Info control is a really really big deal--This (not military) is the real China threat

The collecting of online news that’s been censored in China. Short YouTube clip about the collectors, and an article about the same. I agree that this is very important, but also, I watch this as I watch the fictional show The Hunters on Amazon Prime and I wonder if this collection of info will do any good. How soon will this be both forgotten and discredited? I’m sure that some academic somewhere will use it for a dissertation, but who is going to access this stuff other than the odd researcher? I don't mean to discourage any of these efforts, I'm just not hopeful for a more-caring future, I guess.

This is so, so, I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s multiple levels here: “Just to recap I’m half Asa Akira, half Alex Jones hybrid who works for the CIA.” Melissa Chan went on the Joe Rogan Show and talked about China. Can we all agree that regardless of what you think of Joe Rogan, he's proved that people want to listen to LONG in-depth discussions about real ideas?

In addition to China influencing US media and companies, they are looking to control the infrastructure that allows int’l media as well. Of course they are. It’s the smart move. And the West is still arguing with itself about if it’s racist or not to call out China’s ideology—Hey, ideas are not people, they don’t have a race. China (CPP/Govt) is an ideological threat

If you’re in China now, or looking to manufacture there, you need to read this: Would the Last Company Manufacturing in China Please Turn Off the Lights, Part 4. Dan and Steve at China Law Blog are AWESOME and have been for more than a decade now—I’ve known them since the early 00s. The blog post points out that Covid-19 is just one of many things that have started to push foreign manufacturing out of China for other places. For example, after surviving SARS, Swine Flu, baby-milk scandal, and the 2008 financial crash, I left China after more than a decade because of family/children reasons—it can be hard living in China, even if your family is Chinese. Among other reasons, supply chain diversity, politics, HR violations, now Covid-9 is adding to the increasingly frustrating uncertainty of doing business in China. It still seems like it’s a question of the devil you know vs the devil you don’t, but now companies are having their hand forced and so are jumping into other countries may be sooner than they otherwise would have.

Good news! Chinese Government says there will be no economic impact from Covid-19. Conveniently they do “own” the banking system, which, is likely to take HUGE hits from this event and the last 8 years of poor performance.

Like all economic booms, excess and mal-investment are present, with vacant real-estate properties and low or no return-on-investment projects. The sheer amount of loans outstanding require perfect economic conditions with no exogenous shocks. Currently, with mass quarantines and fear, it should be expected that a large percentage of these loans enter default. Given the extreme level of banking assets relative to Chinese GDP, this is a recipe for a financial crisis.

Bad News, no one believes them. So what does this mean for the global economy? Money and product supplies would be severely restricted and hurt consumers and borrowers and companies alike. I, like the author’s of they article, think that China will be more like Japan and start now (it’s already started) to decline in economic power/influence/size. Demographics, debt, productivity, reduced FDI and access to foreign tech, lack of corporate leadership—all problems the Chinese are dealing with now that will likely be accelerated by the impacts of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Here is some info on the WHO news conference—seems like China data can be read in may differing opinions

And it just gets worse and worse. I really don’t want to pile on China (at least I don’t want to pile on Chinese people), but it really seems that they just shoot themselves in the foot with domestic laws (security law in particular) that affects Chinese MNCs in foreign countries. No way that the concerns about Huawei are going to be limited to just them and ZTE as CCP ideology via UFWD cells all over the world are more and more exposed (related story: new regs against Chinese “journalists” in the US). From the article: “…many agencies at the federal level have banned Lexmark and Lenovo. “But they have access to sensitive information at the state level — whether elections, courts, police, education, family and children services and so on,””

It’s taken a decade for Chinese to start to trust their own domestic milk manufacturers, so why should foreigners trust them or any other scandal-plagued state-backed company? Unless there is no other choice, the educated monied classes in China don’t buy Chinese products that affect their most precious investment, their child. ““Foreign brands are seen as way more trustworthy than domestic ones and this reputation is likely to last for a very long time, particularly for middle-class cities,” said Dan Wang, China analyst for the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU).” 

If you don’t believe that socialism is a threat or even that China is/could be one, you’ll just pooh pooh (see what I did there?) this as so much hyperbole. But that is not what the Chinese/CCP think about the West, and it's not how they act either—“In sum: Whoever rules the words rules the world. In the eyes of the CCP, the West’s superior discourse power is an existential threat more imminent than the remote possibility of a foreign military invasion.” The CCP is not taking the “threat” of liberal democracy and free speech casually and conversely neither should we be lackadaisical in our assessment of the idealogical threat posed by China. The only silver lining is the complete incompetence with which Chinese diplomats have attempted to speak out in the competitive arena of ideas.

Need more evidence? The ability to conduct espionage has forever been changed—and the US is lagging behind. 

And now for something completely different. 

Thailand has a crisis of governance (again) marked by mass demonstrations just at the wrong time (not that there is a good time for a crisis, but with China’s issues forcing MNCs to move, more instability isn’t exactly a great advertisement for the Kingdom). Thailand is a corrupt military junta that seems intent on destroying even the pretext of equality—no surprise as equality isn’t really a Thai value (e.g. the Monarchy and Buddhism). But a less corrupt govt is as least an historical (last 60 years) way that most Thais have been able to better their lives. Sad. Who doesn’t love Thailand?!