Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News Chinese take out

The over ripe queen of the gerontocracy has set forth from the forbidden city to make the trip to Taiwan after all. Refuting the ‘one China’ policy of the last several decades, it’s been odd to see the role reversal for the right wing woke party.The Dems had confined themselves to the Russian scapegoating election losses and their proxy war in the Ukraine. It was the other right wing political party that made its antagonism towards the ‘yellow peril’ of south east Asia and China in particular known by calls for ‘getting tuff’ with China on the campaign trails, the appointment of Larry Kudlow to the SEC with Trumps election victory (sorry Dems, she should have gone to Michigan…) and the immediate tariffs his administration imposed on Chinese imports.

But politics make strange bedfellows and now that the neoliberals are in bed with the neocons that run state it’s the geriatric queen whos now poking the Panda and stoking the flames against China. Right wing Messianic fanatics of world domination in bed with radical adherents to market social ordering. What could go wrong? (Hint: see Ukraine)

Anyways, it was obvious the two camps were going to do China next and here we are now. Having started a fight with a commodities exporting superpower and having our ass handed to us (or our nato trained proxy army anyway) and deciding maybe it was time we picked another fight with a major manufacturing superpower that we literally helped create in the neoliberal pursuit of higher returns via deindustrialization of our economy and industrializing China’s.

Adults are clearly in the room. This could get fun..

Going to the beach

Chunky, welcome back. I was wondering where you've been.

Welp, Nancy arrived in Taiwan - and the world didn't end.

Pelosi arrives in Taiwan, voicing U.S. 'solidarity' as China fumes!


¯\_(: /)_/¯

I’m not sure using ‘the world didn’t end’ would be a good measure of wether or not that provocation wad a good idea.

Needlessly antagonizing another superpower while cocking things up badly in Eastern Europe looks like desperation. Europe’s going backwards economically. Coal plants are being put back online. Over 5 million refugees. Up to a thousand Ukraine conscripts are dying a day. Germany has cut hot water usage in all public buildings, etc.

World didn’t end but there’s major consequences for the parties involved. Wonder what there will be with unnecessarily provoking another conflict.

I remember the aghastitude of the liberals when Gingrich visited Taipei. How far to the war mongering right the Dems have become.

Welp, Donald Trump's Russian BFF thinks that Ukraine, and Europe for that matter, should come under the Russian sphere of influence. Poor 5'3" Putin, the li'l fella has a short guy inferiority complex.

I personally liked the homophobic memes liberals were using with Trump and Putin after the mother goddess blew the election of 2016. They're nothing if not fickle.

Trump had nothing to do with instigating war in the Ukraine as far as I recall. That's a self own of the neocons who seriously misread the room. Liberals too for joining in with them.

Germany was paying 41Euro/MWh average from 2010-2021. Today it's 400Euro/MWh.

Some of the key pieces of equipment in my shop are German and Italian made. I had gone thru and replaced every wear item vital to keep them going when this Neocon sh!t show got underway in February. The consumable feed glue used in one key piece of equipment is made in Germany only. There are no substitutions. Mid cap companies that this machinery/tooling represents in Europe are in real danger of going under now. They can't shift production to other parts of the world. Worst of all possible worlds. Maintaining your competitive manufacturing base thru low cost energy inputs and high skilled labor force while suborning your foreign policy to NATO and it's neocon administrators that have insisted you commit economic suicide for them. Prices are heading thru the roof now. I'm stocking up on what I have to have to continue to do business.

Cabinet hardware is mostly made in Europe as they have taken over the market from the US decades ago thru innovation and improvement. Open a cabinet door and tell me what the country of origin your hinge is from. Ditto if you have soft close under mount drawer slides. China has done a passable job copying some of the more common hardware pieces from Europe so I can substitute some hardware but not all. Should a trade war break out with China and they simply stopped exporting these items I would have no way of making mill work. Most Americans will be barefoot in a year. I imagine that would make whats left of the people of Edicott NY smile.

I wish I had your eff off money with political economic realities Rick. Unfortunately I do not. My material concerns are outweighed by liberal upper middle class fantasies at the moment and their neocon BFF's are really making a hash of things. At some point you understand that's all they really are good at. Winning bureaucratic battles and little else for the vast majority of Americans.

Do you imagine there was ever a tremendous difference between the parties?

That "Democrats" are and have always been made up of morally superior human beings devoted to the good of mankind worldwide and dedicated to peace?

I don't. Because if they were, you'd be one of them instead of sniping at their perceived air of moral superiority.

As near as I can tell, Taiwan has been an honorable trading partner to the US. China claims it just like Russia claims Ukraine. Pretending it doesn't exist to mollify China's abhorrent wishes is nonsense.

Hong Kong and Shanghai have fallen. Ukraine will soon run out of conscripts. Korea only exists as long as China says it exists. Japan could go any time, Slovenia might be next.

The entire former USSR will be re-united under one flag and one currency, and most of Asia will become "provinces" of China. Both nations have long-term plans to achieve these goals and are ruled by autocratic strongmen who have no qualms with the brutality or expense required to get what they want.

The United States can't think beyond the next election; the only enemies it knows are other Americans. Putin only exists as an extension of Donald Trump.

Dem's had some antiwar sentiment with respect to invading Iraq as I recall. Not all but some. Obama ran on his anti war record and made the mother godesses vote to go to war a liability for her in the 2008 primary IIR. (not that it would predict his future behavior, sadly). I remember some Dems opposing Reagans 'Dirty wars'. Not all but some more still. I don't recall Dems being as monolithic in their war mongering as today.

Since the Dems got NAFTA done I don't see much of a difference between either parties in terms of economic positions. Dems and Repubs get funding from different styles of ruling classes (their not a monolith either). They both serve oligarchy.

Republicans repealed Roe V Wade. That shows capacity to sustain a decades long effort to achieve success. Liberals spend their time with euphemisms for why we can't have nice things.

The rest of your post reads like Imperial paranoi.

"But political debate broke out over one key element that enabled this achievement. Taiwan’s GDP growth in 2020 was mainly underpinned by an increased trade surplus and domestic investment. Exports increased to a record-breaking 4.9 per cent in 2020, with China (Hong Kong included) receiving close to 44 per cent of Taiwan’s exports, a 12 per cent increase from 2019. This makes China Taiwan’s single most important trading partner and a key source of trade surplus."

Taiwan’s China dependency is a double-edged sword


Not sure what work 'stalwart trade partner' is doing for ya.

China has announced sanctions on Taiwan already.

I asked the question in the mired Ukraine thread- is it better to be a superpower consumer of commodities or a superpower producer of commodities in a dispute. I guess with China, it's weather its better to be a superpower consumer rather than a superpower manufacturer in a dispute.

Over the years we have gone to China several times. One thing that always amazed me was the number of people travelling there from Taiwan. There were always a lot of them there doing business.