I noted this in the HCR discussion and here as well as I don't think that protesting in a controlled authoritarian society can have the kind of effects we in western democratic leaning societies presume it can have. Western leaders pride themselves (falsely many times) of serving their peoples want and needs. Authoritarian societies, like China and Iran, tell their citizens what to believe, do, and enforce the rules with impunity. JMO. And China has excellent facial recognition technology in use in those same urban areas where protest took place. No hurry to crack down when you can scoop up the dissidents whenever you wish. I can see hundreds of coders updating the citizen records of those who were at the protest, as we write this commentaries.
TC's opened by advising enormous events in Chinese history begin with a small spark.
...in the words of Mao Zedong — 'prevent a single spark from becoming a prairie fire'.
Last week, many speculated that COVID curbs in the city of Urumqi, parts of which had been under lockdown for 100 days, hindered rescue and escape, from an apartment fire, causing the deaths of 10 people.
I may remember best a response to the fire, which TC shared by a WeChat essayist who wrote a satirical piece titled “Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good: Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good!”
Do you think the former president will plagiarize it for his presidential campaign slogan in '24; that's if our 'Rule of Law' permits him to get that far?
From liberal, earlier Hong Kong I heard a story of the privatized fire brigades: they could start negotiating what resources, and at what price, they would start working, while the house was burning. The lockdown policy has clearly created a 'high pressure boiler', where such an incident of failing fire fighting can spark such reactions. Apart from lockdowns maybe the only alternative, I have been thinking that it is the perfect fine tuning of the most advanced surveillance system in world history; with follow up by prosecution of all 'disturbing elements'. Taiwan remains the worse threat for the Beijing regime, by setting an example of Chinese democracy, better and more ambitious than many democracies in the West, and a most tempting conquest by being world leading manufacturer of electronic components.
Sounds like an incredibly fragile situation that could have ripple effects across the globe.
And could the fact that more recent covid variants are much more communicable cause a wildfire effect?
The decision to rely on deficient vaccines may be seen as one of history's greatest errors.
Young people may feel they have nothing left to lose if their lives are heavily restricted. And the government's idea that they can control everything via security snooping and endless crackdowns flies in the face of logic. What a tinderbox!
We could be seeing a supply chain disruption that makes the last one feel like child's play.
Is anything possible? China's COVID problems are very serious.
'In Shanghai, a vigil grew into a street protest where many held blank sheets of white paper in a symbol of tacit defiance.'
'In Beijing, students at Tsinghua University raised signs showing a math equation devised by the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, whose surname in Chinese is a homonym for “free man.” (NYTimes)
The country, however, may not be as fragile or a 'tinder box' as you suggest, at least according to what I have been reading.
'Although protests of this scale are unprecedented since Xi assumed power in 2012, China is a long way from anything like regime change.'
• The Chinese ruler has full control of the political apparatus and the military, and there's
no meaningful organized opposition.
• Shanghai, Beijing police make presence visible on streets
• No sign of new protests in Beijing, Shanghai on Monday
• Backlash is a setback for efforts to stamp out virus
• News of the protests roils global markets
'SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Police on Monday stopped and searched people at the sites of weekend protests in Shanghai and Beijing, after crowds there and in other Chinese cities demonstrated against stringent COVID-19 measures disrupting lives three years into the pandemic.'
'From the streets of several Chinese cities to dozens of university campuses, protesters made a show of civil disobedience unprecedented since leader Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago. During his tenure, Xi has overseen the quashing of dissent and expansion of a high-tech social surveillance system that has made protest more difficult, and riskier.'
'Police have been asking people for their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Telegram app, which has been used by weekend protesters, residents and social media users said. VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the Telegram app is blocked from China's internet.'
'China's official death toll in the thousands, against more than a million in the United States, but has come at the cost of confining many millions to long spells at home, bringing extensive disruption and damage to the world's second-largest economy.'
'Abandoning it would mean rolling back a policy championed by Xi. It would also risk overwhelming hospitals and lead to widespread illness and deaths in a country with hundreds of millions of elderly and low levels of immunity to COVID, experts say.'
'Martin Petch, vice president at Moody's Investors Service, said the ratings agency expected the protests "to dissipate relatively quickly and without resulting in serious political violence".
"However, they have the potential to be credit negative if they are sustained and produce a more forceful response by the authorities."
Bottom line, this is a living nightmare for the Chinese people. Young people have been active in protest and more than a spark has been lit.
All good info. And I am certainly not a China or Covid expert. But two things stick out to me.
The lock downs are ultimately an unacceptable way to treat people. People are starving in their apartments. People can't get their medications. I don't think there will be any official reporting of the deaths that result from these causes. But the people are counting.
And what if Covid simply doesn't go away in China? It's different than a seasonal flu. Millions of un-vaccinated or poorly vaccinated are vulnerable. A tiny percentage of the elderly have had even one shot. Xi can't survive an endless game of whacka mole shut downs city after city forever.
And speaking of counting deaths, who would really trust the "official Covid death toll" from Chinese authorities. They invented statistical manipulation. As to public statements, think Orwell.
(Aha, I just figured out where DeSantis got his inspiration - ha ha.)
Good, Bill, and funny as well. Did I not make those points, perhaps, with less humor? I know you didn't read me as an apologist for Xi Jinping - haha! We're a team!
Xi is truly between a rock and a hard place - as you mentioned, the Chinese Covid vaccines are not effective (apparently they are completely ineffective against O,micron), so that lockdowns are the only weapon XI has at the moment. One geopolitical analyst estimates that if fhe lockdowns were eased, the death toll could reach several million per month, for a quarter to a half year. If most of them were elderly, that would be an extra problem for Xi. The irony is that China's place as a major world power is probably temporary. The "one-child" policy in effect for 40 years has guaranteed that China's population will decrease up to 50% over the next 30 years. - there aren't enough Chinese women to repopulate the country as the older generations die off.....probably there are 50-65 million Chinese men for whom there are no Chinese women. Even though the government has increased the allowed children to three per family, modern middle class Chinese do not WANT children - the birth rate in Shanghai is 0.7 children per family, one third of the replacement rate. When the population declines, so will the size of the (very necessary) security forces, so China will likely break up into regional powers, as has been common in other historical periods..... Taiwan many win after all.
TC--You probably saw this, but at least some of those sheets of paper weren't blank. A posting about students from Tsinghua University [think Harvard or MIT] shows them holding up writing paper with the Friedmann equation hand-written on them. Very complicated math but the point is "free-man", get it? I think, to Fred WI's point, that this cleverness will not long evade censoring, recording and possible academic consequences. The only thing that might save them, or at least ameliorate the punishments, is that Tsinghua grads are touted as the top scholars in China--and hence, in the world. The CCP might not want to publicly lose face by over-reacting. (This time, at least.)
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
This would be a good time to casually ramp up our ability to assist and defend Taiwan. Assuming he could put it together, an invasion either by the PLA or their PDRK stooges would be a serious distraction.
Speed up the production and shipment of any arms that have been promised to Taiwan and South Korea. Bring a couple of carrier groups to higher levels of readiness and possibly change some satellite tasking. It may not be financially or politically feasible for Xi but no one benefits if we aren't prepared and the defense production machinery can always use the money even if we don't need to use their products immediately.
I guess I was referring more to the $$$$$ pumped into the defense industry, which put us into a false wartime economy. Some may argue deterrence but the Soviets were already failing. Then again we may already have the same with supporting Ukraine. Follow the money? I have some tanks in the desert you may be interested in purchasing.
It worked for both. If you're talking about the stuff we left in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll sell it back to you at a 10% discount and we'll both make money. Defense industry accounting is a wonderful world of magic.
Dave, thanks for the practical details here. If any plan is to succeed in action it must first be imagined in specifics. Hopelessly impractical and intuitive thinker, I walk away too often these days to wondering if every single event--no matter how urgently important (and lord knows this one is)--boils down to gamesmanship, an afternoon of chess.
Well, TC, was unable to adopt the 2 boy cats - both having really bigtime issues with being in a shelter & naturally, reacting badly. However, I brought home a four year old female black cat whose person went into a nursing home - so she was surrendered. Shes very unhappy with me at this point, of course. But I have hope that she will come out from wherever shes hiding some time soon. Maybe?
Thanks for the push - I think it helped! I'll keep you updated.
You shouldn't have just let her loose in the house. Best way to introduce a cat to a new home is to put them in a room where there's not a lot of traffic, and not many places to hide that you can't get to. Let them get used to the noises and smells, and to you coming in and talking to them. They're initially reacting out of fear. Letting them just go can awaken the feral inside. We have to remember our feline friends are the least-domesticated animal we live with. If you can catch her, get her into this kind of situation I described and start over.
She IS in a room where her litter box & food are - if she wanted she could come out - there is a cat door. This morning she was back in the carrier (dark & comfy) now back near the box,. Shes quite happy being petted & skritched even made a little tiny meow. Shes coming along. It hasnt even been 24 hours since I brought her home. So I go in & sit near her & either talk to her or read (to me) every little while.
I noted this in the HCR discussion and here as well as I don't think that protesting in a controlled authoritarian society can have the kind of effects we in western democratic leaning societies presume it can have. Western leaders pride themselves (falsely many times) of serving their peoples want and needs. Authoritarian societies, like China and Iran, tell their citizens what to believe, do, and enforce the rules with impunity. JMO. And China has excellent facial recognition technology in use in those same urban areas where protest took place. No hurry to crack down when you can scoop up the dissidents whenever you wish. I can see hundreds of coders updating the citizen records of those who were at the protest, as we write this commentaries.
TC's opened by advising enormous events in Chinese history begin with a small spark.
...in the words of Mao Zedong — 'prevent a single spark from becoming a prairie fire'.
Last week, many speculated that COVID curbs in the city of Urumqi, parts of which had been under lockdown for 100 days, hindered rescue and escape, from an apartment fire, causing the deaths of 10 people.
I may remember best a response to the fire, which TC shared by a WeChat essayist who wrote a satirical piece titled “Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good: Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good, Good!”
Do you think the former president will plagiarize it for his presidential campaign slogan in '24; that's if our 'Rule of Law' permits him to get that far?
From liberal, earlier Hong Kong I heard a story of the privatized fire brigades: they could start negotiating what resources, and at what price, they would start working, while the house was burning. The lockdown policy has clearly created a 'high pressure boiler', where such an incident of failing fire fighting can spark such reactions. Apart from lockdowns maybe the only alternative, I have been thinking that it is the perfect fine tuning of the most advanced surveillance system in world history; with follow up by prosecution of all 'disturbing elements'. Taiwan remains the worse threat for the Beijing regime, by setting an example of Chinese democracy, better and more ambitious than many democracies in the West, and a most tempting conquest by being world leading manufacturer of electronic components.
What a scene!
Sounds like an incredibly fragile situation that could have ripple effects across the globe.
And could the fact that more recent covid variants are much more communicable cause a wildfire effect?
The decision to rely on deficient vaccines may be seen as one of history's greatest errors.
Young people may feel they have nothing left to lose if their lives are heavily restricted. And the government's idea that they can control everything via security snooping and endless crackdowns flies in the face of logic. What a tinderbox!
We could be seeing a supply chain disruption that makes the last one feel like child's play.
Is anything possible? China's COVID problems are very serious.
'In Shanghai, a vigil grew into a street protest where many held blank sheets of white paper in a symbol of tacit defiance.'
'In Beijing, students at Tsinghua University raised signs showing a math equation devised by the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, whose surname in Chinese is a homonym for “free man.” (NYTimes)
The country, however, may not be as fragile or a 'tinder box' as you suggest, at least according to what I have been reading.
'Although protests of this scale are unprecedented since Xi assumed power in 2012, China is a long way from anything like regime change.'
• The Chinese ruler has full control of the political apparatus and the military, and there's
no meaningful organized opposition.
• Shanghai, Beijing police make presence visible on streets
• No sign of new protests in Beijing, Shanghai on Monday
• Backlash is a setback for efforts to stamp out virus
• News of the protests roils global markets
'SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Police on Monday stopped and searched people at the sites of weekend protests in Shanghai and Beijing, after crowds there and in other Chinese cities demonstrated against stringent COVID-19 measures disrupting lives three years into the pandemic.'
'From the streets of several Chinese cities to dozens of university campuses, protesters made a show of civil disobedience unprecedented since leader Xi Jinping assumed power a decade ago. During his tenure, Xi has overseen the quashing of dissent and expansion of a high-tech social surveillance system that has made protest more difficult, and riskier.'
'Police have been asking people for their phones to check if they had virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Telegram app, which has been used by weekend protesters, residents and social media users said. VPNs are illegal for most people in China, while the Telegram app is blocked from China's internet.'
'China's official death toll in the thousands, against more than a million in the United States, but has come at the cost of confining many millions to long spells at home, bringing extensive disruption and damage to the world's second-largest economy.'
'Abandoning it would mean rolling back a policy championed by Xi. It would also risk overwhelming hospitals and lead to widespread illness and deaths in a country with hundreds of millions of elderly and low levels of immunity to COVID, experts say.'
'Martin Petch, vice president at Moody's Investors Service, said the ratings agency expected the protests "to dissipate relatively quickly and without resulting in serious political violence".
"However, they have the potential to be credit negative if they are sustained and produce a more forceful response by the authorities."
Bottom line, this is a living nightmare for the Chinese people. Young people have been active in protest and more than a spark has been lit.
All good info. And I am certainly not a China or Covid expert. But two things stick out to me.
The lock downs are ultimately an unacceptable way to treat people. People are starving in their apartments. People can't get their medications. I don't think there will be any official reporting of the deaths that result from these causes. But the people are counting.
And what if Covid simply doesn't go away in China? It's different than a seasonal flu. Millions of un-vaccinated or poorly vaccinated are vulnerable. A tiny percentage of the elderly have had even one shot. Xi can't survive an endless game of whacka mole shut downs city after city forever.
And speaking of counting deaths, who would really trust the "official Covid death toll" from Chinese authorities. They invented statistical manipulation. As to public statements, think Orwell.
(Aha, I just figured out where DeSantis got his inspiration - ha ha.)
Good, Bill, and funny as well. Did I not make those points, perhaps, with less humor? I know you didn't read me as an apologist for Xi Jinping - haha! We're a team!
Xi is truly between a rock and a hard place - as you mentioned, the Chinese Covid vaccines are not effective (apparently they are completely ineffective against O,micron), so that lockdowns are the only weapon XI has at the moment. One geopolitical analyst estimates that if fhe lockdowns were eased, the death toll could reach several million per month, for a quarter to a half year. If most of them were elderly, that would be an extra problem for Xi. The irony is that China's place as a major world power is probably temporary. The "one-child" policy in effect for 40 years has guaranteed that China's population will decrease up to 50% over the next 30 years. - there aren't enough Chinese women to repopulate the country as the older generations die off.....probably there are 50-65 million Chinese men for whom there are no Chinese women. Even though the government has increased the allowed children to three per family, modern middle class Chinese do not WANT children - the birth rate in Shanghai is 0.7 children per family, one third of the replacement rate. When the population declines, so will the size of the (very necessary) security forces, so China will likely break up into regional powers, as has been common in other historical periods..... Taiwan many win after all.
TC--You probably saw this, but at least some of those sheets of paper weren't blank. A posting about students from Tsinghua University [think Harvard or MIT] shows them holding up writing paper with the Friedmann equation hand-written on them. Very complicated math but the point is "free-man", get it? I think, to Fred WI's point, that this cleverness will not long evade censoring, recording and possible academic consequences. The only thing that might save them, or at least ameliorate the punishments, is that Tsinghua grads are touted as the top scholars in China--and hence, in the world. The CCP might not want to publicly lose face by over-reacting. (This time, at least.)
As Mario Savio said 58 years ago:
"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"
The silent film classic "Metropolis"
Desperation action
This would be a good time to casually ramp up our ability to assist and defend Taiwan. Assuming he could put it together, an invasion either by the PLA or their PDRK stooges would be a serious distraction.
Excellent timing for us to ramp-up Taiwan; how best to do that?
Speed up the production and shipment of any arms that have been promised to Taiwan and South Korea. Bring a couple of carrier groups to higher levels of readiness and possibly change some satellite tasking. It may not be financially or politically feasible for Xi but no one benefits if we aren't prepared and the defense production machinery can always use the money even if we don't need to use their products immediately.
Hmmm… isn’t that how Ronnie Raygun saved the economy?
After a fashion, yes. Distraction through foreign affairs is a common strategy when political players feel themselves challenged.
I guess I was referring more to the $$$$$ pumped into the defense industry, which put us into a false wartime economy. Some may argue deterrence but the Soviets were already failing. Then again we may already have the same with supporting Ukraine. Follow the money? I have some tanks in the desert you may be interested in purchasing.
It worked for both. If you're talking about the stuff we left in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, I'll sell it back to you at a 10% discount and we'll both make money. Defense industry accounting is a wonderful world of magic.
Dave, thanks for the practical details here. If any plan is to succeed in action it must first be imagined in specifics. Hopelessly impractical and intuitive thinker, I walk away too often these days to wondering if every single event--no matter how urgently important (and lord knows this one is)--boils down to gamesmanship, an afternoon of chess.
Thanks, Dave.
Well, TC, was unable to adopt the 2 boy cats - both having really bigtime issues with being in a shelter & naturally, reacting badly. However, I brought home a four year old female black cat whose person went into a nursing home - so she was surrendered. Shes very unhappy with me at this point, of course. But I have hope that she will come out from wherever shes hiding some time soon. Maybe?
Thanks for the push - I think it helped! I'll keep you updated.
You shouldn't have just let her loose in the house. Best way to introduce a cat to a new home is to put them in a room where there's not a lot of traffic, and not many places to hide that you can't get to. Let them get used to the noises and smells, and to you coming in and talking to them. They're initially reacting out of fear. Letting them just go can awaken the feral inside. We have to remember our feline friends are the least-domesticated animal we live with. If you can catch her, get her into this kind of situation I described and start over.
Good luck!
She IS in a room where her litter box & food are - if she wanted she could come out - there is a cat door. This morning she was back in the carrier (dark & comfy) now back near the box,. Shes quite happy being petted & skritched even made a little tiny meow. Shes coming along. It hasnt even been 24 hours since I brought her home. So I go in & sit near her & either talk to her or read (to me) every little while.
I think Xi will put a stranglehold on this. He's a very tough guy and will
not allow any dissent to get out of
hand. I agree with Fred WI about the facial recognition tracking they're capable of. An example is
what has happened with the Ughers(sp). Thousands gone; dead
and locked up forever, being "re-educated".
Send in tRump [the clowns]...
Don’t bother; they here...