You've been looking in the wrong direction, the dangers are coming from China

ToweringPerformance

Everyone needs to make an effort to do what's right. It's impossible to live your life without buying Chinese made products but people need to be more considerate when making purchases especially big ticket items like Chinese made motorbike and cars.

ToweringPerformance

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122174592#Comment_122174592

A lot of the protesting against China stopped when Trump started to call them out on being the ghouls that they are. It's amazing the mental gymnastics folk will do just to not align themselves with him.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175090#Comment_122175090

Do you have a source for this? The rapist was more than happy to invest in China as I recall. His daughter's products were sold there as well.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122174885#Comment_122174885

why don’t you ask them? Give you something to do this week.

Are you boycotting China? I missed your thread where you raised any of these concerns. Zzz

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175038#Comment_122175038

I am old enough to remember life before everything had “Made in China” on it, it was grand

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122174885#Comment_122174885

The Palestinians, Chinese, Russians, Iran etc are all firmly in the one camp

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175181#Comment_122175181

Angela's ashes..

silliussoddius

China isn't exactly in a great position; they have about one sixth of the world's population which must put them in a tough position regarding resources. They pumped a lot of money into Africa which didn't end up with great outcomes, their property sector seems wobbly. I wouldn't write them off completely but I can't see them becoming and maintaining the status of the main player in the world.

fly_agaric

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175505#Comment_122175505

Ha. No, circa CE 2000-05, before (and perhaps shortly after) China got into WTO and the outsourcing really took flight. I remember it also.

This idea that current situation (industrial/factory capacity supplying the West located in China is so big they have a lot of leverage over us) is a law of nature that noone can change, is wrong IMO.

It is a situation that developed because politics (in the West) allowed it, China wanted it badly, and it was economically beneficial (at least short term).

Change the politics on this side (i.e. identify that China may be an "enemy" you don't want particularly wish to have holding your bollox, not merely a "strategic competitor" or whatever) and new economic choices will flow from that (eventually).

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175698#Comment_122175698

I think that is changing a bit, in the last few years US companies have started to favour Mexico over China for factories.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175717#Comment_122175717

Mainly due to tariffs I thought.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175750#Comment_122175750

I remember watching a few videos a year or two ago when it made the news, I think some of it was down to the realization of having all your eggs in one basket etc.

silliussoddius

ancapailldorcha 9:55 am

Do you have a source for this? The rapist was more than happy to invest in China as I recall. His daughter's products were sold there as well.

No problem brown nosing the Saudis or getting photos taken with NK Kim.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175760#Comment_122175760

Who's this? Trump?

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175791#Comment_122175791

Yes, forgot to quote above

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175750#Comment_122175750

the construction of new factories in US has gone mental thanks to Biden

Nothing like that in Europe, if anything too busy putting what little industry at risk of being undercut by China who already began dumping into the market to kill European manufacturing

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175886#Comment_122175886

I would imagine a huge % of this is chip manufacturing after they realised that 4 Asian companies supply over 80% of the market.

Meanwhile Europe seems happy to be caught with our pants down again, like with Russian gas.

silliussoddius

There also seemed to be security concerns about having China make chips that might be used in sensitive industries.

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122175690#Comment_122175690

Yep their population collapse is going to be a huge problem in the long term, they are about to lose a US population worth of people (300mm) in a decade and the population itself is aging rapidly

Tho Europe is on similar demographic trajectory (however unlike xenophobic China migration will offset things)

The problem is 10-20 years is plenty of time to wreck Europe just like they done to US

ancapailldorcha

Europe is not going to be wrecked. China has been doing its thing for decades.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122174786#Comment_122174786

China is engaging in 3 ongoing genocides: Tibet, East Turkestan (Xinjiang) and Inner Mongolia. None of these groups actually pose a threat to China. And unlike a certain cause celebre, these are actual genocides, not fabricated ones. Yet still, its crickets from the usual suspects. No calls for a BDS against China, which gives the impression that genocide is OK if it's right sort of regime doing it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122174507#Comment_122174507

I believe that China provides a lot of industrial subsidies. Under that circumstance, tariffs are an entirely appropriate response. You cannot expect a Western/Japanese car company to be "competitive" against subsidised competition.

Dick phelan

The worry with China is not will they take action on Taiwan as they rise. It's if they take action as they begin to decline. Having lived there for several years and still having a lot of friends there I can tell you a few things.

1 There's been a real shift among the population as to how positive they are about the future, there's very significant youth unemployment, up around 20%.

2 Their housing market is a mess, they've overbuilt to an astonishing level, housing accounts for 25% of the economy. It's also screwed many peoples retirement plans, A 2nd property was usually people's income in retirement, now those properties aren't worth much.

3 FDI has collapsed, yes they have a lot to invest in themselves but due to many factors the days of US and European countries pouring money into China appears to be over. This also hampers their ability to access the best technology in many key industries.

4 Demographics, Demographics Demographics. If there's one thing that has truly fecked them long term it's this. They kept the 1 child policy far too long. People are used to small families now, it's too expensive to have more than one child for many couples. In major cities the birth rate is below 1. Unlike say Canada who use immigration to avoid demographic crisis, China won't do that. The governments attitude to outsiders simply won't allow it.

All of this is to say that if China does pass out the US it will be short lived. The vast majority of Chinese people are hard working decent people who just want prosperity, good education for their children, a nice house to live in etc. Their government is a cancer in the world though. I'd love to see the day Chinese people can live freely and reach their full potential.

zerosquared

Add deliberate policy of pushing drugs ontop of mercentalism

https://au.news.yahoo.com/revealed-deadly-epidemic-super-strength-133425553.html

Oscar_Madison

I watched this programme a few months ago- it’s absolutely staggering the surveillance that goes on towards the Chinese people - this programme should be on Irish schools secondary curriculum as it’s essentially Orwell’s 1984 in action - I recommend you try and catch it on bbc4 at some stage if you can’t access bbc player

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001wkcr

As for religious oppression again a great investigation by Sky News- China clearly doesn’t want its population of Muslims to practice their faith.

https://news.sky.com/story/chinas-tightening-grip-on-islam-revealed-13088966

Meanwhile China does love a spot of spying of US military bases - they are actively encouraging Chinese people touring countries to take photos of sensitive military bases

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/house-arms-over-china-spying-us-military-bases-209168

Then of course there’s Taiwan and the threat of invasion later this decade - Chinas repeated calls for cultural understanding and carefully choreographed PR stunts as well as the increase in the number of CCP members studying overseas as students in universities , they are running rings around the west in terms of laying out future plans for expansion of their powers

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122180450#Comment_122180450

If you watch the excellent BBC documentary above that I posted, you’ll see just how much control China has over its people. There are 80 million CCP members - many of these have a role in monitoring the rest of the population - social credits are now the norm as a way of behaviour control - if you’re deducted enough social credits through your behaviour (littering for example no less anything else) you could lose access to credit or even employment - there are CCP community monitors everywhere reporting on the daily goings on in the community - my personal view is that there isn’t a hope of the Chinese population enjoying what you wish for of the Chinese living freely, unfortunately.
When you start to learn how an apparently centralised government spreads its tentacles far and wide across the 1 billion population, and how essentially 1 in 12 people are a CCP member, you begin to understand how individualism is completely shut down - there’s not a hope of a people revolution happening in China- the government party is intertwined into every aspect of Chinese society - they’re pretty much actively pursuing thought crime at this stage and unfortunately that’s not an exaggeration

Oscar_Madison

More than once this USA based person references that they don’t care about Chinese data collection - it’s extraordinary what rights and protections people will give up in order to make a buck or two - the same people will give out about the US government the next day for not protecting them from data stealers and snoopers and fraud and what not - you can obviously publicise threats and offer advice but even on the face of that, some people will simply pursue their own interests - and that’s why China is so dangerous -even with government health warnings people don’t listen

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/27/dominic-andre-tiktok-ban

zerosquared

McWilliams on the Chinese deliberately flooding the west with exponentially more dangerous synthetic drugs like fentanyl

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1llDXphbdM3YukHCHkkiyM?si=Y9iH30BVSFek2c-rnFa2gw

They are going way out of their way to kill people and profit while at it

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68669244

One of the most active threads here involves Gaza while absolute crickets about several times more people dying year after year due to Chinese policies

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122179524#Comment_122179524

I get regular posts from my congressman to boycott/divest/sanction China. What are you even talking about? This is terrible whataboutery

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122205782#Comment_122205782

This subforum,

2022 - 111k opiate overdose deaths in US alone

2023 - 107k

That’s what? 7-10x Gazas right there due to Chinese policy of wanting payback for something that happened in 19th century and absolute crickets on the subject here

Instead we get pages and pages about silly “symbolic gestures” and “all eyes on Rafah” craic

Someone posted about how this policy has now reached UK which means won’t be too long before people here start to die