xiaohongshu [none/use name]

@ xiaohongshu @hexbear.net

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775
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1 yr. ago

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 20h ago

What are those things that are incorrect? I’d love to be corrected and learn from you. Thank you.

21h ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 21h ago

I wasn’t accusing you of anything, don’t worry. I think that paragraph lacks context, see my response here to another commenter for a more detailed explanation.

21h ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 21h ago

I think it’s a paragraph that’s easily misinterpreted because I didn’t provide the context. And I apologize for that.

As I wrote in another response, maybe “support” wasn’t the right word to use, but there is an implicit consensus that Western leftists want China to keep the status quo because they either forget or completely ignore the fact that it took an entire underclass of migrant workers to sustain China’s vast economic output.

When you think of China’s incredible industrial prowess and the amazing infrastructure, who do you think are the driving force behind this? I can assure you that it’s not the affluent middle class kids you watch on Chinese social media.

There are 280-300 million migrant workers in China (nearly the entire population of the US) who are mostly invisible to not just to the Westerners who admire China’s incredible development, but even among the Chinese middle class themselves. These people have limited access to housing, healthcare, education, pension and public services despite working and living in the same cities as the urban citizens.

And yet this is the true underclass of workers in China that are making your iPhones, that are building all those amazing infrastructure that the middle class is enjoying the fruits of their labor from.

This is also where the “90% house ownership in China” myth comes from. It’s because when your hukou registration is in the rural area, the municipal governments do not have to provide you with access to those public services in the cities. You are technically not a resident of the city, only a migrant/visiting worker, because you technically have a home back in your provincial town/village that your parents own.

Again I can assure you that when people think of China’s amazing development, not just foreigners but even many local middle class folks, they almost certainly never think about this huge underclass of migrant workers who are behind this. And thats my point.

Ironically, in order to solve the low consumption problem, it is these people who need to be taken care of. And simply by raising their income (which will include China giving up its net exporter status), the huge potential of its domestic consumption market can be unleashed.

22h ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 22h ago

Maybe “support” was not the right word, but I meant that Western leftists want China to keep the status quo because they seem to have forgotten that their endless flow of cheap treats actually come from migrant workers who work 10-12 hours for 6-7 days a week with very little access to public services that urban citizens enjoy.

Remember that there are 280-300 million migrant workers who are the true underclass in China that produce your iPhones, build infrastructure all over the country yet they have very little rights compared to the middle class that are enjoying the fruits of those labor. They have restricted access to healthcare, pension, housing and education for their kids despite working in the same cities as the urban citizens.

The irony here is that the government simply has to raise the income of this group of people to solve the low consumption problem. But clearly, they won’t.

But cheap treats from china, were never really a talking point

That’s my point. It’s already embedded into their status quo thinking. When they think of China’s incredible industrial output, who do they think are the driving force behind that? It’s not the people from affluent upper middle class lifestyle you watch on Douyin (Chinese TikTok).

2d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Then why not directly allocate the labor and resources to prioritize the domestic sector? Why not use it to raise the living standards of the people directly?

Why would you need to spend a significant portion of your labor and resources on creating cheap goods for Western consumers to earn their currencies before you are allowed to prioritize your own people?

And we’ve seen the outcome of this export-led growth strategy: deflation, wage stagnation/reduction, low purchasing power, which ultimately led to low domestic consumption. Meanwhile, foreign countries are enjoying the cheap goods Chinese labor are breaking their backs to produce while enduring longer working hours and increasing retirement age, with near zero annual leave.

It looks like the leverage is on the US hands, who simply has to put up tariffs to force China’s export sector to divert elsewhere. Meanwhile, the mercantilism is sending every other country to sell their goods to the US in desperation to make up for their growing trade deficit with China. I don’t see any geopolitical leverage at all. It is the Chinese people who are absorbing the costs.

Honestly, I suspect a lot of Westerner leftists support China because they secretly enjoy the cheap goods from China, and not really support the Chinese workers to get the fair share of their own labor.

Anyone here seriously believe that working 26-28 days a month for 10-12 hours is a good deal? If your impression of China stops at the flashy infrastructure, then you’re missing a huge part of the picture. These are the people who make your iPhones and all the cheap gadgets you are consuming. Shifting away from the export sector will actually allow the workers to get more rest and recreation time to spend with their families.

2d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

As I wrote in response to your question in the previous thread, why is there a need to accumulate trade surplus?

All of that $1 trillion worth of Chinese goods could sink at sea during their shipment and it would not matter one bit for the financial situation in China. It’s just a number, or think another way, a high score in a video game.

It is a choice to tie your own financial situation to the score you get in a video game. Just like you can still live completely normally if you don’t get a good score in a video game today, there is literally no need for the Chinese government to do so, except for a belief in neoliberal ideology.

Put another way, Chinese labor and resources are being spent on creating something that the Chinese people themselves could not enjoy, but merely getting in return for the equivalent of a high score in a video game. A misallocation of capital, labor and resources.

Export is meant to exchange for goods you cannot produce at home. But in the post-Bretton Woods era, under neoliberal ideology, it has become a belief system that you need to accumulate a certain number before you can invest domestically, otherwise you will run a high deficit which is very bad. The price is the working class in the Global South having to work harder and lowering their own domestic purchasing power in exchange for a number they cannot use, and will never use. An imperialist extraction of the surplus values from the Global South.

The problem is not just China though - it’s everyone wanting to run a trade surplus because they have bought into the IMF ideology (“you need to reach this score in the game before you’re allowed to eat dinner!”), and this is what makes the dollar hegemony so powerful, because the dollar is that score, of which any number can be easily typed simply through keystrokes.

This is fundamentally different from the previous Bretton Woods and gold standard eras when accumulating foreign currencies through trade surpluses actually get you gold, which is a tangible and finite commodity. The dollars can be created simply out of thin air, and this is what allows the US to get unlimited free lunch. The key to the solution is to stop believing in this nonsense, which the world finds very difficult to pull themselves away from.

2d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

At this point I am convinced that neoliberalism has achieved total propaganda victory.

I mean, Russia is literally at war with the Collective West and they still couldn’t abandon neoliberalism. China is literally under unprecedented sanctions from the US and they cannot imagine a system that works without neoliberalism. BRICS+ just reaffirmed their support for the IMF, World Bank and WTO during the Rio summit this year and vowed to defend neoliberal free trade ideology even without the US.

Even if the US economy were to collapse tomorrow, all the BRICS+ countries will voluntarily transfuse blood to keep the US economy alive, because they cannot imagine a future without the US consumer market.

2d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 15th to December 21st, 2025 - Never Trust A Western Peace Deal - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Retail sales in China broke the 2% floor in November. The worst figure since abandoning Zero Covid in early 2023 (or, since a very long time ago):

Month-on-month retail sales plunged to 1.3%, making the year-on-year growth down to ~4%:

Monthly breakdown:

Most significantly, car sales have plummeted (light blue - car sales; dark blue - retail excluding cars):

Deflation does not make things more affordable. On the contrary, deflation reduces wages, and ended up making things more unaffordable.

The official explanation is that 2024 ended on a high base figure, but it is clear that with the government subsidies removed in the second half of the year, the people are most unwilling to spend more than what is necessary, if they are not already in austerity.

This explains for the most part the very aggressive export strategy to make up for the plunging property and consumer markets at home.

However, with news from last week including Mexico imposing 50% tariffs against Chinese goods and the EU complaining and starting to take measures about their soaring trade deficit against China, the signs are showing that the world may not be able to absorb Chinese export goods for long. We can only imagine how much worse it is for the smaller economies across the world.

This, in turn, will worsen the financial distress for the exporter countries around the world, and making it harder for many Global South countries to earn the dollars to service their foreign debt.

Remember when everyone was laughing at Trump tariffing the penguins back in April? Well, laugh no more, because soon we’re all going to have to pay for the economic costs. Still can’t believe Trump got the tariff strategy to work, but it is even more astonishing to see the rest of the world having no clue how to retaliate against the US.

Now do you finally see why China’s domestic consumer market is such an important piece of the puzzle to stop US financial imperialism?

2d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka

Good points, and it actually illustrates why military alliance is critical for the whole Eurasian strategy to work, as I mentioned before. The failure to take this into consideration really showed how inferior the Chinese foreign policy is compared to the USSR’s.

As for the bombings - we still don't really know how much meaningful damage was actually done. Recently the Israelis came out with a statement that they overestimated the damage they did (although we of course have to consider the possibility of this just being more "they're literally days away from developing a nuke" propaganda to justify more military action).

That’s my point - the real damage is Russia and China pulling away from Iran and the rest of Middle East. The physical damage is superficial and symbolic, but it does the job of scaring away Chinese investors.

2d ago

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report - Global Times

I think you’re too harsh on the Chinese government. A lot of good has been done, and the rapid development of the Chinese economy is evident to anyone.

The real major contention here is whether this NEP/neoliberal model can continue to work in the coming era?

Read my comment here in the news mega this week for detailed discussion.

A lot of people who China’s development from the outside (which is really the outcome from the development started 10+ years ago) and think that the current model can persist forever. But those who live inside it knows that a change is long overdue. Like a kind doctor who refuses/incapable of keeping up with the times and new medical advances, and insists on his traditional methods, eventually he’s going to do more harm than good to the patients.

2d ago

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report - Global Times

It’s the elephant in the room. Everyone talks about it, but the leadership will never admit it.

The inequality is built into the system since the 1994 Tax Sharing Reform: read my effort post here from a few months ago. Anyone who tells you why China should or shouldn’t have billionaires but without closely inspecting the historical development during this period, isn’t really tell you anything.

And if we want to interrogate this from a historical materialist perspective, it really is a 2000-year old struggle between a centralized bureaucracy and decentralized regional growth models that has never been resolved over the dozens of dynastic changes throughout centuries in China.

3d ago

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report - Global Times

Trust me it wasn’t that fun. It’s a lot of “writing 3000-character essays about why the party is great” lol. It’s mostly patriotism classes these days. Maybe if you’re lucky and you get a very engaging lecturer, but these people are very rare. Chances are you end up with a lecturer who’s half-assing it and you end up hating the entire thing lol.

I know numerous party members who couldn’t even provide the most basic arguments with Marx lol. I literally don’t know how they passed the exam because the party membership selection process is very stringent (you need to know the right people who can write the recommendation letters for you, and you have to take mandatory ML courses and pass the exams etc. It’s very elitist, at least for those recruited from the academia and high schools)

What I’m getting at is that China calling itself a socialist country and promoting a “Marxist-Leninist ideology”, even though very superficially, is already priming at least some of its people to think about it.

3d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka

Agreed and no major disagreements here. It really shows how Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard was a total fraud and that Trump’s B-2 bombing completely shattered the illusion. Without military alliance, the Eurasian strategy is extremely vulnerable and doomed to fail.

Having said that, I still wouldn’t take it so far as to say that it is not worth mounting a defense just because the US has overwhelming military power. If so, then you might as well submit to the fate of getting steamrolled by the US military. Why bother put up a defense at all? I still believe that a willingness to provide security guarantee can at least make the US less emboldened with its operations in the Middle East.

3d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka

As I mentioned to the other user, I think we’re talking past each other. Russia and China are certainly capable of forming defense networks to secure the Silk Road. If they cannot do so, then China’s entire Belt and Road is vulnerable.

I certainly agree with your assessment here. But as I’ve said, war isn’t about annihilation of the opponent’s forces (although Russia is being forced to do so in Ukraine and is seemingly capable of holding off the entire NATO/Collective West, so I wouldn’t write them off just yet), it’s about exerting the high costs to make your opponent think twice about freely roaming the Iranian airspace and dropping bombs as they wish.

Even the promises of a security guarantee, which would drag the US into a long war and exert high political and economic costs at home, would make the US think twice about their decisions. It is the lack of such cooperation between the countries that emboldened the US.

So, yes, I won’t deny that the US is still ahead, but that doesn’t mean China and Russia cannot provide the defense cooperation that they did more than half a century ago. What made the US imperialists feared Mao was his willingness to fight a “10,000 years war with the imperialists”. This kind of mentality does not exist anymore in today’s China, who has since benefited much from the dollar hegemony and a US-led neoliberal free trade model.

3d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka

I think we’re talking past each other. You mean more of a power projection across the oceans, while I am talking about Russia, China and Iran forming a defense pact to protect their Eurasian/Silk Road interests from Western imperialism.

I agree with you that China does not yet have the power projection capability, though that is not far off, but they can certainly form defense networks across the Eurasian continent to make it extremely difficult for the US to freely roam the airspaces and bomb Iran and the surrounding countries on a whim.

Again, we’re back to talking about the costs. The question isn’t about conquering a country, it’s about exerting high costs for the opponents to think twice about their military actions.

I’ve also noticed a lot of mental gymnastics especially on the pro-BRICS twitters on this matter, where on the one hand, Russia is single handedly holding back the NATO and the Collective West, on the other, they keep making excuses that Iran didn’t want to take China’s deal, so China shouldn’t help them. Well, an economic deal that doesn’t come with security guarantee isn’t going to worth much. Big surprise.

3d ago

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report - Global Times

If we’re talking about the policy makers, then the old school Mao era central planners were all purged back in the 1990s (Chen Yun et al.). Marxism has been banished to the humanities departments in the academia. The policy making decision is mostly advised by neoclassical economists at this point.

However, there are still mandatory Marxism-Leninism class in universities, which, to be quite frank, are just patriotism classes these days. This is the kind of classes that 99% of the students will find boring except for those politics nerds (you know, the type of people who love to post and argue on leftist internet forums lol), yet it is undeniable that the students are being primed to seek out socialist theories. When life was good, nobody really cared. But in times when the economy isn’t going so well, suddenly you begin to question “is this really the socialism I’m being taught?”

With the rapid development of China’s economy over the past two decades, deep inequalities also began to emerge. In late 2019, there was a small resurgence of reading Mao’s work, mostly by college students from middle class background because these are the people who have the most time to study. The working class is far too exhausted to read theory.

Then Covid hit in 2020 and people suddenly had more time to do some soul searching with Mao. This coincided with the failure of the Chinese economy to pick up pace after abandoning the Zero Covid policy in early 2023. At first, people thought, OK, maybe the economy is still recovering, let’s give it some time. The mood was still optimistic.

During that time, the property prices peaked in 2021 and the Evergrande implosion that unfolded between 2021-2023 also caused many people, especially the middle class and the many corporations that had jumped on to the property buying frenzy in the 2010s, to start losing their wealth.

By mid-2024, it became clear that the economy is unlikely to return to the pre-Covid level. Pessimism began to spread and people started to save money (there is no welfare in China for most people, so losing your job can be a big deal especially if you still have 20-30 years of mortgage to pay), which led to a deflationary spiral. As businesses began to lose profit because people are unwilling to spend, production shrinkage turned into layoffs and wage stagnation. Nearly 40-50% of fresh graduates could not find jobs. The tangping (lying down) movement is picking up pace, as the youth become increasingly disillusioned about their future.

By 2025, all hope is lost. I don’t know of anyone who still believe that we can return to the pre-Covid level of economic spending in a short period. Even the most optimistic think we have to endure until the end of the decade. So, it should not surprise you that some people are beginning to question about the “socialism” in China, which is being made more dissonant by the fact that, on the one hand, great infrastructure building and China becoming a superpower, and on the other, the positive outlook of the 2010s where jobs were abundant and personal wealth was rapidly rising was all gone.

As I have written elsewhere, it all comes down to unleashing the domestic consumer market to offset the export and investment sectors, both of which have now run their courses. However, the massive wealth inequality, which had not been addressed in the decades prior, is exactly what’s causing weak consumption. This is the root cause of the problem, hence what I said before about whether the government is serious about tacking the wealth inequality issue.

3d ago

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report - Global Times

You are absolutely correct. I am using it in the BC/AD sense, or closer to the contemporary historical period, pre/post-GFC.

3d ago

China to regulate CEO romance micro dramas, warns against content promoting materialism, flaunting of wealth: report - Global Times

It’s bad either way. But this has an added social aspect to it since the economic downturn after Covid. In the BC (Before Covid) era, few people cared about whether China is socialist or capitalist. As long as the economy is growing, opportunities are abundant, people just don’t care. Black cats, white cats, they’re all the same if they catch mice.

Since Covid, more and more people are suddenly finding the mandatory Marxism-Leninism class they used to find boring in college useful, and started to pick up Mao selected works. That’s how things work.

3d ago

Bulletins and International News Discussion from December 8th to December 14th, 2025 - Cyclone Ditwah Strikes Sri Lanka - COTW: Sri Lanka