Thanks to Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, we know now that, when their invasion was going badly in early 2022, the Russians were ready to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine.

Straight up historical revisionism. Shameless yet not surprising. After all they memory-holed all those reports on Nazis in Ukraine after 2021 and the SMO happened and called anyone who claimed as much a Russian disinfo agent.

Well there’s India and they hate China and would love to help hurt it and have a large population of people living in deep poverty. Of course they probably wouldn’t allow the west to exploit them forever, they’d seek to move up the value chain if the west doesn’t manage to coup them with compradors but it would at the least buy the west a quarter century of thinking time. There are problems there of course, it’s run by extreme religious reactionaries, it doesn’t have the proper infrastructure in many places, etc. But I don’t ever want to be in a position of underestimating our enemies I suppose. As on the one hand I think it would probably take 10 years for India to get into position to take over a lot of this stuff, on the other it’s impossible to tell what they might pull off and my assumptions could be very wrong or outdated.

There’s also how they’re destroying Europe (and the US too), if you lower the quality of life of an area, hit it with neo-liberal shock therapy, gut social services, hit it with harsh inflation that decreases costs of labor and lowers quality of life and puts pressure on people to keep or get jobs just to stay above water, immiserate the population and make them desperate and if they’re quite happy being indoctrinated with liberalism and anti-communism then I see possibilities in the near-term, by 2030. They also have their prison slave population which is near free labor. I fear they are moving for enclosure. Higher prices to deal with the reshoring, more rent-seeking behavior instead of owning things to also deal with consumer inability to afford that. A future where you lose your job and it’s not just your apartment but your TV, your computer, your phone, your blender they repossess and that will be life for the lucky ones. Not so lucky ones, exploited under the table labor, servants for the luckier population, uber drivers, grocery pick-up, we see it already. But I hope I’m wrong and if I am indeed I don’t see anywhere for them to go though things will get very nasty in the west for workers for some time before we have a chance to make them better I fear.

Decoupling happening.

Only question is whether the west will actually manage to incentivize the creation or movement of means of production to replace this tariffed production from China. Certainly there are forces in India that would like to take on this role though the level of corruption and other endemic issues like lack of reliable utilities in many areas there and incomplete transport networks, etc makes it an uphill climb. With enough free money and subsidies it’s possible I suppose given a few years even in the west. In the end succeed or fail this will hurt Chinese exports a bit, hurt US workers who purchase these things and have to pay massively more whether because of tariffs or higher costs from reshored production. At the end of the day this is shooting the foot efforts to mitigate climate change because this will lessen the appeal of moving to green energy, EV’s, etc and it’s pretty predictable at the end of all these high prices Republicans (bad cop) will come in, declare the whole thing a failure and gut the subsidies leading to shrinkage of the whole industry and its usage in the west to being a kind of luxury thing.

So not only is Biden abetting genocide in Gaza, he’s pushing full steam ahead for full-scale eco-cide and the worst climate outcomes. China should really just gut-punch the US already, slap up a total stoppage on things and crash the US economy into the ground. US politicians are already badly hurting the proletariat with these moves and inflation so it would be a matter of getting very bad fast rather than slowly.

This doesn’t seem like straight up retaliation, I mean it’s not a gut-punch, it’s not threatening to severely limit the supply of drugs to the US, just leave the US unable to inspect for health and safety compliance with the pipeline fully open. The US themselves would have to force the issue and literally shoot themselves in the foot and declare they want and will accept shortages (without backing down upon seeing the problem) to cause an issue here so I don’t see this as really leverage against the US decoupling and sanctions regime.

If anything this seems like a gift to western capital that has stayed in China in the form of easing their regulatory compliance worries so they can run more cheaply and dangerously beyond the reach of western regulation.

Yes China could just straight up cut supply to the US but they could do that before this law was passed and that’s a nuclear option. Thing is the US doesn’t really care if lots of its workers die due to adulterated medication or supply crunches (as long as there’s still enough for the “important people”) so it’s unlikely to get them to panic and come to China on hands and knees begging and offering concessions on tech restrictions so they can make sure the drugs are safe for their people. In an absolutist sense yes it’s another thing they can bargain with the US over but it’s a very weak hand compared to the hand the US holds and not equal to the US for example letting China import advanced AI chips or lithography technology. The types of concessions they could likely get for it aren’t IMO likely to change the balance of things.

Now maybe this is an attempt to slow or stymie decoupling which is in fact happening. By preventing Chinese manufacturing knowledge and advancements from being observed and taken abroad to be used in spinning up a reshored factory in India or Vietnam or some soon to be impoverished region of the EU with newly cheap labor.

You see you use the language of liberals which tells me you’re a liberal. Dead give-away. That and the focus on the little puppet-show that is bourgeois democracy and the drama of that being pushed by one side or the other instead of thinking in class conscious proletarian, Marxist terms.

Op if you want to be a liberal fool and a pearl-clutching ‘muh precious American democracy’ type kindly find a non-communist instance to post your garbage liberalism to.

Shameful that hexbear allows liberals like you to not only have accounts but clog up their instance and ours with your nonsense liberal conspiracy posts.

Who gives a flying fuck if Amazon charges lib-brained losers $20 to view some pearls-clutcher lib “documentary” about a bunch of speed boat dealership chuds having a little tantrum? Oh no not the precious discourse for fake bourgeois staged democracy!!

Students are being beaten, arrested, and allegedly blacklisted by Zionist orgs for simply peacefully occupying parts of universities to try to stop a genocide and the president of the party I suppose you’d say is better is calling them anti-Semite’s and echoing Hitler in demanding order while arming and defending a genocide.

But sure let’s worry about Jan 6 (a big nothing burger). Rather than the stifling of our very limited real dissent. Let’s do as the liberals want and obsess over the stage play and the process and precious institutions and not the real issues.

There’s that hope again. The only question is how quickly. I won’t live to see communism but it would sure be nice to live to see the fall of the last capitalist empire and hope on the horizon.

It’s not about removing supply chain inputs. The US has no near term plans to cut off reliance on Chinese chemicals or other industrial inputs. However those are low value. The profit margins on them are low and it leaves China dependent on the US as customers to keep their own industry humming by producing products and services. The US wouldn’t have cared if China forever remained a low value producer of Walmart toys, cheap cookware and chemicals, those were never threats to the US and its bourgeoisie.

By contrast, these things are targeted at things up the value chain, at high tech industries with high profit margins, places where important innovation with military applications and applications for the newest $1000 must have consumer treat good like smartphones or VR headsets, etc.

Who makes the money in a smartphone? Is it the contracted company making the chips and circuit-boards, the displays, RAM, etc? The company who assembles it? Or is it the company who puts it in a shiny store in the US for $1000? Most of the money is made at that last step and even some of the money at earlier steps is diverted into having to pay fees to license patents held by western countries and their vassals which is another way the west keeps China down and a lever they’re increasing using to prevent them from producing goods at all.

They are not at this point attempting to completely sever trade, rather they are keeping out Chinese brands, this is a form of decoupling, it’s targeted decoupling. They are also moving to try and reduce reliance on Chinese inputs in the categories you mention by trying to source from India among other places but that will take more time (a decade or decade and a half might be optimistic predictions on their part), however that doesn’t matter in the near term as simply blocking these types of products has the desired effect (stated on multiple occasions) of keeping Chinese innovation down, of keeping them 10 years behind the US in terms of cutting edge technology.

I’m not claiming that China couldn’t retaliate and gut-punch the US into a recession but they won’t because it would hurt their own industry, hurt their image of impartiality, and hurt their plans for a peaceful rise and displacement of the US. So short of just not doing trade with the US suddenly, China doesn’t have reciprocal levers of equal pain to pull to hurt US high tech because the west is already established in the high ground and thanks to multiple betrayals on the national security and spying front plus the fact that the US has been restricting their ability to buy (to suppress them) China has already begun phasing them out. Also such threats never cowed the US in the first place, Microsoft and NVIDIA and others went to the government pleading at times for more reasonable policies and were rebuffed because the choice was not keep the Chinese market and suppress China it was either suppress the Chinese competition and keep existing markets or keep the Chinese market for a while then lose all markets. At the end of the day having a walled garden where they are guaranteed no competition from Chinese companies is better than an open market where they are losing badly to superior products at better prices from China.

I’d say it’s not superficial, it’s just step 1 of the plan. The most important part. They’ve slapped restrictions on chip exports for NVIDIA, they’ve prevented ASML from selling China cutting edge lithography tech, China is trying other approaches but honestly they’re not as good as the ASML approach and it will take years for them to get a real breakthrough into production which buys the west time and potentially distance in their minds. That’s part one, to maintain dominance and markets for the profits of their bourgeoisie.

If it works there is a chance that growth slows in China, they experience problems and problems can lead to cracks, discontent and the possibility of undermining or a color revolution. Even if that doesn’t happen it’s laid the groundwork for turning the screws on China, for guaranteeing profits and markets for western bourgeoisie which will be safe from competition. Then comes step 2 “friendshoring” where they try to move those other things you mention out of China gradually, to India, to perhaps a newly de-industrialized and cheaper to operate in Europe whose social safety nets have been gutted in the name of militarism against Russia, etc. This may or may not be allowed but if it is then step 3 is slapping as much of an embargo on China as possible, sanctioning goods, starting color revolutions and fomenting terrorism along the belt and road to disrupt it, trying to squeeze it and Russia into a corner and seize the rest of the world for themselves with various methods to try to get a Soviet Union decline and break-up repeat scenario. Obviously the Ukraine situation and Gaza genocide have thrown the seeds for big wrenches for this part of a plausible plan but they can still do stages 1-2 which is cold war 2.0 with two spheres, either you’re in the US sphere and get to buy from it or the China-Russia sphere and trade and direct purchasing by consumers between the two will be extremely limited. Of course this time you have a rising Africa and the US is not in the position of strength it was in the first cold war but it would buy them time.

So much for those people who thought the US was bluffing about decoupling. It was always going to happen gradually unless an actual conflict between the US and China in the SCS broke out.

And no, it was first Huawei, then Chinese cranes, then Tiktok, then DJI. Beginning to see a pattern are we? They’ve moved from high technology in the network sector they could actually plausibly make an argument for to industrial tech like the cranes and consumer entertainment like drones and tiktok.

Also likely a confession of US capabilities. If they’re claiming Chinese drones can be used to take down US communications or launch hacking attacks then I guarantee US devices that phone home at all already have this capability and the NSA can do it with the flip of a switch to cause China problems.

Soon it’ll be more consumer electronics brands, TP-Link is probably soon because they’re like Huawei in that they’re in the networking business, they’re in millions of homes and businesses and they’re a Chinese brand. After that they’ll go after Chinese TV brands, Chinese everything. They’ll still make your Xbox in China but it’ll be a US corporation affiliated with the NSA that is pocketing most of the product with an implicit threat that they’ll move off-shore to Vietnam or India if wages go too high for workers. Prevention of China moving up the value chain is in full effect and steaming on ahead.

We are entering scary times and things are only going to accelerate and get much, much worse. No one is pulling any brakes. There isn’t going to be any wake up and pause to think moment, slowly this run-away train is moving and the bourgeoisie not presently on board will be swept up by the momentum just the same within a few years regardless of their desires to the contrary.

No but their landleeches might. The guy who found this out works for Amazon hosting and lived in an apartment complex that installed them. He investigated and complained about this and was brushed off.

Imagine if a Chinese company did this. Liberals would be hooting and hollering about Xi Jinping personally breaking into your apartment to rearrange your anime collection and take pictures of the files on your computer. There’d be immediate calls to ban the company from all business dealings within the US. But because it’s a US private corporation that abuses the shit out of the proletariat there’ll be a some pressure to fix it and they’ll maybe eventually get around to doing it and get a slap on the wrist if anything for this and a slap on the wrist for the rent fixing collusion.

True. But a man did burn himself alive. Look I’m not saying these government types are great people now for doing this I just think it’s telling that it happens here and not there. Because I have to be honest at least some of these people resigning 100% believe it. This isn’t all a CIA op, these are dyed in the wool liberal believers who have a crack in their propaganda armor and are genuinely making what they perceive as a moral decision within the confines of their liberal ideology.

This is genocide we’re talking about and these people have been enabling it and all other forms of monstrosity. Saving Jews in WW2 occupied Europe could mean the possibility of death or imprisonment, so I don’t really care about the excuse about their job, they can get a job at Starbucks or I don’t know figure something out. Western press are scum in my mind and this only further illustrates it.

If government officials can do these token gestures and if a man can burn himself alive where then are the good ones? They don’t exist is the simplest answer and I’m tired of excuses. Fuck them. Fuck their career in propaganda servitude to the bourgeoisie and imperialist war machine. I don’t care. They cloak themselves in lofty platitudes, they claim impartiality and a desire for truth and justice.

I’m sure high ranking Nazi propagandists would have been in trouble for job prospects too if they’d spoken out yet we don’t allow them off the hook so it’s amazing to me how many people want to offer excuses for this awful class, the propagandist class.

We hold the NYT to account for their brushing off the persecution of Jews, the papers of the day downplaying the holocaust as a Soviet myth, yet we see the same kind of denial. The same, in fact greater guilt, they didn’t have tik-tok, they didn’t have access to real videos of the suffering in an instant from their bedroom. Their guilt is far greater and deeper than that of the WW2 era media.

You know what’s interesting about this? We’ve heard of numerous agents of government who feel this is a genocide in Gaza who have resigned, some publicly.

Yet where are the high ranking members of the press (supposedly people concerned with truth to power though we Marxists know better) with the same conscious who resign because their organizations are carrying water, reporting Zionist propaganda, hiding the genocide and being one-sided? Nowhere to be seen. Yet again I say the western press is criminal scum. More shamelessly so than even the state department.

Nah I think we’d rather blow another 100 billion on the defense industry and propping up Ukraine, Isnt’real and other failed and fake reactionary shit-states.

But not the first part? Unlike the US it isn’t founded on stolen land and settler colonialism that was taken with genocide. Unlike western Europe it got into the colonialism game late, was never much of an empire and after WW1 became the Soviet Union so it has no colonial interests like say France had/has with the African sahel which recently broke from them.

And unlike the US and western Europe it isn’t part of the western hegemony club that uses racial divisions, separatism, inflaming tensions, regional destablization to weaken and control various regions of the globe. For its own internal stability in fact given its huge size and range from Asia to Europe it has built in interests in racial harmony, not stoking white supremacy, a kind of everyone part of the whole ideology which while not socialist or perfect is miles better than the west and there is no sign it’s part of their national mythos like white supremacy is in the west. Indeed to survive in the face of the break with Europe and it’s turn east, Russia must develop good relations with the global south and they’re obviously not going to beat the US and NATO at the racism and neo-colonialism game given their head-start and other advantages so their other choice is engagement and presenting a better looking, less racist, more fair option than the west. The Russian bourgeoisie has no choice, they’re not magicians, they are as constrained by material and historical forces as you or I. That and the western bourgeoisie has been totally unwilling to compromise with them, they chose this, they forced them into this corner thinking they could destroy them and gain power over them to loot them.

Literally nothing. Because these are mostly Euro-loving, western loving, US-loving liberals sobbing about Ukraine and hating how evil their country is and hoping to make it more like western Europe. Aka a puppet of the US. The show of bourgeois electoralism goes on and Russia will hopefully continue to be an ally of the global south, a counterweight to US hegemony and imperialism and a friend to China.

China: Message understood, we will build our own fully independent tech stack including resources not under western control or subject to sanction in order to protect ourselves, our economy, and free trade we do with others.

Exports to China from US/west proceed to plummet

US: What the fuck? China isn’t playing by the rules, China isn’t trading with us, China won’t buy things from us, China is being hostile.

Hopefully in disgrace, her plans in tatters.

Not that it’ll change anything, hopefully an even more incompetent imperialism manager takes her place.

Sadly I will note she’s left government before to go to an imperialist MIC think tank when Trump came to power and she was let back in so I’m sure the revolving door of ghouls will be open to her in future once someone else takes the blame for her failures and she can rehabilitate herself.

May she eat herself to lifelessness and be found in a room-sized pile of half-eaten hamburgers and discarded wrappers that looks worse than a Trump after-the-game victory celebration. For truly her hunger for violence, conquest, human suffering and blood was among the highest in the empire and if the blood on her hands were a dipping sauce she’d have enough to supply McDonalds nuggets sauce for every consumer of it in the US for years.

I love how they can just completely ignore the WTO and their own capitalist free and fair trade rules when they suit them by crying national security. As long as it has electronics in it no one even looks at it funny.

Here we go again.

I hope China has given consideration to a fleet of such balloons for use in a conflict with the US, totally unarmed or equipped obviously but apparently westerners cannot help themselves but shoot them down, wasting valuable and expensive munitions on pointless game. They could print in Chinese and English on each one “Chinese spy balloon, secret CCP asset, return to China if found” and these western fools would waste missile after missile on them.

What’s interesting to me is how much trouble the US is giving the MSS by apparently finding groups in China everywhere of random businesses and hobbyists that they give sensors and cameras to via front groups which report back to US spy agencies and are capable of disrupting Chinese networks and conducting cyber attacks. It’s a real damn problem and I worry about if they can’t get a lid on it what it means to China in a confrontation with the US because those type of capabilities are the US trump card in a war they can’t otherwise hope to win. At the same time the US continues to baselessly assert, without an ounce of evidence of intent or capability that everything Chinese is a threat. Perhaps because they know the opposite is true, everything American sent to China is a potential threat and many things sent there actually are done so as a threat. From Cisco networking equipment with hardware NSA spy and command implants to all of these revelations all over China of this worrying stuff given for free by all these front groups which is the work of foreign intelligence.