The Kuomintang has the same historical experience as the CPC. So then the question becomes, why did they pick fullthroat liberal democracy instead of preserving some meritocratic elements? The key difference is once again capitalism.

I think a fall in China’s population by ~200 million by 2100 is very reasonable. Some amount of population decrease is already locked in because of the previous years of 1.2 children per woman.

Here’s an article that forecasts this based on a slow increase from China’s current birth rate of 1.2 per woman to a normal 2.1 per woman, which will result in a population by 2100 of 1.2 billion (200 million lower than China’s current population of 1.4 billion): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinas-population-could-shrink-to-half-by-2100/

It is best to ignore the catastrophic projections of China’s population falling to 700 million by 2100, which are based on the 1.2 per woman birth rate not changing at all, which is completely unrealistic because China will and already is implementing pro-natalist policies.

The competition aspect is sort of inevitable with a large population. People always want to be making more money than their neighbor, and if you have a shit ton of neighbors, then you have a lot of people to beat. I don’t really know what can be done about this.

That does not explain why Taiwan also has a useless government just like the USA, except that the Taiwanese politicians also beat each other up in Congress on TV.

In a bourgeois liberal government, your performance does not matter, only your fealty to capital while lying to the people.

Here’s a previous discussion on Lemmygrad on the topic: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/230769

Here’s a great article on the topic: https://goodsforthepeople.substack.com/p/the-great-chinese-famine-one-child

TLDR: Historically, China, like India, had constant famines due to having way too many people, such that any small natural disaster that wiped out a few rice fields would kill a couple hundred million. China implemented the One-Child Policy in order to prevent these India-style issues of having too many people fighting over too few resources, which could have destabilized development. In a way, young people are liabilities because they must be given jobs (ideally better jobs than those of their parents). If the country’s economy is not adapting fast enough to give them those jobs, then they become a source of instability.

From the perspective of the Mao era, there was no guarantee that China’s economy would rise as quickly as it did, so from their perspective, this was a very logical choice. The demographic transition model (that birth rates naturally fall as industrial development increases) that Westoids use to denigrate China’s One-Child Policy did not exist as a cohesive theory back then, so there were no examples to show that the problem could fix itself and did not require an enforced One-Child Policy.

When I talk to my relatives in China, they still think that the Chinese population is a little too high. They would actually prefer for it to fall by ~200 million so that competition is less intense and there is more to go around for everyone.

Also remember the Parenti quote about western media’s constant negativity. If China did not implement the One-Child Policy, western media would be constantly complaining about Asiatic hordes and India-like deprivation in China due to too many people fighting over too few resources. In the past, Western media straight-up did this, creating tons of Asiatic horde propaganda cartoons in the U.S.

Since China has implemented the One-Child Policy, they instead complain about the historical cruelty of the policy.

Vietnam is basically following China’s playbook but just 10 years behind. Like China, they allowed foreign capital to come in order to build their industry. Once they have good manufacturing, they will increase socialist aspects again.

I personally despise this framing because it explains nothing. The preponderance of engineers in China’s government versus lawyers in the U.S. government is a symptom of the difference between capitalism and socialism, and not the cause of their difference. Chinese politicians are elected based on their performance in building socialism, while U.S. politicians are elected based on how well they lie while taking donations from capitalists.

If this is not recognized, then Westoids will keep trying to “fix” their government in useless ways, because simply trying to elect more “engineers” is not going to fix the underlying system that makes all US politicians sell out to the capitalist class.

Good work! May Cuba one day become fully self-sufficient with oil.

Fair, I’ve heard similar annoyances about GPT 5.5. I think I hope DeepSeek reinforcement-trains V4 a bit harder and, in two to three months, comes out with an earth-shattering V4.1.

Unfortunately, DeepSeek V4 is not a full frontier model able to beat OpenAI’s or Anthropic’s latest yet, so there is a bit yet to improve.

The U.S. made the same petrodollar deal with them that they did with Saudi Arabia. The UAE has way too much money in U.S. stocks to have any choice other than to stick by the U.S. and Israel.

This is really good! A great resource to send to previously Zohran-susceptible liberals to advance their global analysis.

Why the fuck is this suddenly a federal crime? Do federal prosecutors only wake up to combat worker revolts?

My bad, sorry.

Removed by mod

Iran needs money (since the US has sanctioned them to kingdom come) to preserve the value of its currency and its balance of payments, and this is a good way to do so. What did you expect Iran to do? Fight the U.S. without getting any money in return?

Ah yes, the classic western leftist approach of disapproving of every AES and anti-imperialist state and instead trying to build something completely new out of doing mutual-aid and aimless anarchism hard enough.

It’s arguably a good idea for the world in general. By occupying the strait and being the official security provider, Iran prevents the U.S. from ever taking that role. One of the reasons the US tried to collapse Iran was so it could come in and occupy the Strait, then use that power to cut off China from Hormuz oil as an extension of their Strait of Malacca blockade strategy into the Middle East.

Just imagine if the U.S. was able to enforce sanctions and blockades at the Strait of Hormuz, restricting oil going from the strait to any U.S.-sanctioned country. That would be the exact inverse of what Iran is doing right now.

If Japan doesn’t send anything against Iran, they may be able to negotiate some deal to get oil. If Japan starts sending warships there, then Iran will immediately cut them off, and Japan will go from having an oil shortage to an oil drought.

Yes, either the Chinese are working too hard and the West should be like them, or the Chinese are too lazy and the West shouldn’t be like them. Schrodinger’s whatever the f.

The author saw that 996 wasn’t a viable avenue of attack, as it’s mostly a myth unless you’re in the startup sector (in which case it’s completely voluntary because you’re doing it to make bank). The author then decided that to meet his China negativity quota, he had to lament about normal work culture in the public sector (as it’s super bad because it’s “China-style” or something).

What the fuck does this mean? If China was directly fighting the US, then the US would be less violent? Is that what they’re arguing? The sheer audacity.