's e-commerce giant Alibaba moved $17.8 billion in sales during its Singles Day sale on Friday, smashing its own records.
The $17.8 billion (or 120.7 billion yuan) figured crushed Black Friday's $4.45 billion in e-commerce sales last year and Alibaba's own $14.3 billion record from 2015.
Singles Day is China's biggest e-commerce day of the year, complete with a nationally televised party and concert. The day originated as an anti-Valentine's Day, encouraging single people in China to buy gifts for themselves.
Happy Singles' Day 11/11 everyone! Shop early, shop often!
(http://www.bbc.com/news/37946470)
Singles Day: Alibaba closes in on record sales (http://www.bbc.com/news/37946470)
As has now become tradition, Singles Day was kicked off with a televised gala event which this year included a performances by One Republic and appearances by basketball legend Kobe Bryant, English football legend David Beckham and singer-turned designer Victoria Beckham. But pop star Katy Perry, who had been scheduled to perform, withdrew citing a family emergency.
Analysts have predicted this year's event could see Alibaba rack up sales of $20bn despite a slowdown in China's economy, partly due to the event having a broader audience. "We're seeing an even bigger shift from offline shopping to online shopping," Kitty Fok, managing director of IDC China told the BBC.
"And there is also more of a focus on rural areas. People in the villages who could not do online shopping now have mobile phones and so can do that."
This should also be posted in the Good News thread…
I have no words to comment such a Chinese imbecility and their self assumption as rats.
"Speculation over North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's apparent weight gain has been a source of growing fascination in neighbouring China, where government censors have been blocking offending nicknames on social media.
The terms "Kim the Fat" - and variations, such as "Kim Fat III" or "Kim Fatty III" - have appeared on social media sites throughout the year, particularly on China's most popular platform, Sina Weibo.
But in response to unverified reports that North Korea had asked China to stamp out the abuse, Weibo users have been coming up with more creative names.
The latest to appear online - and it doesn't translate easily - is "Kim III half-moon". The "third" in the title refers to the fact that his late father and his revered grandfather were also called Kim."
"Called"? Kim is the family name. I don't know Korean, but the Chinese character for Kim is 金 or Jin, meaning "gold" (alternatively money), fitting name for that family.
He's probably been the most ridiculed person on Chinese social media (if the authorities may try to put some brakes on now), though that was before Trump was elected.
What's going on in China??
Death penalty, with public exhibition.
Well Bel a bit like America where they can hang you, shoot you, gas you,. electrify you and a wee audience can sit an watch it. Disgusting. There were in hard fact still places doing traditional public executions in places before WW2. :down:
There were in hard fact still places doing traditional public executions in places before WW2.
Of course, "drawing and quartering" lasted a tad longer… (One of the reasons for our 8th Amendment, btw. We had had enough of British barbarism.)
What's going on in China??
Death penalty, with public exhibition.
China doesn't do public executions. Quite the opposite, they do secret executions, which many think is worse. They did on the other hand have a crime TV program interviewing with those who were about to die. The outcry shut down that series though, years ago.
I used to watch the CCTV (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television) crime and finance channel. Some programs were similar to US fare like America's Dumbest Criminals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Dumbest_Criminals), except that the tone was not to laugh at the criminals. The programs were entertaining, educating and morally uplifting. You could for instance see a man stab a passing woman, and then you could rewind the criminal's past in the last half hour, going back to surveillance footage of the assailant drinking too much in a bar. Riveting drama, coming soon to a country near you.
China doesn't do public executions. Quite the opposite, they do secret executions, which many think is worse. They did on the other hand have a crime TV program interviewing with those who were about to die. The outcry shut down that series though, years ago.
I know that series, the outcry shut dow the series but not the exexutions and the public display all around the city in top of a truck of the people that went to be killed while carrying signs around the neck.
There's nothing secret about China's executions. Not to speak about the families that need to pay the bullet cost (state property) for having the body back.
You have learned nothing Oakdale with that variety of executions you have over there. We did away with the death penalty years ago but you lot live in the past and practice a vicious legal system. You are still the damn past.
You mean, your state only allows its agents to kill in self-defense… Your criminals are still quite free to murder "ordinary" citizens! And, if caught, get a slap on the wrist and a chorus of "Naughty! Naughty!"
Of course, self-defense is frowned upon.
Your charge of a "vicious" legal system falls on deaf ears, RJ: Your repentance of your past is, with your rejection of Catholicism, rightly seen to be insincere…
You DO have a terrible legal system and in fact does border on the nasty with some rather over the top penalties. Even allowing for what is it 2.3 million in jails tends to prove my point of a vengeance attitude. Keeping people on eath row often for years and cases of a decade so how crude are you lot? Farcical if it was not so sad.
We never included beheading and drawing and quartering as punishment… But you'd rather not remember your own history. (Do you still pay the ax-man, to keep him on retainer? :) ) Of course, you only chopped the head off of one of your kings… From whom did you seek absolution? :)
Aw for goodness sake. You are not an old enough country to go too far back. BUT you were still hanging people in public before WW2. Right up to the 1960's you were dispensing with black people illegally. You still have the death penalty and as I also said earlier you will hang, electrocute, gas, poison or do a firing squad. And the sheer horror of being on daeth row for damn years sometimes a decade? The system is a farce. So don't try taking some high ground because you were not here away back in ancient times.
Neither were you, boy-o… Your outrage never seems to hit close to home!
I'm old enough to remember your Pakis being beaten in the streets… Yeah, even in the streets of Glasgow. (Forgot that, did you?)
Like I said, nowadays only the criminals get to administer the death penalty — or the few coppers who aren't too cowed. In your neck of the woods.
Good luck to,you, orange person. You won't protect yourself or your own… Why'd you think others will continue to stand up for you?
Of course, you don't care, RJ! No skin in the game…
What happened to China?!?
"What's Going on in China?"
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.no1chinesesouthorange.com%2Fimg%2Finside2.jpg&hash=e994eceaaf6bb92bc560e24d85249332" rel="cached" data-hash="e994eceaaf6bb92bc560e24d85249332" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.no1chinesesouthorange.com/img/inside2.jpg)
That's what's going on in China, not an Rj-Oakdale piffle.
What a load of deliberate keech from you as routine (of course)
The new largest radio telescope is now in China.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/world-s-largest-radio-telescope-will-search-dark-matter-listen-aliens
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencemag.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Farticle_main_large%2Fpublic%2F1280x892_60930N_Telescope.jpg%3Fitok%3DnwIvkO0S&hash=3c0e66be28cfd2e1c63e55518f898f39" rel="cached" data-hash="3c0e66be28cfd2e1c63e55518f898f39" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_main_large/public/1280x892_60930N_Telescope.jpg?itok=nwIvkO0S)
What is especially going on in China is it's defence.
Oh and by the way Jimbro my comment was on Oakdalenot you!
Xi's all that 2016
https://youtu.be/vc8blxuVT5c
Instead all that pro Chinese propaganda maybe it's interesting to know that Chinese turned into the second biggest arm dealers in the world.
After the EUA of course.
I thought that was the open economy. :P
Yes, open economy...
when they use their weapons against you, dear Frenzie, let's see if you keep on laughing....
maybe it's interesting to know that Chinese turned into the second biggest arm dealers in the world.
After the EUA of course.
I know,
Bel: England and France faltered… :) So sad! (For my fellow Americans who don't know the preferred patios of the Portuguese, EUA is their term for the U.S.) And, of course, the former Soviet Union -now Russia again- is an up-and-comer!
Portugal exports — what, exactly? Cork and wool pulp and some veggies, if I remember correctly… Oh, and their language; but they want it back, to which Brazil says No! :)
A nice map of US, Chinese, French and Russian arms sale.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cf6Hc8RUsAAZZgG.jpg:large)
Message has gone out on the phones that within the fifth ring road of Beijing, firework during the Spring Festival (new year) is limited to the night before the new year (that's the day after tomorrow), the first day, and the fifteenth day, and it is requested that people try to keep it to a minimum.
https://youtu.be/BKxhH2WGv7I
A great many years ago I was on the Republic of China's connection and they sent me every two weeks a copy of a Free China newspaper and from time to time a lovely coloured magazine. For the Oakies of the world the Republic of China is Taiwan and it's islands...... :D
As a postcript I had all those years ago written to the palace in Taipei and the then President Chiang Kai Shek. :blush:
Taiwan is weighing whether to evict former dictator Chiang Kai-shek from his own memorial (https://qz.com/922638/taiwan-weighs-whether-to-evict-former-dictator-chiang-kai-shek-from-his-own-memorial/)
(https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/rtsanct-e1488421287620.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=800)
Last week Taiwan’s culture ministry announced plans to repurpose (http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201702280008.aspx) the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, one of Taipei’s top tourist attractions, in a project could entail the removal of a massive bronze statue of Chiang. And the hall, it said, will stop selling Chiang-themed merchandise.
The memorial hall isn’t alone. Chiang’s presence is being steadily removed from public spaces across Taiwan, feeding into a larger public debate about Taiwan’s identity and “Chinese-ness.” Chiang used education and propaganda to create a Chinese identity here, while also trying to erase 50 years of Japanese colonial rule and tamp down the local indigenous culture. But that identity has steadily faded since the arrival of democracy in the 1990s, and a new identity unique to Taiwan has begun to emerge.
I know about that but they have to watch themselves in the Republic of China as those that are the opposition to the Kuomintang are sometimes tending to want to be more like the "Republic of Taiwan" and there is no way the dictatorship on the mainland will tolerate that. It has to be also reminded that democracy would not have advanced if the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) had not adapted as the place became more distant from the Civil War days. On a lesser note any drastic change in the memorial centre which is still an attraction would be disappointing. The present government is not the Kuomintang.
The "Red" Chinese still can't re-take Formosa… Their army can't swim that far.
Why is Spain in the middle of a spat between China and Taiwan?
Although most of the 269 suspects arrested were Taiwanese nationals, Beijing asked for the entire group to be sent to China. Last month, the Spanish government approved the request.
Taiwan, which China sees as a breakaway province that will eventually be reunited with the mainland, has protested that the decision violates historical European human rights norms and the "principle of nationality".
But the reality is that it can do little to stop the transfer. Spain, like most countries, doesn't formally recognise Taiwan as a state.
It was Henry Kissinger whose diplomacy achieved the global non-recognition of Taiwan.
Guomindang and the Communist Party of China both agree that Taiwan is part of China (if not on who should rule China), and legally the case is pretty clear. Taiwan/Mainland China is quite analogous to West/East Germany (formerly), North/South Vietnam (formerly) and North/South Korea (currently). These are all cases of one county, as is also the case with e.g. Somaliland in Somalia, where the Somali government doesn't extend into the territory. The Kurdish areas in Iraq is another such case of de facto, but not de jure, independence.
It could seem that the long separation (67 years and counting, 68 for Korea) would inevitably lead to a divorce, but it is not inevitable. A political process is necessary. Taiwan cannot unilaterally secede from China. Kosovo did from Serbia, but after a war, and even so the legality of that was less than perfect.
Guomindang and the Communist Party of China both agree that Taiwan is part of China (if not on who should rule China), and legally the case is pretty clear. Taiwan/Mainland China is quite analogous to West/East Germany (formerly), North/South Vietnam (formerly) and North/South Korea (currently).
Diplomatically (which is the pragmatic, i.e. workable, argument in international law) Taiwan's case is pretty hopeless. East and West Germany were both dipomatically viable countries and so are North and South Korea. Communist Vietnam kicked U.S. butt and got international recognition in response. Taiwan, thanks to Henry Kissinger, has no viable diplomatic relations, only economic ones. Both Chinas do One China policy from their own perspective, but mainland China has decidedly had the upper hand since Henry Kissinger.
Well Oakdale Free China also has two islands right next to the mainland (Quemopy and Matsu) so maybe a mile or so swim might be possible! :up:
Diplomatically (which is the pragmatic, i.e. workable, argument in international law) Taiwan's case is pretty hopeless. East and West Germany were both dipomatically viable countries and so are North and South Korea. Communist Vietnam kicked U.S. butt and got international recognition in response. Taiwan, thanks to Henry Kissinger, has no viable diplomatic relations, only economic ones. Both Chinas do One China policy from their own perspective, but mainland China has decidedly had the upper hand since Henry Kissinger.
None of these were/will be unions of equals. North Vietnam took over South Vietnam when the Americans left. West Germany simply took over East Germany to form Germany, which is the likely outcome of South Korea taking over North Korea (both South Korea and China are concerned about refugees in a collapsing North Korea), while Mainland China would be likely to repeat one country two systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country,_two_systems#Taiwan) if things got their way, which makes Hong Kong and Macau important showcases for Beijing.
None of these were/will be unions of equals. North Vietnam took over South Vietnam when the Americans left. West Germany simply took over East Germany to form Germany, which is the likely outcome of South Korea taking over North Korea (both South Korea and China are concerned about refugees in a collapsing North Korea), while Mainland China would be likely to repeat one country two systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_country,_two_systems#Taiwan) if things got their way, which makes Hong Kong and Macau important showcases for Beijing.
I disagree. South Vietnam surrendered grudgingly to superior firepower. East Germany willingly self-destructed as the whole Commie block was imploding and at the same time it was perceived that Westerners would not persecute the Eastern comrades, the capital would remain in Berlin, etc. Hong Kong and Macau had no say in their own fates as they were colonies, not countries.
The relationship of Taiwan and China resembles most that of the Koreas - frozen conflict, no reconciliation in sight. Taiwan has no reason to willingly surrender without a (military) fight because they are a so-called free country with direct continuity with the erstwhile republic that used to rule the mainland and used to be internationally recognized. Taiwan would likely implode as soon as U.S. (and Japan) withdraw their military presence, but nobody wants the mainland Chinese regime to spread in the region, so the containment is to remain in place.
Elements of cold war continue in Far East. Except that U.S. has Trump now who can do whatever random and senseless either purely to advance his personal business or to prop his popularity at home.
which is the likely outcome of South Korea taking over North Korea (both South Korea and China are concerned about refugees in a collapsing North Korea),
What China is also concerned about is the military presence of the USA in South Korea. Wonder which of the concern is bigger...
As for the USA, in case of an unified Korea it would have to look for another pretext for its military presence there.
Whatever that pretext would be, I don't think that the Chinese will buy it. The further expansion of NATO and US military bases after Germany's reunification didn't passed unnoticed.
To sum it up, my forecast for an unified Korea with US military presence in the country is less optimistic than yours.
Taiwan would likely implode as soon as U.S. (and Japan) withdraw their military presence, but nobody wants the mainland Chinese regime to spread in the region, so the containment is to remain in place.
It's not the U.S. (and Japan) military presence which keeps Taiwan afloat but economic support. ;)
The question is if that support is affordable forever. In the meantime Taiwan's economic dependency on China grows.
In the earlier stage the Republic of China had already started getting somewhere whilst the mainland was still locked in that Red Book mentality nonsense so that idea of long control is not completely accurate. At the same modern time of course the 2 Chinas for all the rhetoric are trading with each other!
Alibaba says it can be world’s fifth-largest economy by 2036 (http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2097691/alibaba-aims-become-fifth-largest-economy-2036)
Alibaba Group Holding, the world’s largest e-commerce platform operator, aims to become the fifth-largest “economy” in the world by 2036, founder Jack Ma Yun said on Friday.
In 19 years’ time, the technology giant would have created 100 million jobs and would support 10 million profitable businesses on its platforms as it strove to become a global business in the truest sense, serving as many as two billion consumers worldwide, the executive chairman told about 400 investors at its headquarters in Hangzhou.
[font="PT Sans", sans-serif]The Chinese firm, which runs the popular Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms, has set a target to achieve US$1 trillion in gross merchandise volume in 2019 – the 2020 financial year – which would make it roughly the 16th- or 17th-largest “economy” in the world, according to Ma. He said Alibaba’s gross merchandise value today already made it the 22nd-largest “economy” globally, just behind Argentina.[/font][/color]
(https://cdn1.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/images/methode/2017/06/09/0abdcf62-4d20-11e7-a842-aa003dd7e62a_image_hires_225513.jpg)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn4.spiegel.de%2Fimages%2Fimage-1154253-galleryV9-lvrf-1154253.jpg&hash=738f4923199d4527364e9ca23206428f" rel="cached" data-hash="738f4923199d4527364e9ca23206428f" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn4.spiegel.de/images/image-1154253-galleryV9-lvrf-1154253.jpg)
Flowering peacock: A bird-shaped garden midst traffic in Nanjing - East China.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn4.spiegel.de%2Fimages%2Fimage-1157263-galleryV9-hjgp-1157263.jpg&hash=964d49f0c7afbc728b4314d5a8eb569b" rel="cached" data-hash="964d49f0c7afbc728b4314d5a8eb569b" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://cdn4.spiegel.de/images/image-1157263-galleryV9-hjgp-1157263.jpg)
We did it! - Children at the farewell ceremony of their kindergarten, in the province of Hebei in China.
It is decades (of course!) since I once wrote to President Chiang Kai-Shek in the cloned island and it is very clever that the Bolshie lot have had to use dictator ruled capitalism to get somewhere!
Xi has just been canonised (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2115767/xi-jinping-thought-break-chinas-past) at the 19th National Congress.
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/124c815d268a730e4b86d843ba86ea2e64485bd5/0_42_4435_2662/master/4435.jpg?w=620&q=20&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&dpr=2&s=04a3f399600a116e546c2ffdd3b70fb8)
Much more important than canonized or not, China's president had made severe criticism against Americans, without even mentioning Trump once at a three hours long speech, regarding economic isolationism.
Also the concern with climate alterations is to be noted, another criticism against the USA.
It is passingly amusing that a Red dictatorship has used capitalism to been supportive of the people as their dogma wasn't doing that!
The Mysterious Death of a Chinese General (https://thediplomat.com/2017/12/the-mysterious-death-of-a-chinese-general/)
Eh?
How China is changing the future of shopping (https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_wang_how_china_is_changing_the_future_of_shopping)
https://youtu.be/RgBU2CazqM0
Robots Have Replaced Humans in 25% of China’s Ammunition Factories (https://futurism.com/robots-replaced-humans-25-chinas-ammunition-factories/)
What about fireworks factories?
I used to be a mailing list decades ago from the government of (Free) China re Taiwan. If wasn't so far away would have visited. Was nice back then to get a letter from the Presidential palace on behalf of Chiang Kai Shek. Wish I had kept the link!
(https://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2017/12/20171222_Skyscrapers.jpg)
Well dictatorships have a built in direction!
Yes, the direction of destroying us all.
Yes and you have an unfortunate passing history. Must have been quite a challenge?
Train table
(https://image.ibb.co/iFsj4G/FFA09157_2334_42_D9_8_B1_D_2_C614_D06_C102.jpg) (https://image.ibb.co/iFsj4G/FFA09157_2334_42_D9_8_B1_D_2_C614_D06_C102.jpg)
And that point is?
just as well I am a train fan.
Train table
Any idea how the cost of a sleeper compares to the cost of flying?
The prices are very similar. Air fare is a bit more variable, cheaper or more expensive, but on average they come out the same (The slow train sleepers are cheaper, but not that much cheaper).
The table impressed me for two reasons. It is a little trite to say that the high-speed rail network in China has grown fast, though obviously it has, and the network is less than a decade old (the first line, Beijing-Tianjin opened August 2008, a week before the Summer Olympics). I was impressed by the extent this network has been established, and the at-a-glance quality of the table.
The 33 cities are the province/division capitals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_China) of China (with Shenzhen as a stand-in for neighbouring Hong Kong, and Zhuhai for neighbouring Macau). I was impressed that each cell represents a direct link between the two cities (the fastest link), a total of of 1056 direct links, though some of these are still missing. Europe has an extensive passenger network as well, but with a corridor/hub-and-spoke approach. If e.g. you'd want to go from Amsterdam to Rome, you would change trains twice, in Paris and in Milan.
Not all of these connections are high-speed, only the blue cells are. With the dark blue you would expect to travel at least part of the time at speeds of 300+ km/h, while light blue would be in the 200-250 km/h range. The greens would be regular trains, with the dark greens going at decent speed as long as you don't travel too far.
The chart gives a snapshot at the state of train travel in China. It could improve a little, like grouping the capitals more geographically (e.g. north-east, east, south-east, south-west, west, north-west). As is, the densely populated regions tend to be on the left, the sparsely one on the right. I would also added a progress bar to denote distance. Probably an inverse one. The shortest journey is Beijing to Tianjin, taking all of 31 minutes. The longest is Nanning in the extreme south-east (nearby Hanoi, Vietnam) to Ürümqi in the extreme north-west (by the Taklamakan desert and the Heavenly Mountains), at 59 hours and 6 minutes.
In China they do things quickly by upping the numbers of workers involved.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2213537-in-china-vervangen-ze-het-spoor-met-1500-man-tegelijk.html
(Coordinating that must be hard…)
(Coordinating that must be hard…)
Coordinating in China is easy: Just keep adding and replacing people until things begin working.
If the process takes too much time, intimidate some strategic individuals or (simpler) everyone. This works universally of course.
I suppose you mean the railway track might suffer this fate? :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktM__i-8IQ
They try their best and this is what their best occasionally looks like.
Chrome files discovered in "first homegrown" Chinese web browser
Redcore, which was previously known as AllMobilize Inc., claimed its web browser was the only one to be fully made in China, and that it would break the United States’ “monopoly” on software. It even mentioned the browser’s “independent intellectual property rights.”
However, Chinese users discovered some surprising files in the Redcore browser’s installation directory, including ‘Chrome.exe’ and several image files of the Chrome logo. [...] The option to download the Redcore browser has since been removed from the company’s website.
Kinda like that Russian eink school tablet that came with great promises but turned out to be completely unusable and not Russian technology at all (or maybe Russian technology in the sense that it's unusable) http://en.rusnano.com/press-centre/news/88213
including ‘Chrome.exe’ and several image files of the Chrome logo
You don't need any of that to smell a Chromium-type browser from a mile away, setting aside the ease of spotting a WebKit/Blink type engine. Browsers like K-Meleon and SeaMonkey are significantly more distinct from Firefox than Vivaldi is from Chrome.
I was able to find a screenshot here: https://www.jqknews.com/news/57362-Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants_giant_creative_founder_of_red_core_browser_founder_resume_fraud.html
From that page:
Blink is an engine developed by Google and Opera, and a part of Chromium.
Is it really? Are they just saying that because Opera is Chinese now? :right:
In my experience Intel has made more significant contributions for example.
Interestingly, if you look at the AUTHORS (https://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/AUTHORS?revision=291468) document, all of the Intel contributors are listed as individuals and Opera Software ASA as an organization.
Here's the full list of credited companies:
BlackBerry Limited <*@blackberry.com>
Code Aurora Forum <*@codeaurora.org>
Comodo CA Limited
Google Inc. <*@google.com>
Igalia S.L. <*@igalia.com>
NVIDIA Corporation <*@nvidia.com>
Opera Software ASA <*@opera.com>
The Chromium Authors <*@chromium.org>
The MathWorks, Inc. <binod.pant@mathworks.com>
Torchmobile Inc.
Venture 3 Systems LLC <*@venture3systems.com>
Yandex LLC <*@yandex-team.ru>
ARM Holdings <*@arm.com>
I single out Intel because those Intel contributors somehow manage to fix and improve those things that matter the most to me. I'm sure Opera does important work in VR or something. :P
AFAIR/AFAIK the Opera team made fairly significant contributions (https://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2015/10/opera-33-our-contribution-to-chromium/), merging in Opera adaptions to Blink. When Google set up in Oslo Morten and Rune (https://twitter.com/runeLi) started for Google/Chrome. As I remember it Rune began just days before me in 2000, and Morten just days after. Rune on the CSS parser, I forgot Morten's first project. They became core to the rendering engine in time. In the early days that was Geir (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geir_Ivars%C3%B8y)and Karl Anders (https://twitter.com/Karl_Oygard).
1. Google is starting a new office in Oslo
2. Several core Opera veterans are quitting
or example, Blink/ Chromium’s way of showing multicolumn layouts was written by Morten from our R&D Department
Ah, excellent! Just the kind of stuff I like to see from Opera. They should publicize it better, or maybe I should glance over their announcements less. :)
Then again, in 2015 I still read them with more scrutiny. I guess I just forgot and perhaps I've negatively colored my memory with present-day impressions?
In any event, contributions by people from Intel somehow stand out to me. Perhaps the slight oddity of seeing a name like Intel contributing so much to a browser engine has something to do with it, unconsciously making it stand out more, while Opera "of course" contributes.
You don't need any of that to smell a Chromium-type browser from a mile away, setting aside the ease of spotting a WebKit/Blink type engine. Browsers like K-Meleon and SeaMonkey are significantly more distinct from Firefox than Vivaldi is from Chrome.
Sure, Chromium-type browsers are easy to spot. However, when your idea is to call the product your own, as a minimum replace all graphics and rename the main exe. Vivaldi has come pretty far in distinguishing itself.
And, in a bad way, also FF has come very far in distinguishing itself. Seamonkey and Palemoon are still recognisable Mozilla products/forks/derivatives. FF is not.
The discontinuation of Flash caused some issues.
The railroad system in Dalian, northern China, collapsed citywide on Tuesday for up to 20 hours after the Adobe Flash programing software stopped running.
[…]
Authorities fixed the issue by installing a pirated version of Flash at 4:30 a.m. the following day.
I'm quite surprised at how little activity there is in this thread...but (since it's close enough for government work:) did anyone else catch Putin's remarks on Climate Change? Wanna bet Xi says much the same? :)
You of course have some twisted take on it. Come on, spell it out. Don't do half-sentences.
Please verify poster's (ersi's) familiarity with topic... (waiting; of course he could simply answer the question - I'd guess No.)
Here's a little piece of trivia for you about me. Do you know what this is https://djrc.dowjones.com ?
It shows all the major political and business dudes in the world, sanctioned entities of all types, their connections with each other, families, media and court records. Both Putin and Xi are there. I have access there and I use it daily. You don't.
Jax knows better about stuff in China in particular. I only care to know as much as I need for my job.
I'm quite surprised at how little activity there is in this thread...but (since it's close enough for government work:) did anyone else catch Putin's remarks on Climate Change? Wanna bet Xi says much the same?
Putin has made a lot of remarks on the subject over the years. Which in particular?
Oakdale probably means Putin's latest statements on the topic. But Putin's latest statements were in no way special, so no idea what the point is or the connection to Xi or anything.
We can call it Oakdale's Gaslight. It's him at his best.
At a climate summit in Washington (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/26/president-biden-invites-40-world-leaders-to-leaders-summit-on-climate/) last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin, on top of pledging to "significantly" reduce the country's emissions in the next three decades, called for a global reduction of methane.
"The fate of our entire planet, the development prospects of each country, the well-being and quality of life of people largely depend on these efforts," Putin ssid.
from Report: Cutting methane crucial (by Hiroko Tabuchi, NYT writer;re-published in San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 2021, p.A7)
But, I guess, the summit was
ho-hummed by most...:)
China’s Xi Jinping, the first national leader to speak at Thursday’s summit, reiterated the nation’s pledge to “strive to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.” On coal consumption, Xi said China might “phase it down” during its 15th Five Year Plan, which runs from 2025 through 2030. The Chinese leader also said his country, which is responsible for nearly a third of the world’s emissions, would strictly control coal power projects in the years ahead.
Russian President Vladimir Putin promised only to “significantly” reduce emissions by 2050 and noted that his country takes seriously its international commitments. He mentioned both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris accord — climate agreements that the United States once walked away from.
Still, most countries on Thursday wholeheartedly welcomed the U.S.'s return to the world stage, saying American leadership is critical to reach the collective goal of limiting Earth’s warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels, and if possible to stay closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Failure to hit those targets, scientists have warned, will result in a cascade of costly and devastating effects.
(WaPo story (https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/04/22/biden-climate-summit/))
While Biden’s climate summit was intended to help persuade other nations to embrace the bigger, bolder goals envisioned under the Paris accord, whether that succeeds or fails will become clearer only over time. A moment of truth will come this November in Glasgow, where nations are expected to arrive with detailed new blueprints for how they intend to do their part.
(also from the WaPo story)
Might
our "man on the ground" be given temporary privileges, to keep us informed? :)
But there's exciting news: Russia and China are going to jointly build a lunar scientific research station! On the moon's surface, or perhaps in orbit... No time-line given.
Somewhat related: NASA tasks SpaceX to take Americans back to the moon.
While I don't think "Gaslight" is my word of choice, I wouldn't accuse
@OakdaleFTL of excessive clarity. Much of the time I think nobody, including the author, knows the drift of his…elliptical…comments. I assume they refer to foreign politics, with forays into climate and space politics.
All politics is local, and they hardly come more local than with China. Politicians, aka leaders, cater to themselves, to their power base, and to the territory they are administrating. Xi, Putin and Biden no exception.
I think this is a fair general assessment, of the "snow always melt" kind: After Xi: Future Scenarios for Leadership Succession in Post-XI Jinping Era (https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/after-xi)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfeytbHBPFMSpeaking of succession, kingmaker Jiang Zemin is still around, at the age of 94. So is Kissinger, 97. Deng died at the relative young age of 92 (curious how these threads have circled longevity lately). So Xi (67), Putin (68), and Biden (78) still have some time to go. Question is how lithe they are going to be. So far I would give top marks to the US and Biden. Not bad for an old democracy and an old president.
I have previously mused about the Chinese pattern of underreacting, then overreacting ("underreacting" is not a word in the US vocabulary), but they do error-correct and do so pretty well. Haven't seen much of that lately, but these are trying times.
But of course, given that this is the China thread, it's all about Putin. The Chinese-Russian partnership is one of convenience, primarily Chinese convenience. China is strong where Russia is weak, and while China is rising, Russia is in relative decline. As said about their aerospace partnership, a decade ago the question in Russia would have been what they would need China for, a decade from now the question in China will be what they will need Russia for. Since we're into space symbolism: If little Zhurong gets rolling next month, China will have succeeded with that the Soviet Union and Russia have consistently failed.
The climate calculus is different in Russia. Putin and clan believe they can win on climate, and they certainly have a good grasp on fossil profits. China is hedging. Former energy baron, and previously sitting in the Standing Committee, Zhou Yongkang, is ousted. Still there is enough of that stuff to grease palms. But Energy is the first name of Security. China is ready to do the switch, just not yet. Leaving Biden. The US fossil lobby is extremely powerful, but battered. I see no sign Biden will try to go up against them, but he might encircle. If he does and succeeds, power will shift globally. Particularly to the detriment of Russia, Arab states, Iran and Venezuela.
While I don't think "Gaslight" is my word of choice, I wouldn't accuse @OakdaleFTL (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?action=profile;u=21) of excessive clarity. Much of the time I think nobody, including the author, knows the drift of his...elliptical...comments. I assume they refer to foreign politics, with forays into climate and space politics.
:) I presume (and assume) a conversational tone... Perhaps it is an artifact of my earlier life, before the internet's seeming explosion of the means of communication. (You know: Letters, telephony that was expensive -and thus metered, personal interactions which required sometimes crossing vast distances (and, in a similar way, personalities who'd accost each other, usually without rancor or anger from remembered or imagined previous encounters; a willingness to talk -if you will.) I like words and word-play; but I'm -especially compared with most others here- a
mono-glot. So it's not surprising that my posts are hard to understand: Indeed, I'm writing mostly for myself...
But you'all are a fairly forgiving lot, and I like "conversing" with you. Mind a little poem? :)
I always wonder when I see that lone
dark shape winging by going north or south,
what is it? Scout or straggler...
without a flock
behind or ahead, it's hard to say. No? (dej ღ © 2021)
When there's something I'd like to talk about, I'm not above (
beneath?) hi-jacking a thread that has promise; isn't that how conversation goes, everywhere? I expect the same from others; it has happened, and the switch to a different topic has often enough been worthwhile.
What we do here is more like telegraphy than monologue or debate: Sometimes the wires sing!
The US fossil lobby is extremely powerful, but battered. I see no sign Biden will try to go up against them, but he might encircle. If he does and succeeds, power will shift globally. Particularly to the detriment of Russia, Arab states, Iran and Venezuela.
I appreciate your insights into Russia and China,
jax; but I've a quibble or two:
While I agree Biden will not really "fight" what others call Big Oil, he will do his utmost to destroy a fairly large swath of our middle class with his "meddling"...: Halting the pipeline between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico; encouraging state governors like California's Gavin Newsom to
advance the fight against economic sanity by adopting any damn-fool method to virtue-signal Our (
his) commitment to Climate
Nirvana Utopia; facilitating -if not out-right forcing- local schools to adopt absurd and contradictory credos, at the behest of --
teachers unions? (Like Parkinson noted ages ago: Organizations eventually discard their purported purpose in favor of increase and aggrandizement... Our teachers unions seem little interested in
teaching future citizens;
voters and activists are what are needed! More union members...) If Biden succeeds -and he stands a better chance than did Obama- I don't see such leading to a redoubtable U.S. energy sector; quite the opposite:
power will shift globally. Particularly to the detriment of [easing of competition to] Russia, Arab states, Iran and Venezuela.
You will admit that oil-rich failed or failing states -in the Liberal sense of yore- will benefit from a U.S. precluded from attaining energy independence?
And I still worry about Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong... See:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-legislation-on-china-to-be-delayed-lawmakers-say_3792977.html
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/processors/us-takes-strategic-step-to-onshore-electronics-manufacturing
(You may read that Trump vetoed the FY21 Defense spending bill... And his veto was overridden. Two points: 1) Overriding that veto was a gimme; but certain points needed to be made. Which points? 2) Sen. Warner explains it all! (https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/12/warner-on-president-trump-s-veto-of-the-national-defense-authorization-act))
While I agree Biden will not really "fight" what others call Big Oil, he will do his utmost to destroy a fairly large swath of our middle class with his "meddling"...: Halting the pipeline between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico; encouraging state governors like California's Gavin Newsom to advance the fight against economic sanity by adopting any damn-fool method to virtue-signal Our (his) commitment to Climate Nirvana Utopia;
You will admit that oil-rich failed or failing states -in the Liberal sense of yore- will benefit from a U.S. precluded from attaining energy independence?
A few misunderstandings there, where the last was the most egregious. Being independent of fossil fuels make you less, not more, dependent on fossil fuels. It is kind of obvious.
I can guess where that misunderstanding comes from. In the name of energy security the US increased their domestic fossil fuel production, e.g. with fracking. In a sense that was successful, the US today imports much less Arab oil. and is not directly affected by shocks in the region. But fracking never made money and never will, billions have been lost. Reducing the consumption of fossil fuels by building renewable power permanently removes this dependency. This is basically the European approach, and Europe now is neither dependent on Arab nor Russian fossil energy. The Arab gulf states, and also Russia these days, are primarily selling to Asia. If Asia too reduce their fossil dependency, the value of their fossil reserves will fall precipitously. Which is a good thing for all of us of course, otherwise they would be extracted and burnt.
A different misunderstanding is that fossil fuel extraction benefit the middle class. They benefit a small elite.
Most interesting to watch your attempts to re-educate Oakdale. I am firmly convinced that he is absolutely incorrigible. Right now there is this rampant theory among Trumpites that Biden, as a Xi puppet that he is, plans to ban cows in America and introduce plant-based beer. This, along with reducing rates of coal and oil usage, would destroy the American middle class! It all makes sense!!
But the Texas power crisis this winter shows a couple US vulnerabilities. Not just that fossil fuels are not a particularly secure form of electricity generation, but also some particular grid problems that Texas may share with California.
The EU consists of many small and medium-sized countries agglutinated into a union, which is not the most efficient of structures. But the European grid is overall better than the US (and it is not as if there aren't shortcomings here too), not the least in long-distance energy transfer. And this for political rather than technical reasons. The states don't want to be subservient to the federal government.
Texas and California built different power grids, but neither stood up to climate change (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/21/texas-california-climate-change-power-grids-470434)
But getting back to the thread topic, both US and EU grids are dwarfed by Chinese grid projects, like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pE0z5StI4
Though built by a European company (at the time, now Japanese-owned), there is nothing like that in Europe. A line like that would link Scandinavia to the Sahara.
Most interesting to watch your attempts to re-educate Oakdale. I am firmly convinced that he is absolutely incorrigible. Right now there is this rampant theory among Trumpites that Biden, as a Xi puppet that he is, plans to ban cows in America and introduce plant-based beer. This, along with reducing rates of coal and oil usage, would destroy the American middle class! It all makes sense!!
Heh, yeah the "Biden bans beef" line is tragi-comic. Particularly since the argument is that such
drastic reductions can only be achieved by everyone becoming vegetarians, while in fact the goal for US emissions in 2030 (half those in 2005) is still 1½ times the EU average today, and 2½ Sweden.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0D9FyVWUAEDvsI?format=jpg)
Right now there is this rampant theory among Trumpites that Biden, as a Xi puppet that he is, plans to ban cows in America and introduce plant-based beer. This, along with reducing rates of coal and oil usage, would destroy the American middle class! It all makes sense!!
Where on earth do you get this stuff from,
ersi?
(I'm sure "inquiring minds" want to know...:)
Fox News, fair and balanced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQZOQKFHAZE
As always (https://www.11alive.com/article/news/verify/national-verify/biden-administration-red-meat-consumption-university-of-michigan-study/536-ec779795-82a3-4279-ad9e-163ab59f4db2), snark and poorly followed click-bait... :) and :(
(What's that you say, about motivated reasoning?)
Access denied?
Do you mean access to https://www.11alive.com/article/news/verify/national-verify/biden-administration-red-meat-consumption-university-of-michigan-study/536-ec779795-82a3-4279-ad9e-163ab59f4db2 (A fact check by a TV station? Seems unlikely; VPN problem, maybe?)
NATIONAL VERIFY
No, the Biden Administration has not proposed a reduction in red meat consumption by 2030
The experts behind a University of Michigan study are setting the record straight.
Author: Erin Jones (VERIFY), Mauricio Chamberlin (VERIFY), Evan Koslof
Published: 6:59 PM EDT April 26, 2021
Updated: 7:17 PM EDT April 26, 2021
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President Joe Biden announced his plan for the United States to reach a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030 at the Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate on Thursday, April 22.
After the announcement was made, headlines like this one from the Daily Mail: “How Biden's climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH,” several on-air segments on Fox News and Fox Business, and a number of social media posts claimed that Biden’s plan would slash red meat consumption in the U.S. by 90 percent.
THE QUESTION
Did the Biden Administration propose a plan to slash red meat consumption by 90 percent?
THE SOURCES
United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
FACT SHEET: President Biden Sets 2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target Aimed at Creating Good-Paying Union Jobs and Securing U.S. Leadership on Clean Energy Technologies
Heller, Martin, Gregory Keoleian, and Diego Rose. (2020) “Implications of Future US Diet Scenarios on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” CSS Report, University of Michigan: Ann Arbor 1-24.
THE ANSWER
This is false.
No, the Biden Administration has not proposed a reduction in red meat consumption at all, let alone 90 percent.
WHAT WE FOUND
In January 2020, researchers at the University of Michigan released a study on the “Implications of Future US Diet Scenarios on Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” It found that greenhouse gas emissions could be cut in half if red meat consumption is cut by 90 percent, along with a 50 percent drop in all other meat consumption.
In a fact sheet released by the White House on April 22 following President Biden’s speech on greenhouse gas pollution reductions, neither mention any proposed changes to meat consumption.
While the White House did not comment directly on the claims, they did confirm that there are no restrictions on red meat consumption as part of Biden’s climate plans or emissions targets.
During a call with the media on Monday, April 26, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack answered the question more directly, saying, “There is no effort designed to limit people's intake of beef coming out of President Biden's White House or USDA. Sometimes in the political world, games get played and issues are injected into the conversation knowing full well that there's no factual basis."
(from URL above)
VPN problem, maybe?
Perhaps they decided to self-ban in Europe, in which case they should be shunned and avoided for whatever immoral stunts they dare pull on Americans.
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.11alive.com/article/news/verify/national-verify/biden-administration-red-meat-consumption-university-of-michigan-study/536-ec779795-82a3-4279-ad9e-163ab59f4db2" on this server.
Reference #18.acc51102.1619723046.11bced37
An Atlanta tv station that doesn't diss Biden...? I'm confused; at your reaction as well as their proscription.
He was not referring to Biden. but to the web site that is not available to him or me, and probably other Europeans, but is available to you and probably other Americans. When a web site is geographically constrained like this it is usually for someone's Intellectual Pillage rights, or for our privacy rights. As there is no media file, presumably the latter. Thus "good riddance".
The Biden's beef story is manufactured, and the usual suspects like Murdoch and Cruz pushed it hard. This story is completely false, misleading, and deliberately so. Yet… There is smoke, grain, Chinese whispers. Not with Biden, not with 2030. Biden's "radical" goals are the same as every pre-Trump president have committed to. They require change, but not hardship. If he pulls this through it will be a bit like recognising the Armenian genocide. A lot of presidents have promised, he actually did it. But it is relatively easy to do because technology has changed. But yet, the world won't end in 2030 (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=136).
And we got pie.
(https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png)
The 80/20 solution (or 73.2%/26.8% solution) is clear: Stop burning fossil fuels. In theory it should be hard now that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels. In practice it is hard because:
- energy runs at a slow burn, a new power plant can run for 40-50 years
- while the fossil industry is not as all-powerful as it was 50 years ago, it still packs a massive lobbying punch
- change is hard
- we still want our economies to grow (yes, degrowthers, we do, poverty is not sexy)
- while the OECD countries have more than enough energy for our needs, much of the rest of the world is underdeveloped
- our electrification is partial, and while that will get us more available energy in the end, we still have to do it and change is hard
- even renewable energy emits climate gases in their life cycles (less so the more we bootstrap)
- our "carbon loan" will be due, and we will have to pay it back with interest
We are at least a decade behind schedule and are massively overshooting, but we are course-correcting. The goals for 2030 takes will, but can be done and that without hardship. The goals for 2050-60 will be harder. Because of that overshoot, far harder. Net zero is precisely that, net
zero, not net 26.8%. So energy and its uses, industry, waste, agriculture and land use will have to end up on zero. That means looking at everything. Building those cities (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=300) and all that shiny new infrastructure (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=334) comes at a cost, and all that beef. But fortunately we're talking about
net zero, not zero, which would be hard to combine with existing. The green slice of the pie could be net negative, and all that renewable energy we have built up can be set to use to claw out some of that carbon we have dumped into the atmosphere.
But the green slice is quite big right now, and
Bos taurus is a large part of the problem. Primarily on land use, but it takes a lot of energy to grow tham, and they produce a lot of natural gas in the process. Either we have to create a better cow, or we must have less of them. Some cause far more harm than others, particularly those in China shops, they will have to go.
For the rest, there might be tricks. Sea weed may be better than grass which is better than maize and soy. We can make artificial cows, or alternatives to cow, or alternatives to meat all together. Here we intersect with another cultural/economic/moral phenomena:
They are vegans because they can. Throughout our history we haven't been vegans because we couldn't. Animal products have been a necessary supplement to our diet. Now we are affluent enough that we can forego it, and technology gives us alternatives. Thus we can ask ourselves: Is it right to kill animals for food? I find it likely that 22nd century people will look at our eating habits with revulsion.
He was not referring to Biden. but to the web site that is not available to him or me, and probably other Europeans, but is available to you and probably other Americans. When a web site is geographically constrained like this it is usually for someone's Intellectual Pillage rights, or for our privacy rights. As there is no media file, presumably the latter. Thus "good riddance".
Yup, exactly that.
When a web site is geographically constrained like this it is usually for someone's Intellectual Pillage rights, or for our privacy rights.
Can you verify the block originates in the EU? (Or that it doesn't...)
@OakdaleFTL I ran some checks: 11alive.com server is blocking Europeans. Asians and Africans are welcome to access the server freely, Europeans are not.
Not that I am in favour of jury trials, but the new security law, imposed to Hong Kong by mainland China, seems like a serious departure from ordinary legal practice in Hong Kong.
First person charged under Hong Kong’s national security law loses bid for a jury trial
- Tong Ying-kit, accused of driving his motorcycle into a group of police officers, will have his case heard by three judges hand-picked by city leader Carrie Lam
- High Court judge Alex Lee rules the provision for trial by jury contained in the Basic Law overridden by national security law