Biden supporters aren’t really left wing though. The left is barely a thing in the US.
Hey don’t leave out Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush! IMO they have better politics than even AOC but they just don’t have as much name recognition.
If you have to defend Nazi’s because the SC will give them a more favorable decision then the legal system is already fucked beyond repair.
Well part of it is China was a severely underdeveloped country. They had to play catch up and so they traded access to their large labor market in exchange for technology transfers agreements.
That said, I think it would be incorrect to say their economy is currently based on copying. They publish more high impact research papers these days than any other country and are technological leaders particularly in green energy. This has been such a rapid change though that I think people’s perceptions of the Chinese economy lag the reality.
You’re not wrong. The CPC see Taiwanese independence as a threat because the US prevented them from taking it during the Chinese civil war. The US knows this and clearly intends to use Taiwan as a pressure point to gain diplomatic leverage against China. That makes it a high stakes game with the Taiwanese people caught in the middle and no resolution in sight.
Given that context, it’s not surprising most people in Taiwan want to maintain the status quo and prevent any escalation. However, as tensions rise between the US and China the political tensions in Taiwan rise with them.
I imagine that’s the likely reason the IDF was attacking and occupying hospitals in Gaza. If there is nobody to count the bodies then Israel can keep the reported death count low as they continue their genocide.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Hamas or another Palestinian group that attacked either. However, I don’t think it would be without reason.
The problem is if the pier is completed then it offers a route for an aid other than the Rafah crossing. That would give Israel an excuse to invade Rafah and take control of the border with Egypt. If they succeed, Israel would finally have full control over Gaza’s food supply which would allow them to use starvation as a weapon. If you want to genocide a people starving them is far more efficient than bombs and bullets. This is a future Palestinians desperately want to avoid.
In most cases yes. However there is a range to that success. Some developments have been in such high demand that they’re now expanding. Others are still struggling.
The US definitely had its fair share of housing developments that were basically real estate investment scams. Most of the endless suburban sprawl in California was developed that way. One of my favorite examples is California City. It’s still mostly empty and is located in the middle of the desert. Also if you ever watched the show Arrested Development, it was making fun of the people who ran these kinds of real estate scams.
What’s happening in China isn’t all that different. It’s just happening on a much larger scale given the population size and the kind of urban density China is targeting. That’s what I think is shocking to anyone not looking at numbers. Instead of empty blocks of houses you might get empty apartment buildings instead.
What you’re saying just isn’t true though. China isn’t overbuilding by any meaningful metric. Their urbanization rate is really low compared to developed nations like the US. They have a huge population so their total rate of construction while urbanizing is unique. However the actual process of urbanization isn’t unique at all.
If you look at historical data the US followed a very similar trend with rapid urbanization ramping up until around the 1960s. That rapid development included a mix of shoddy and quality construction. Additional urbanization was more difficult to achieve and growth slowed. That’s basically what you’re seeing in China now too.
I don’t think the article is actually all that critical. It might have been worth providing more context for why China is using that much concrete. However, even without that I think it’s fine.
The real problem I think is the headline. It frames China’s concrete use as an irrational mental illness which is just absurd. I’m betting that was the work of one of the BBC’s editors and not the actual author.
Honestly I think people just get defensive when their worldview is challenged. It sucks but it is what it is.
This is a wild take. The Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT did not have any more legitimacy than the CPC. He was a straight up fascist and after fleeing to Taiwan he politically repressed native Taiwanese people by having them massacred. You can oppose Xi and the CPC without having to pretend the KMT was at all legitimate.
He’s not saying it will have to be taken by force. Where did you read that? He’s implying that China is willing to use force but he’s not asserting that the use of force is necessary if that makes sense.
If you want to understand the situation you have to understand that Taiwanese only remained politically independent thanks to US intervention in the Chinese civil war. When the nationalists fled to Taiwan the US stationed a fleet between the island and the mainland. That prevented the communists from finishing the fight against Chiang Kai-shek’s fascist KMT. The US then supported the KMT as the legitimate government of China right up until Kissinger realized the US could ally with the CPC against the USSR.
Given their long victimhood at the hands of colonialist and imperialist nations, the CPC is worried about what allowing Taiwanese independence would mean for their national security. They see foreign support for Taiwanese independence as the continued meddling of outside powers in Chinese affairs. That said I imagine they would be more amicable with maintaining Taiwanese political independence under the umbrella of an economic union if the US agreed to stop funding pro independence groups in Taiwan.
Good luck with that. The US is the world’s largest oil producer and therefore it has a vested interest in preventing the development of sustainable energy alternatives.
Unfortunately the US is actually the world’s largest oil producer these days. It has a vested interest in supporting sustainable energy.
Thank you! I totally forgot that easily verifiable facts are actually just propaganda when Adm_Drummer says so. I’ll be more careful next time.
They don’t have a communist system. As I said, they don’t claim to have one either. It’s not Schrödinger semantics. They do want to build a post scarcity society where every person is given the resources they need to thrive, aka communismr. During the Mao era they thought they could achieve that through revolutionary fervor. After the failure of many of Mao’s campaigns they turned towards a model that prioritized economic growth. That meant they were willing to leverage a market economy for however long it was useful.
You can just go and read their self assessment on past actions and their development plans. They aren’t shy about it and there’s no real indication they’re lying about their intentions. They’re pretty explicit about why they think maintaining the political supremacy of the CPC is important.
They also don’t put out any statements to indicate they believe in Han supremacy. That’s honestly silly to me especially when you consider the vast ethnic and cultural diversity that’s contained within the Han ethnic group. The CPC is however very concerned about maintaining national integrity which means they do suppress independence movements within the country. That goes for both ideological movements such as the protests in Hong Kong and Taiwanese independence or ethnic movements as in Tibet and Xinjiang.
They don’t have a communist system. As I said, they don’t claim to have one either. It’s not Schrödinger semantics. They do want to build a post scarcity society where every person is given the resources they need to thrive, aka communism. During the Mao era they thought they could achieve that through revolutionary fervor. After the failure of many of Mao’s campaigns they turned towards a model that prioritized economic growth. That meant they were willing to leverage a market economy for however long it was useful.
You can just go and read their self assessment on past actions and their development plans. They aren’t shy about it and there’s no real indication they’re lying about their intentions. They’re pretty explicit about why they think maintaining the political supremacy of the CPC is important.
They also don’t put out any statements to indicate they believe in Han supremacy. That’s honestly silly to me especially when you consider the vast ethnic and cultural diversity that’s contained within the Han ethnic group. The CPC is however very concerned about maintaining national integrity which means they do suppress independence movements within the country. That goes for both ideological movements such as the protests in Hong Kong and Taiwanese independence or ethnic movements as in Tibet and Xinjiang.