@AngelicaOung There is definitely a higher proportion of goodlooking men and women in the North East, but most people do not look like the caricature, lol. The men can look rough as hell but it is quite easy to find ones that look like C-dramas actors and the women are often pretty.
@Iamhkgee@CarlZha It's just that the mother is very beautiful and youthful looking so people's minds go haywire. If she looked like a typical middle aged mother like me I think comments would be different. She didn't do anything wrong.
@ChozangNoyb@razibkhan Many aren't sentimental about dialect IMO. It's whatever is economically expedient. I was born in Europe to two Hakka speakers but spoke the local language not Hakka. When China was rising in 2000s, I learned Mandarin not Hakka. English easiest for a diverse country like SGP
@yifullofsin I have/had a scar on my elbow and because of it being on a joint the silicone patch is useless. Unfortunately I had to get laser treatment and now it's barely noticeable. I did this in Asia 14 years ago though so the cost was quite reasonable.
Chinese statecraft is, if nothing else, patient. I think it fully appreciates that US elites need time to adjust to their loss of primacy even if ordinary (laobaixing) Americans, especially younger Americans, as the "Tiktok refugee" phenomenon suggests, or American techies, such as the DeepSeek disruption shows, do not share this hangup. You will recall Deng Xiaoping's invocation of 韬光养晦 (hide your brilliance, nurture your obscurity, or hide your strength, bide your time) This is not some mere stratagem about dissembling one's strength. It's and idiom counselling an approach to political and personal *conduct* that is deeply rooted in Chinese philosophy and etiquette. In relation to the US it counsels exactly the conduct that would seek to avoid the incomprehension and envy of elites. Deng didn't invent it. Xi hasn't stopped applying it. Every Chinese child is raised in this as a social norm.
ChinaWatchers fond of pitting nice little Deng against big bad Xi are really pining for a time when the Chinese economy was 120 times smaller than it is today (149 billion in 1978 vs 18 trillion nominal dollars today.)
China at 120X is a bit harder to hide. Shorn of the democracy prattle the dilemma of China's rise is arithmetic. Western elites feel threatened by China's very *development,* which has happened at a pace and speed that continues to surprise even the Chinese.
Underneath the pseudo sophisticated security-hawkery and NED/USAID funded human rights trolling, it is China's growth, not its conduct, or even its ideology, that is the real offence. It is about China's existence as China. Nothing in their educations prepares western elites for a phenomenon that defies western social science, political theory and historical memory. Hence some take comfort in annually renewed dreams of its fragmentation or collapse.
No one has the right to tell a fifth of humanity to wind down their development and recovery as a civilization, to stop alleviating poverty, educating their young, building their cities and greening their environment. It is an internal development, driven by a core internal priority, on a level that would disrupt any international order, let alone the anomalous, unsustainable post-Cold War unipolarity with which it coincided.
To Western elites still steeped in supremacist assumptions, that growth looks like the mirror of their own imperialism. In fact it has proceeded with none of the violence that attended emergences such as Prussia's and Imperial Japan's that were orders of magnitude smaller.
In economic terms, the spillover of China's rise on the rest of the world has been overwhelmingly positive, especially for the global South. The US, or rather US capital, has benefited disproportionately from it. (Through the Global Financial Crisis it even bailed out US capitalism.) The benefit of trade with China and Chinese production has not been well distributed. It has massively enriched the 1% (indeed helped concentrate it) kept the middle class quiescent on ever-falling prices of consumer goods while their wages stagnated, and shipped the manufacturing and industrial jobs of the working class abroad.
China-phobia is a Western issue, driven ultimately by Western political dynamics and its frustrated expectation of a servile, economically captured Third World. The answer was never going to come from China trying to pacify or charm the Beltway China barkers or propaganda channels known as mainstream media.
As it turns out, an answer of sorts, we may hope, a turn towards sanity and realism, is emerging precisely through the ideological revolution now underway in the US. It may at least buy us time, not for the present elite to come to terms with China, but for a new elite to arise capable of organizing a society oriented towards the common good. The resultant integrity, strength and confidence are necessary for managing great power relations without resort to phantoms and demons.
In the last few weeks there have been serious and concerning developments regarding my sons’ father, Imran Khan’s treatment in prison. The Pakistan authorities have stopped all visits to him by his family and his lawyers. They have also postponed all court hearings. In addition to cutting off in- person visits, and in defiance of a court order, his weekly calls to his sons, Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, who are British and who live in London, were stopped on 10th September. We have received reports that the authorities have now turned off the lights and electricity in his cell and he is no longer allowed to leave his cell at any time. The jail cook has been sent on leave. He is now completely isolated, in solitary confinement, literally in the dark, with no contact with the outside world. His lawyers are concerned about his safety and well-being.
These actions come in the context of ongoing targeting of Imran’s family, as well as his party (PTI) members and supporters in an attempt to silence them and all political opposition in Pakistan. Imran’s nephew, Hassan Niazi, a civilian, has been detained in military custody since August 2023. More recently, Imran Khan’s sisters, Uzma and Aleema Khan, who have continued to speak out on his behalf, have also been arrested as they made their way peacefully to a demonstration and they are currently being held in jail, despite there being no proper or lawful basis for their imprisonment.
In June this year the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Imran is unlawfully and arbitrarily detained and called for his immediate release.
As a matter of urgency , we are calling for Imran Khan’s release, and for the release of his sisters and nephew as well as for his sons’ contact with their father to be re-established, so that they may have assurance first-hand that he is well and not being mistreated.
Running in Beijing - this was not possible ten years ago! 👍
How much China 🇨🇳 has changed after declaring war on pollution! Ten years ago I would never go running in Beijing.
This week I did beautiful morning runs. The sky was blue, the sun bright and I could fill my lungs with tons of fresh, clean air.
Old men were fishing in the canals, children playing at wonderful play grounds and people of all ages were doing shadow boxing and gymnastics in the parks.
Beijing showcases how fast the green transformation can happen with dedication and the right policies. The world should learn
Ok, today is the day 🚨 After four years of work, my second book is finally out. If We Burn - now available in hardcover, e-book, and audio editions. For now, I just want to thank the hundreds of people who helped to make this book possible
This is key to understanding China. It has only 11.6% arable land, concentrated to the East of the Hu line.
Which means that it has an enormous density of population for its homegrown food resources: about 12 people per hectare of arable land.
For comparison, India - a country with a similar-sized population but 3 times smaller than China - has only 8.9 people per hectare of arable land, meaning that it's actually easier to feed the Indian population than the Chinese population: 26% less mouths to feed for each hectare of arable land.
The US is also an interesting comparison: only 2 people per hectare of arable land. France: 3.6 people. Germany: 7 people. Brazil: 2.8 people.
This is an interesting question to ask yourself if you're the US for instance with its 2 mouths to feed per hectare of arable land. If its population was multiplied by 6 so that it reached 2 billion people and therefore 12 mouths to feed per hectare of arable land like China, could its current politico-cultural system cope with this? Would its value system be the same with such an emphasis on individual "freedom"? Or would they start to become much more collectivist and organized as a society to make it work?
Given that already at 2 people per hectare of arable land there are 44 million people in the US who are food insecure (https://t.co/uDOHKLsQ32), I personally don't see how its system could cope with a 6x population increase...
This is good illustration of why it's never a good idea to judge other countries and cultures from your own context, you always need to first understand theirs.
Here is a full hour from today's stream for my X subscribers. I go over a formal CIA Rent-A-Riot manual from 1983, declassified in 2017, that teaches CIA officers how to organize street riots, make them turn violent, & manipulate the civilian populace to back the rioters' cause.
Let's do a sanity check. This is special for YOU. This is for everyone.
Here we go...ready?
After receiving an unprecedented number of anti-doping tests because he's Chinese, Pan Zhan Le won the 100m freestyle Gold medal with a record breaking time
So again, all you doping accusers, let's try this again
After receiving an unprecedented number of anti-doping tests. 9X more than any other country's athletes, because he's Chinese, while in Paris for the Olympics, Pan Zhan Le won the Gold with a record breaking 46.4 breaking his own previous world record of 46.8 by 0.4 seconds.
Not there yet? No?
Ok, one more time, let's some more detail
After receiving an unprecedented number of anti-doping tests, 9X more than any other country's athletes and with China's doping violation levels at 0.2% amongst the LOWEST in the world 10X lower than U.S. doping violation levels, because he's Chinese, while in Paris for the Olympics getting regularly tested 9X more than any other fucking athletes REGULARLY REPEATEDLY RANDOMLY TESTED IN THE MANY IMMEDIATE DAYS BEFORE COMPETING, Pan Zhan Le set another world record.
How did he do that? I'll tell you how. Pan Zhan Le was pissed. In fact he was extra pissed and rightly so. He dove into that water determined with ferocious anger he unleashed to kick all their malevolent bigoted political asses after being subjected to more dope testing than anyone else and won the Gold with a record breaking 46.4
Did you pass the sanity check? Are you still going to say the Chinese athletes are doping? Are you high? You must be. That's the only thing that could explain your ignorance and stupidity and insanity and bigotry
I hope you passed this sanity check. Thanks.
#PanZhanle #Olympics #Paris2024 #Doping #WADA
The single defining feature of this political moment in the United States is that all major presidential candidates favor continuing the perpetration of an active genocide, and that everyone's trying to tap dance around this issue.
That's it. That's the main story here. It's not "American democracy is on the line in this election." It's not "Making America great again" or "Taking back our country" or "Fighting the woke agenda" or any of that braindead nonsense. The main story is that an actual genocide is scheduled to continue no matter whom Americans elect, and everyone's meant to just ignore that point as though it's some small insignificant quibble and focus on the candidates' positions on other issues like immigration reform and student loan debt forgiveness.
The main story is this mind-warpingly insane situation in which progressive-minded Americans now find themselves saying plainly ridiculous things like "Gosh I'm not crazy about this candidate's pro-genocide policies, but I really like what she's saying about tax credits for low and middle income families!" It's that right wingers are now forced to adopt the position "Yeehaw, Trump's gonna end the wars and bring our troops home and Make America Great Again, right after he helps Israel defeat Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, and oh yeah, also Iran." It's that independents are saying "RFK Jr is going to dismantle the war machine while simultaneously backing a genocide and pledging 'unconditional support' for the front-line aggressor in today's major conflicts throughout the middle east."
That's what all the headlines should be about. Not how Trump's 2024 campaign strategy differs from his other presidential runs. Not the ways Kamala should go after him in their first debate. The main story in US politics is the fact that there's a genocide happening which all viable candidates support, and that an entire country is trying to find ways to psychologically compartmentalize around this horrifying fact.