If I can find it. The basic premise is they know exactly where all the US **** is, and can just overwhelm anti missile defense systems with a giant initial barrage.

Doesn't seem like a super hot take this might be more or less true.

Considering there is a tweet for everything that's being asked, I don't think there is going to be legitimate account that shares accurate information on military capabilities of the us or china considering that its consistently evolving and basically no one in the public is going to be made aware of it.

At that point all of China's invasion force would be gathered in one area. So while potentially true, it overlooks the fact that USA would respond in the same manner against a very concentrated force.

That would also be a declaration of war, which would be the #1 thing China would want to avoid when they send their military to an area not recognized by the UN in order to handle "internal affairs".

True enough. But it seems reasonable China could just overwhelm US positions with a giant initial barrage. Nowhere to run or hid on aircraft carriers and small, exposed islands.

I have heard it argued Iran could more or less do this with all our bases in Iraq/Syria. Although Iran's entire economy runs through one port city that would be very easy to destroy, so Iran has strong economic incentives not to have things escalate to that point with the US, Israel or the Sunni monarchies.

I think that the idea that China could completly wipe out all american military bases in Asia in a single stroke is a super hot take tbh.

There are 10 marine corps bases, 4 navy bases and 4 air force bases in Japan alone.

last year was at a closed door lecture given given by a retired admiral who was in charge of the pacific so his main focus was on potential conflicts with china

during the q&a session someone asked about china's anti-carrier missiles

he felt confident that carrier groups had sufficient maneuverability (they are in constant movement of over 35 mph - this is by design specifically to make targeting with missiles difficult) and counter measures would heavily negate the threat of those missiles - however he did concede that nobody would actually know how effective they are until they are finally put to use vs an actual carrier group

there's also a non-zero chance he gave a nothingburger answer because the truth is not publicly disclosed

China could empty its entire clip of (non-nuclear) missile arsenal and still probably fail to destroy American assets in the region. Doubtful they even get the 7th fleet.

We got thousands of Patriot missiles, hundreds of destroyers and cruisers each carrying tens of interceptors, and many of whom carry additional anti air (CIWS for example).

The US has been building anti missile defense since WWII and, in no small part thanks to the Israelis getting to test against tens of thousands of rockets, has gotten quite good at it.

Also pretty much every Chinese military installation on the coasts should start evacuations before the missiles land.

Ok. I'll take the L on this one. You guys are probably right. I dont have any conviction the information I read was correct. Just seemed interesting if it was.

https://warontherocks.com/2024/06/a-...-launch-a-war/

Just a random chart from Twitter with no sourcing so def take with a grain of salt but ...



Due to most of the semiconductors being built there there are massive global implications. Makes it super obvious why China is so thirsty for Taiwan beyond their ego

Even if the data is completely made up, what this is pointing towards is pretty clearly correct imo.


The article makes an interesting argument that because it is so important to world economy that China can't really try to blockade Taiwan unless they are going for a full military invasion.

It is interesting how despite being the self-appointed world's policeman, the US is actually more insulated than most countries to major disturbances. For example, if the Houthis/Iran completely blocked Indian Ocean shipping and started destroying underwater cables, the chart would be similar, where Asia and Europe would be much more affected than the US.

USA is extremely risk averse and prepares for worst case scenarios. A major part of that is having a large military with few vulnerabilities which has been insulted repeatedly by Europe. Now that Europe is dealing with the fact that USA might stop subsidizing their defense they are waking up to the fact that large scale wars didn't necessarily end after WW2 so I think this will change drastically in the near future.

I admit I dont know the geopolitical intracacies of the Iranian nuclear situation well; but it is interesting that Europe (and obviously Israel) seems more committed to blocking Iran from getting a nuclear weapon than the US is. Although it isn't clear Europeans have the ability or will to use force to make this a reality, so it might just be all hot air.

I don't know if it's fair to say that they are more committed to blocking Iran that the USA. USA is likely going about it differently.

USA seems to think that the situation has reached a stage that is sustainable. Iran can create a nuclear weapon in a few months if they decide to, but the punishment for doing so is too great to attempt it. To make it so that Iran can not make a nuclear weapon within a few months would mean military action. USA is not willing to do that. USA is likely constantly explaining what would happen if Iran does go this through with this behind private doors and they are not willing to go further than that.

On top of that Russia and China are likely both pressuring Iran not to make a weapon, and Russia and China are in turn and receiving pressure from USA to put further pressure on Iran.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c844q27v732o

Hopefully a one time event, but it's also a very predictable outcome of China becoming more ultra nationalist.

I still believe that China is in very troubled economic times right now and will continue to be so for the next 4-20 years.
Three months ago 2024-04 I was having a discussion with an investing partner of mine. He was in China last year and was telling me how great it was. His argument was that I had to go there and see it with my own eyes. (All the new development and infrastructure) His go to example was how great the Hong Kong to Macau bridge was. I asked him how busy it was. He said it was virtually empty as if that was a great compliment (like it was spacious and easy to drive) !
I did not explain malinvestment to him because I was not trying to convince him that things were not good. I just wanted to collect another data point for my records.

As a side bit of info for my lined video, I worked on a major civil engineering infrastructure project (tunnel) 33 years ago. Pre construction, there were 50,000 cars travelling this stretch of road and had constant traffic jams, so many people avoided it if they could. As soon as the tunnel opened it had approximately 100,000 cars traveling it per day. It still has over 100k cars per day and could likely use an upgrade, but it is connected to a bridge (not part of my project) with a few on and off ramps between them that takes 121k cars/day. The bridge is always in heavy use and that needs an upgrade before the tunnel capacity is increased.

If you watch the video about the HK-Macau Bridge, the important part is:
timestamp 0:35 seconds to 1:00 for what I mean. about malinvestment.
and 9:15 to :10:00 to see how to create GDP in the current fiscal year, not prompted by demand, but by top down goals set by the government.
Please note that the video news outlet that posted the video is not a pro China news outlet and has a negative slant when reporting about China IMHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4028j6HaI2c

Well I just had coffee two days ago with the same person and he is telling me now, how much the economy is in trouble. (His extended family lives in Hong Kong and has real estate and business there. He was there visiting his mother) He did no go into detail about what he meant by the economy is in trouble. His simple version, explained to me, is that everything in the economy is down.

fyi - construction on that bridge began in 2009, when macau was in peak macau frenzy


while under construction, xi came to power and one of the first big things he did was crack down on macau


they used macau for sting operations as a way to uncover corrupt officials - after quite a few prominent people went down based on their macau activities proving they had wealth reaching far beyond their salaries, macau became a no go vacation destination

nothing good could come from it, you were just going to draw attention you didn't want

absolutely everyone in china who is wealthy is either firmly in the machine of governance or highly related to it - ie their best friend/uncle/dad/cousin is a governor/minister who opens pathways to wealth for them

so this is why macau died and transitioned from a location where chinese went to a place where indians, non chinese asians asians (& to a lesser extent Siberian Russians - they are all over Hainan) go instead


that bridge was built under a different era with very different chief executives in power and they could not have forseen what would have happened

it's a terrible example of poor planning for that reason, the outlier of all outliers

oh yeah, and for the regular people, it opened up only a year before covid so most of its existence has been under both physical and cultural lockdowns



HK has also been declining forever, it has no natural reason to be a business hub, it was unpopulated swamp before the british took it as a center for opium trade and later thrived as the gateway to china when it was closed off to the rest of the world

that is no longer the case, a company in chengdu no longer needs to source their raw materials nor ship out the finished product through hong kong but can just do it through any number of ports - hence why hk has declined so much

mindflayer: cool story, 100k cars sounds like a ton, and doubling from 50k must mean it really worked out.


Mark Galeotti gave an insightful speech about "corruption" in Russia that I believe is also relevant to China. In these systems, corruption is not just tolerated but necessary for career advancement. Engaging in corruption signals that you're willing to play by the system's rules. If you're not corrupt, you can't rise beyond a certain point. To continue climbing the ladder, you must agree to participate in this game, effectively giving the state (or in Russia’s case, Putin) the power to bring you down at any moment through corruption charges. Everyone is corrupt, but there is a central authority that decides who gets punished and who gets away with it.


I don't think Xi ever did any type of corruption busting, he just went after his opponents with corruption busting as an excuse.




I agree regarding HK, but China really sped things up. There was a mass exodus of businesses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNRuVXhcItI

you didn't copy the first letter of the tail code, fixed it for ya

Please know my first girlfriend was born in Beijing and I had a black and white picture of her as a young child holding up Mao's red book, wearing a Mao outfit.
It does not bring me any joy to point out the situation in China. I try to be impartial when making all my statements. It is something that I try to look at because
I need to see how this will affect the global movement of money and investment and my city/country in particular.

I watched several documentaries on the HK - Macau bridge. As an engineer, the bridge is a 11/10 engineering marvel, 10/10 construction speed.
What the documentaries did not cover is any environmental study nor an economic need to build the bridge. When I took the hydrofoil from HK to Macau, in 2017
(just a day before typhoon Hato) I only had to wait around 20 minutes for the next departure. The trip was smooth and inexpensive.
Today I watched a video of a person explaining how to take the bus from HK to Macau.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFI2BoRi3vM
The bridge trip is super smooth and not difficult. Time stamp 6:30 to about 7:00 and see how many vehicles you see. for the price of 18.77 Billion USD or 126 B Yuan.
if the Bridge took 3 years to build, it added 6 Billion to GDP for 3 years.
In my book this was an engineering success 100% but financial planning was 0/10. There was no need for the bridge even if the number of trips doubled instead of decreased.
If there was a high demand, it would be very easy to add another sailing time or two or even buy another hydrofoil for 50million (to add to the 14 existing hydrofoils) and run the sailings slightly more often.
After it was built, the bridge adds a very small GDP by employing boarder crossing agents, maintenance crews etc. but a huge negative GDP by being a huge drain on government coffers
because of the interest on 18 Billion dollars expenditures but adding virtually 0 income to the government's coffers by charging cars, trucks and busses for crossing. If this project was
amortized over 40 years it would be a negative 1B per year drain on the government for the next 40 years.

The reason I posted today was that I was got upset. I was having lunch yesterday with the friend that was in West China during Covid and he was telling me that it is very
bad now (economically) in China. One of his Chinese co-workers sent him a message. 4years ago they were making 8000yuan/mo. and now they are making only 3000yuan/month and there
is widespread negative outlook and impossible to get a good job. Unemployment for young people is super high. (over 20% when the government stopped reporting last year)
He said that his friend was contemplating suicide as the outlook is so bleak. I have probably watched over 100 videos in recent weeks saying the same thing, but did not think it was worth bringing up. Until he read the message that his friend had sent, those videos did not seem real.

It is like listening to the war in Ukraine. It is far away and has no real impact until you find out that one of your friends has a Ukrainian gf whose parents were just killed.

I am certain that the HK - Macau bridge is NOT an outlier. You will find the same problem in Residential Construction, High speed rail, Train stations, SOE Manufacturing, Steel, Concrete, Infrastructure, even Electric Vehicles. The quality is very high for the most part but the demand is not there. China has for 40 years been under a supply side economic model, with
the assumption that there is an endless demand to match supply. For the first 20years this was true. I cheered for China's +10% growth rates. China became the world's manufacturing plant. For years 20-30, not so much and for the last 10 years definitely not and to the point where the economy is in total disarray. The last sentence may sound like a criticism, but it is not. It is just an observation. I do think Xi was helping when he tried to rein in
unbridled investment by saying that homes were for living in and not investing, but it did not have enough braking power on the economy. He was correct in thinking that a growth that matched the demand would be slower but more controlled growth that did not rely so much on debt would be better. Oct 18, 2017 — "Houses are built to be inhabited, not for speculation," Xi said

If you studied first year University Economics you would recognize the simple equation
GDP = C + G + I + Net X

All Western economies just measure C, G, I, Net X and calculate GDP. In China, they set GDP and then tell SOE's (State owned Enterprises) and Firms to create G, I and Net X to match.
In the last 10 years, it has been infrastructure and subsidies to boost G, I and Net X. By extension, when the economy is booming C increases.

Please note that I am not saying this is good or bad, only that it is what I have observed in news and from friends that are in China and/or have recently returned from China.
In recent years, from 2022 on, China has been battered on every one of the 4 components. In addition, if you understand the multiplier effect small changes in any component will be amplified in C. ie. The employee who makes steel gets laid off. He spends less on restaurants, the restaurants spend less on waiters and farm food, the farmers spend less on fertilizer etc.. on and on.

C, Household spending/personal consumption of individuals.... Individuals have cut way back on spending and are saving everything they can. I see endless videos of citizens saying that they have cut way back on personal consumption. The knock on effect is that I also see endless videos of virtually empty malls and businesses shutting down due to lack of customers. This has lead to the Lay Flat Culture of the young generation.

G, Government Expenditures...the government has cut back on infrastructure projects. Bridges, Dams, High Speed rails, Train Stations, all put on hold because they have negative returns. no more high speed rail and bridges like the HK-Macau bridge are being approved. For certain this was done in recognition of malinvestment. I see many videos of the government blaming this on corruption. You know that things are really bad when the government starts laying off iron rice bowl employees like bus drivers and garbage collectors, increases fines, claws back prior year bonuses, and starts 30 years of company tax audits to increase government income.
Jan 2024 "Increasing its efforts to manage $13 trillion in municipal debt, the State Council in recent weeks issued a directive to local governments and state banks to delay or halt construction on projects with less than half the planned investment completed in 12 regions across the country, the sources said."

I , Company/Firms investing in manufacturing equipment, buildings, inventories... I is clearly decreasing. Foreign companies are fleeing China, SoE's and Private Companies like Foxconn are cutting back on production. Production is moving to lower cost SEA countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam. I have seen video after video of private companies posted by employees saying that after 30-40 years their company is closing down and 100's or 1000's of employees have been let go. Foxconn (makes Apple products) being one of the most famous shutting down plants and laying off 50,000 employees in Nanning

"A local man told the report the plant required massive resources to go with its 50,000 employees. This included 60 tons of rice per day, as well as 280 pigs, 1.2 million eggs, and 80,000 chickens."
That single plant supported Hospitals, nurseries, schools/teachers/farmers/cooks, restaurants, theaters, entertainment, fire departments, police, ..essentially a whole city build around those employees. usually 2.5x the plant workers worked in support of those employees directly, NOT including those that worked upstream or downstream in the product production cycle such as small component suppliers, (chips etc.) truckers, warehouse, freight forwarders it goes on and on.

Net X (Exports minus Imports) China is being blocked by more and more countries (USA, EU, Austrialia, Canada, Mexico, Turkey... etc) saying that China is dumping low cost materials (like Steel and cement and Aluminum) that used to go into infrastructure projects) These goods are now being subject to high tariffs. This number is hard to cheat on because other countries report on imports , which equates to China's exports.

CNN March 26, 2024 The oversupply of Chinese goods in key industries is stoking tensions between the world’s biggest manufacturer and its major trading partners, including the United States and the European Union. Its global trade surplus in goods has soared and is now approaching $1 trillion. But China needs to increase exports as a key measure to revive its economy, which is grappling with a protracted property slump, weak household spending and a shrinking population among other problems.

I used to know this stuff well as I used to import goods from China and you had to fill out forms (Form A) that stated the category of good so that the importing country could apply the appropriate tax on that value of goods

I can speak on any of these topics in detail if anyone is interested.

As a secondary note, I am beginning to see the knock on effects of the Chinese economy in my city's real estate market as my city/country was/is a top investing target of wealthy Chinese.

you may want to run those numbers for a moment - once you do, you'll realize how they are simply made up

you're chasing sensationalist clickbait

most stuff on the internet is not about facts, it's about getting views and the way to do that is with sensationalizing confirmation bias - those things you're finding on youtube are not done by credible people with journalistic intentions, they only care about view count



you really think 50k people eat 134.4k pounds of rice a day? they literally eat 2.7 pounds of rice individually each day?

for reference, most bags of rice are 2 pounds in america. so each worker there eats more than a full bag of grocery store rice?

and then in addition to that, they also eat over a full chicken as well...

and don't forget... they also each twenty four thousand eggs each day? I'll say that again, 24,000 eggs a day, per person



c'mon man - you're so eager to find a thesis you're eating up total nonsense that you, a very smart person who runs all sorts of calculations to break down and expose things about china which appear positive, genuinely copy pastes such outlandish and wild lies without giving them a second thought

and you're buddy is probably trying to scam you since you're a high networth individual



not a single person i'm in touch with back in china from chinese to expats have mentioned even once that times are tough and things are difficult - and yes, they would mention that if it were the case

i like you man, but i get a strong feeling you probably hang out with or married a falungong member or two and they are feeding you a bunch of nonsense you see it a lot and they really strive to get out there message, hence why they own so many media outlets

I agree that those numbers sound ridiculous. I would not rely on the words of the local man at all.
You have to read the article and see the video of the city for yourself.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/24...ehind-in-china
Please watch the video and criticize it as you please.
I would certainly call the area in Nanning around the Foxconn plant a ghost city now.

Oh btw I stayed at Hard Rock Macau and saw House of Dancing Water when I was there. The show was excellent.