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To anyone who still believes this narrative: Get on a flight and go to Xinjiang and see the "genocide" for yourself. It's not restricted like Tibet, you can just go. You may even qualify for visa free entry for 30 days or a week or whatever. Then you can make up your own mind if what you see there is a genocide.

5-10 minutes is definitely reasonable. It's just enough time have a snack break, or grab a coffee, or go to the toilet, or have a cigarette if you're a smoker. Of course it will mean many existing gas stations are probably too small. Now people fill up and leave pretty quickly but if the turnover is slower you need more spaces so you don't have long queues. On the other hand, you wouldn't necessarily need to charge at the "gas station" if you had chargers at every parking spot. That way you distribute charging all across the city and you don't need huge "gas stations" with lots of spaces.

To me that would be an added bonus of this system. It would double as a sort of maintenance check-up for your battery. If your battery is old and no longer up to standard then it just gets set aside/recycled. It means you don't "own" your battery any longer, instead batteries are shared, collective property of all EV drivers.

Sure. In the metaphorical sense. Why not? I'm an atheist, to me it's just a fancier synonym for evil.

Or they've been bullshitting you all along and you never should have believed them.

Don't believe everything you read in the MSM. The fact that they are "admitting" this should make you suspicious. It is possible that they are trying to divert blame away from the Zionist entity in the same way that they diverted blame away from the US for the Nordstream bombing by "admitting" that Ukraine did it (obviously we know that's bullshit).

Not a fan of the use of "globalist", it's a meaningless and unserious term, but the rest is accurate.

I think he's right. At least I don't see anything, at a glance, in this analysis that i disagree with.

I'm still thinking about the idea of battery swapping stations replacing individual charging. That would invalidate charging time concerns altogether, no? It just becomes a question of how fast you can mechanically perform the operation.

Then your old battery can sit on a big buffer stack of batteries and charge as slowly as it needs to in order to maximize life span, while you drive away with your fresh battery almost immediately. Later, when your old battery is charged up, it is swapped into someone else's car, and so on.

It would just require a degree of standardization across EV manufacturers because you don't want to have to account for a lot of different models of battery and battery installation methods.

That's what i personally want. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about the topic can explain to me if or why this or isn't viable.

I don't quite know why you were downvoted either. Personally i would much rather downvote someone being arrogantly wrong than someone asking earnest questions.

The implication of the state attending so thoroughly to people's social needs is such a beautiful thing. I think especially coming from the US where so much is spread out and people can be so estranged to each other.

Great point! It is so important for people to have public spaces where they can gather and socialize, as well as public events, celebrations, etc. This helps to prevent the atomization and individualization of society. It forges social bonds and promotes communal spirit.

This goes for cultural venues too. And it is especially important that these spaces be free or very accessible for everyone (for instance most parks in China are free, museums are free, etc.) so that they don't become segregated along class lines.

Where i live it's almost impossible to find something to do recreationally that doesn't have some kind of fee or cost associated with it, because everything is privatized. The poorer you are the more likely you are to just stay home and not go out.

You can see this humility and hunger for knowledge from the author here:

In this regard, we stated that we have much to learn and adopt for building socialism in Russia.

Agreed! It solidifies my belief that KPRF are on the right path.

Nothing major stands out.

I mean there are very minor things like:

And throughout the entire journey, we experienced no jolts or jolts.

Where you can tell that two different Russian words with similar but not identical meaning were just translated using the same word in English.

The original Russian says

И за все время пути нас нигде не дернуло и не тряхнуло.

Which literally would be translated as:

"And during the entire journey we were not jerked or shaken anywhere."

It's just a stylistic thing though so i wouldn't bother about it, it really doesn't affect the meaning at all. It's just a telltale sign of machine rather than human translation.

And anyway i don't speak fluent Russian, so i'm not the best to ask. I just have some basic reading comprehension.

"Believe X people but only those who hate their country and want to see it bombed."

Small correction to the translation:

In this passage:

This historical analogy was voiced at the forum by our delegation and was well received by the participants...

There is twice a mention of the "Second World War". This is a mistranslation. If you look at the Russian original it says "СВО" (SVO) which stands for "Специальная Военная Операция" (Special Military Operation or SMO) and refers to the war in Ukraine.

Incredible piece, full of some very astute and evocative writing. Thank you so much for sharing!

Some parts that particularly stood out to me:

Just ten years ago, the movement of cars, bicycles, and mopeds in Chinese cities often resembled Brownian motion, with limited observance of the rules.

Ok this was one just very funny. I think it still describes a lot of today's South-East Asia quite accurately.

"The Sinicization of Marxism for Russia is Leninism. Lenin is one of the most, if not the most, brilliant Marxist and political figure in world history. In its initial stages, the CPC, inspired by the successes and victories of the USSR, copied the Soviet model as much as possible, but quickly realized the futility of this approach. This isn't because Leninism, the Leninist model of socialism, is flawed. No, it's simply that Lenin developed them for Russia, for its culture, traditions, including its traditional economic structure. They are undoubtedly optimal and relevant for Russia."

This is an excellent insight. Leninism is "Socialism With Russian Characteristics". That is why it worked.

And even within Russia itself, depending on the time period, there have been completely different concepts of socialism.

We were taken to the birthplace of the CPC and Chinese War Communism (I'll return to this later). The delegation was literally immersed in that era. I had the distinct feeling that, in those wartime and postwar conditions, a different approach to economics and politics would have led to the collapse of the state. But while recognizing this, the Chinese, with Eastern wisdom, do not absolutize that model of socialism. They do not attempt to transplant that Marxism to new realities, [...]

Marxism has to adapt to the circumstances and needs of the time.

A model that may be necessary and correct in time of civil war or when there is a need for rapid industrialization in the face of imminent fascist invasion, might not be suited for a later time period.

During academic discussions, I saw similarities between the tenets of the doctrine of socialism with Chinese characteristics and Lenin's theory on the possibility of building socialism in a single country. Moreover, this idea is further developed to the point that socialism MUST be built in each country in its own way.

Yes! Copy-pasting one country's model of socialist development onto another's will not and cannot work. It must always be adapted to the specific local conditions and each country's unique historical and cultural characteristics.

At the same time, the shared ideology of Marxism brings countries and peoples closer together. It allows them to unite around the global goal of a just society. This dialectically develops into socialist globalization. Xi Jinping voiced this idea of new global governance as a counterweight to the global governance of imperialism.

And more than just uniting through shared global development goals, countries are also now uniting out of necessity in defense against the ravages of imperialism and neo-colonialism.

In general, ten years later, the Chinese remind me very much of Soviet citizens in the late 1970s. They are full of optimism and confidence. In some ways, they may seem naive, but in reality, they simply have a much better, clearer, more nuanced understanding of what is good and what is evil.

I believe here there is a bit of romanticization of the USSR. Compared to Soviet citizens in the 70s, i would say Chinese citizens today are far less naive and more worldly.

This is good because it serves to innoculate them against the western capitalist propaganda that so many Soviet citizens unfortunately fell for in the 70s and 80s.

Now Chinese people can not only see on TV and on the Internet the ugly reality underneath the glamorous facade the West puts on, but many of them can travel and witness the rot and decay of western society, particularly in the US.

This is thanks in large part due to the openness highlighted in the next passage:

And here comes the time to highlight the key difference. Modern China is by no means a besieged fortress, even if confident in its defensive bastions. The PRC has recognized its strength and its rightness. This strength is not so much military or even economic, but the appeal of its ideas, its way of life, its state, and its society to the peoples of the world.

China has recognized its strength. It has opened the gates and moved out into the world, eager to offer everyone a model for the most progressive development. Beijing is expressing its full readiness to assume its necessary share of responsibility for the universal well-being of humanity.

Of course opening up is not by itself enough to counter the West's propaganda. You also have to deliver material results, and China has:

One of the reasons for the collapse of the USSR and the socialist countries in Eastern Europe, as well as the infamous events in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, was the appeal of the Western lifestyle to young people. [...]

But for the first time in history, it is now, and specifically, China that has become the world's leading economy. By 2030, the average Chinese citizen's standard of living will be no lower than the European average. And China's pace of development continues to impress.

Moreover we are or will very soon see an inversion of the dynamic that existed with the Soviet Union:

The situation is changing radically. Now Europeans and Americans will envy the standard of living in socialist China. It will be time for them to take to their squares, demanding socialist reforms in their countries.

However this also makes the situation very dangerous in that it makes it almost certain that the imperialists will be forced to resort to open war this time as a result of being defeated economically:

This makes the Chinese path even more attractive. And, incidentally, not everyone likes this. Global imperialism sees this as a threat, and a clash is seen as inevitable. This was repeatedly stated at various forum events. The PRC declares its readiness for such a clash.

In general, assessing the current state of society in China, I was reminded of the USSR on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. Everyone understands the inevitability of conflict, they are preparing, trying to delay the outbreak.

Meanwhile, neighboring non-socialist Russia has been fighting for its interests against Ukraine and the entire NATO bloc for years.

I am also very glad to see that both China (both the CPC and Chinese society in general) and the KPRF are clear-eyed about this situation and about the role they each have to play in this global struggle:

Just as the CPC served as an important link between the USSR and China in the 1930s and 1940s, so too is the CPRF currently doing everything it can to unite the efforts of socialist China and, as yet, non-socialist Russia.

This historical analogy was voiced at the forum by our delegation and was well received by the participants. This analogy, apparently, has been accepted by China. The underlying theme of most of the speeches was that imperialism is rapidly degenerating into fascism, and Russia is the first country to directly encounter this new fascism during the SMO. Support for Russia's actions was unequivocal in the speeches.

Incidentally, this position was equally clear and unambiguous on Chinese television channels. In my view, all of this reinforced my confidence that the CPRF has adopted the correct position regarding the SMO.

It's good to see that the KPRF are not falling into the trap of dogmatism and understand that China still fundamentally follows the socialist path, even if the specific implementation today looks different than it did in the past:

The modern ideology of the PRC does not contrast the periods of China's development, but rather unites all paths and breakthroughs into a single great path. This path is also proposed for the entire modern world through the "One Belt, One Road" initiative toward a "Community of Shared Future for Humanity."

And this was a great quote to end on:

"Marxism is a river. Its waters vary at different times and in different places. But no matter how historical terrain changes its course, it always flows in the same direction and is capable of overcoming any obstacle."

What goes around comes around. The US does it to Russia all the time, why would Russia not respond in kind? Russia has been warning for years that there would be a response to Western participation in the aggression against Russia, even if the response did not come right away and would be assymetrical.