WinterSloane

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

Europe sanctions China.
China retaliates 14-for-14.

A tiny German supplier in ASML’s supply chain suddenly discovers that access to Chinese rare earths was not decorative.

Now Brussels wants to trade sanction removals to keep the company alive.

Classic European strategy: throw the stone first, then discover your own foot was under it (搬石头砸自己脚).

And that is the funniest part.

Europe made the mess collectively.
Now it needs collective agreement to clean it up.

China needs one decision.

Brussels cannot quickly remove its own sanctions without lining up 27 governments.
Beijing can lift its countermeasures when Beijing decides.

So Europe now wants China to move first because Europe made its own exit mechanism harder than its entry mechanism.

Easy to tie the knot. Much harder to untie it when 27 hands are holding the rope.

China’s answer is basically:

You sanctioned first.
You remove first.
Then we’ll talk.

For years, Europe imagined economic interdependence as leverage it possessed over China.

China just reminded them that interdependence has two ends.

Sanctions are apparently “principles” until Europe has to pay for them.

[沙漠之狐 埃尔温·隆美尔 @3596675596com]

巴西人只知道中国封杀Meta、推特、youtube等美系社交平台，却不知道事件的起因是什么

事件的起因跟2009年7月5日的新疆恐怖袭击有关

当时在新疆策划恐怖袭击的组织者，利用Meta和推特指挥新疆的恐怖分子制造恐怖袭击

中国平定恐怖袭击后，要求Meta、推特等美系社交平台交出恐袭组织者的数据

Meta、推特等美系社交平台以维护用户隐私为由，拒绝提交策划者和组织者的数据

这事成了中国封锁封杀Meta、推特、youtube等美系社交平台的理由

美系社交平台被中国封杀后，对中国市场念念不忘，想回到中国市场，但中国有以下要求：

1.必须在中国建立数据中心

2.必须遵守中国的法律，禁止传播反共反华内容

3. 中国必须必须掌握审核权

因美系社交平台无法满足中国设立的3个要求，中国不允许他们在中国运营，继续封杀

中国当年封杀美系社交平台，美国的盟友没少骂中国破坏网络自由，中国国内也有不少人骂中国政府的做法是破坏自由。互联网防火墙的教授方滨兴，在中国政府封杀美系社交平台后，没少被中国网民骂

但是嘛，2013年情况出现了转机

2013年斯诺登事件，斯诺登爆料苹果、谷歌、微软等美国科技巨头给美国CIA开后门，方便CIA监听其他国家的领导人，尤其是美国的盟友

曾经骂中国破坏网络自由的美国盟友，瞬间成小丑，因为他们发现，自己是CIA重点监听的目标，如果继续骂中国破坏互联网自由，很容易被中国人笑话

自此之后，美国的盟友不再骂中国破坏网络自由，相反，美国的盟友暗中学习中国如何修建互联网防火墙

中国人看了斯诺登的爆料，对中国封锁封杀Meta、推特、youtube等美系社交平台的做法，开始意识到——互联网世界的国境线是存在的。自此，中国人开始理性看待中国政府封杀美系社交平台的做法

再者，中国封杀美系社交平台的时候，恰好是中国本土互联网产业起步阶段，百度、阿里巴巴、腾讯等中国互联网公司，在2009年前后，就像刚学会走路的小孩，实力根本没法和Meta、推特、YouTube等美系社交平台相比

中国正愁如何保护本土互联网企业的发展，结果美系社交平台拒绝提交恐怖分子的数据给中国，给中国封杀美系社交平台提供绝佳理由

在互联网防火墙的保护下，中国的互联网企业能安全度过起步阶段，现在的中国互联网企业，已经发展到具备和美国互联网平台分厅抗衡的实力

[Nari Kyo(秋霞)✝️ @Ky0u5y4]

@Alexditangerang 苏南、广东、黑龙江部分地区出现了对中央指示理解不到位、纵容当地土改过激情况，但部分不代表整体，十亿人的土地革命拿着几万人的集体错误来定性说明你就没有在认真研究历史而是试图扭曲历史。

[Nari Kyo(秋霞)✝️ @Ky0u5y4]

中国革命是分步骤进行的。
如果从土地革命的角度看，相对复杂：
在国共第一次内战过程中，土地革命战争时期，以打击地主、土豪劣绅和反革命势力为核心，没收地主土地并进行分配，粮食和金钱也被没收以供给苏维埃政府使用；
在抗日战争中，苏维埃政府与地主进行“协商”，虽然是和平的但也因为苏维埃本身的力量而带有威慑力，从而让他们减租减息，降低农民的负担，这是因为地主也是抵抗侵略的力量的一部分，不宜过度伤害；
但与此同时，其中一些投靠侵略者的，或者手上沾有血债的地主，则由群众在公开大会中被指认。由于村庄是熟人社会，所以这种指认相对公正，尽管一些农民过激地伤害了犯人，但绝大多数都被阻拦了，并进行了完整的审判，并且这种审判只针对犯人本人，其家属不受牵连，其所得也被没收，但会留下和其他人一样多的土地进行耕种以保证其自食其力；
第二次内战发展得相对迅速，在此期间随着控制区的扩大，也进行了土地革命：没收地主土地，按照人口统一分配给农民，并废除旧债务；对地主的牲畜等其它生产资料也进行分配；在实际执行过程中，许多地区在执行过程中没有按照规则，而是把地主窝藏的粮食和金钱之类的私人财产也进行了没收和再分配；
新中国成立后，对地主阶级封建土地所有制彻底废除，但对于地主的私人财产不进行没收。
在中国的封建制度到内战这段时间里，民众的生活因为传统手工业被倾销的损害，以及国民党苛捐杂税、征发劳役与征兵等行为的迫害，加上日本侵略者在一边经济破产、一边以战养战的过程中，对于中国经济严重掠夺，导致农村生活极度困难。而在这种时候，就像传统封建时期的天灾和兵变的时候穷人破产、富人趁机搞土地兼并一样，外加许多地方的基层管理积极地加入到压迫农民的一方中，发生了比朝代更迭更加严重的地主对农民的土地兼并和随之而来的普遍的人身迫害。
具体的细节描述，在韩丁的《翻身》中有更为具体的记载。他是一名来自芝加哥的美国记者，也是中国建国前土地革命的亲历者。

[WinterSloane @WinterSloane]

@huang3feng Too bad the CPC didn't kill you all

[Dr. Yousef 🇵🇸 @yousef_ki1]

Palestine, Gaza 2026.

If you see this photo, put a dot to break the Silence.

[Jason Smith - 上官杰文 @ShangguanJiewen]

Mao Zedong isn't just a hero for the Chinese people, he is a hero of humankind.

1. Founded modern China.

2. Ended the "century of humiliation," which was started by British drug dealers.

3. Restored sovereignty and ended colonial foreign domination and unequal treaties

4. Implemented nationwide land reform (early 1950s), redistributing land from landlords to peasants and breaking feudal structures.

5. Promoted women's rights via the 1950 Marriage Law, banning forced marriages, concubinage, and foot-binding.

6. Ended historic illiteracy through mass education campaigns.

7. Increased primary school enrollment and access for the masses.

8. Improved public health with "barefoot doctors," sanitation drives, and disease eradication efforts.

9. Raised life expectancy from 38 years in 1949 72 years.

10. Led the development of heavy industry with Soviet aid, despite the brutal embargo of the USA, which led to a famine despite China's best efforts.

11. Established state-owned industrial base, laying groundwork for later development in steel, coal, machinery.

12. Developed nuclear weapons which protect the nation today from imperialism powers.

13. Stop the imperialists from taking all of Korea.

14. Built extensive irrigation and infrastructure through mass mobilization (dams, canals, etc).

15. Opened diplomatic relations with the U.S. via Nixon's 1972 visit, shifting global geopolitics.

16. Unified written language efforts and simplified Chinese characters for broader literacy.

17. Fought the Fascist Japanese occupation effectively in base areas during WWII.

18. Inspired global anti-colonial movements as a symbol of Third World revolution.

19. Achieved early economic growth in the 1950s, despite brutal US sanctions on farming equipment and machinery.

20. Built foundational transportation infrastructure (railways, roads).

21. Elevated China's status as a major world power despite US attacks, counterintelligence, and sanctions.

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

There is something grotesquely revealing about Israel rushing to support Japan’s demand to erase the UN Charter’s “enemy state” clauses.

Both governments insist the world must remember the atrocities committed against them.

Yet when history records the blood on their own hands, suddenly memory becomes “outdated,” “divisive,” or in need of reform.

Victimhood for me. Amnesia for you.

Japan wants the legal traces of its fascist defeat erased.
Israel wants the world to stop treating Palestinian blood as politically inconvenient evidence.

And together they lecture others about international law and historical responsibility.

You do not get to demand eternal memory for your own suffering while demanding selective amnesia for the suffering you inflicted on others.

The problem is not that history refuses to move on.
The problem is that the victims refuse to forget what the perpetrators would prefer to bury.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is one of the biggest geopolitical mysteries of the year: why did China just save the world economy?

Because, make no mistake, it absolutely did. Analysts are pretty much unanimous on this: had China not dramatically - and I mean dramatically - reduced its oil imports this year, the price of crude oil would have gone through the roof and dragged the global economy down with it.

For proof, read how Javier Blas from Bloomberg - widely recognized as one of the world’s top energy analysts - explains what China did to Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer on their podcast “The Long Game” (https://t.co/bBD8yFFUdC).

As Blas puts it, China went “from 11, 12 million barrels a day to less than 6 million barrels a day” of seaborne crude imports, and that “freed a lot of oil for other countries, particularly in Asia.” India, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia “could buy the barrels that China was not buying.”

To be clear, China wasn’t the only factor - surging US exports and the IEA’s emergency release helped too - but it was by far the biggest: JPMorgan reckons China accounted for about 74% of the fall in global crude trade (https://t.co/JCmFXYJcfh).

So it's no exaggeration to say that it is China, first and foremost, that saved the world economy this year.

If you remember the early days of the Iran war, none of this is what was predicted. In fact some US think tankers, such as the (always horrendous) Zineb Riboua from the Hudson Institute, were even cheering the war as being “all about China… the opening act in the larger contest against China,” the moment the US would crack “the central pillar of a regional order that Beijing has assembled” (https://t.co/RaCE05TcMp).

Seven months on, what actually happened is that not only did China come out of the war unscathed economically, and strengthened strategically, it also ended up shielding the world economy, America’s included, from the fallout of the very war that was supposed to be its undoing.

Breaking news: if you do something that’s supposed to be a “blow” to someone else - some sort of 3D chess move to gain the upper hand - and they end up having to rescue you from the fallout, maybe it wasn’t such a brilliant strategic move after all.

So how did China pull it off? And, more intriguingly, why did it choose to rescue countries, including the US, from a war that Washington’s own hawks were openly selling as a strike against China itself?

And why do this when it effectively dampened Iran's leverage considerably, even though they're supposed to be China's "ally" (which, as we'll see, is false)?

This is the topic of my latest article. I went very deep researching all the Chinese sources I could find on this, looking at the exact legal mechanisms, and at what officials, oil refiners and state media actually said.

The answer turns out to be far stranger than I expected: no-one in Beijing actually ever ordered an import cut. China, effectively, seems to have saved the world economy incidentally, as a by-product of its own domestic policy to protect Chinese consumers.

Which is the real story here: China has become so large and so important it can just rescue the world economy as a mere side effect.

In fact what I discovered, hilariously, is that the Chinese were just as surprised as anyone else: it’s only weeks after Western media started crediting China with saving the world economy that Chinese media picked up the story. And even then, CCTV’s first take in July (https://t.co/xLPyaJeZnT) presented it as something 外媒称 (wàiméi chēng, “foreign media claim”) 🤣

Almost like a giant suddenly waking up to its own powers. Because, that's the thing: intentions fade, consequences stay. Intentional or not, as Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, put it (https://t.co/ckinOaHzJ7), the consequence is that it's now China, not OPEC, who calls the shots on global energy markets.

The valve of global oil pricing is now in Shandong, not in Zhongdong anymore (Zhongdong, 中东, is the Middle East in Chinese).

Full article here, with how China’s 20-year strategic nightmare, the “Malacca dilemma”, has now effectively become its leverage over the rest of the world: https://t.co/HsxPLJp45X

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

@ZhaiXiang5 Yes, the funniest part to me is people complaining about China's lack of transparency on its governance when I don't know many other countries whose president has published 5 volumes of books on exactly how the country is being governed.

[Zhai Xiang @ZhaiXiang5]

The most frightening thing is not that we don't understand China, but that we don't understand China while being absolutely convinced that we do.

The leader of a major country writes 700 pages laying out his logic of governance, historical judgments, institutional anxieties, and methods of reform-and yet almost no one in the West bothers to read it seriously, while everyone continues to debate what "China really wants."

That, in itself, is deeply ironic.

Some people should resist cognitive laziness.

[Jason Smith - 上官杰文 @ShangguanJiewen]

Absolutely right Arnaud.

I have read all five. Excellent collection of his speeches, and broken down by topic. Must reads for anyone trying to understand China.

I would also like to recommend this book from before he was President.

It is actually his writings, and it really outlines what he wanted to do as a leader in a very clear manner.

There are other books of his speeches besides the big five as well, like "The Belt and Road Initiative" and "Up and Out of Poverty" which are collections of his speeches on just those topics, also published by Foreign Languages Press.

But this one, "Zhejiang, China: A New Vision for Development" really stands out, as he intended them to be texts. He wrote them for Zhejiang Daily as an ongoing column.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is genuinely shocking, and says so much about our approach to China.

I decided to check for independent reviews of the English version Xi Jinping's latest book, published a year ago, to see what people had to say about it since I hadn't read it myself.

To my surprise, I couldn't find any: not a single thoughtful review about the book out there! Even on Amazon, check it for yourself (https://t.co/1LVlhACA53): the book has only 3 ratings, that's it.

No matter where you stand on China, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty crazy: the sitting president of the world's rising superpower publishes a 700-page book explaining exactly what he's doing and why, and we don’t even care to look.

If there ever was a fact that illustrates just how willfully ignorant we are about China, this is it.

All the more because we then go spew the usual clichés around how secretive and impenetrable the Chinese system is: the book is on Amazon for $21 for crying out loud!

Anyhow, this felt so wrong that I figured I'd fix it. I bought the book, read it attentively and wrote what I hope you'll agree is a thoughtful review of it.

The book contains genuinely surprising passages, such as Xi writing that oversight of the Communist Party by "the judiciary, the public, and the media" was not just something the Party must “readily accept,” but something that he framed as historically decisive - an essential component to "escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall" that has doomed every dynasty in China's history.

Other passage that I'm sure would surprise many: a common narrative out there is that China blames the West for the century of humiliation and is driven by revenge. Well, Xi explains that's not true at all: the century of humiliation was China's own mistake, originated in the Ming Dynasty's disastrous "policy of national seclusion" that "resulted in China missing out on the opportunities presented by the Industrial Revolution" and "led to China’s decline."

All in all, the book is remarkably self-reflective and thoughtful. For instance Xi recognizes that his drive for “full and rigorous internal governance” - including to rid the Party of corruption - risked "instill[ing] fear and apprehension, or intimidate members into inaction.” He emphasizes the need for pragmatism in this regard, codified in a framework called the “Three Distinctions” that separates honest mistakes - made while experimenting, reforming, or operating without precedent - from deliberate violations committed for personal gain.

And many other surprises still. I found it a genuinely fascinating read for anyone interested in how the Chinese system works and how Xi thinks - or anyone interested in governance, period, as so much of what he writes is pretty universally applicable.

This is the link to my review of the book, an article I titled "The Book the West Refuses to Read": https://t.co/DYowWEESOd

[WinterSloane @WinterSloane]

@thepunishedemp @Michael15800195 煞笔

[WinterSloane @WinterSloane]

@Michael15800195 Your name is exactly how I normally feel

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is a really funny Xi video, which I've never seen before. I just added subtitles in English to it 👇

He explains the art of giving gifts to foreign leaders. The South Korea anecdote is particularly hilarious: he explains that when China had to find a gift for President Park Geun-hye, they went through her autobiography, where she wrote that if she’d ever had a first love (she was unmarried), he would be Zhao Zilong, a legendary general from the Three Kingdoms. So they had Fan Zeng, one of China’s most famous painters, paint her crush 😂

Xi can’t resist adding that Zhao Zilong happens to come from Zhengding, the county he ran in the 1980s, which makes him "very proud too."

Xi’s actual point is that good diplomacy is personal and that you need to do deep research on the people you’re dealing with: reading their biographies, knowing their taste, their history, etc. It signals respect and, as he puts it, is "a very, very effective way of reaching people’s hearts."

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

A young Chinese neurotechnology company wiped out U.S. smart prosthetic firms that had boasted about their "advanced prosthetics" for years.

BrainCo’s bionic hand weighs just 383 grams, delivers more than 50N of grip force, interprets neural and muscle signals, and lets users grasp, type, drink, exercise and control the hand almost intuitively.

Western companies made smart prosthetics look like futuristic luxury hardware.
China is turning them into something lighter, stronger, more practical and increasingly manufacturable.

The real disruption is not that China made a better demo.
It is that China is industrializing what others kept presenting as the future.

America marketed the future.
China put it on an arm.

[Andy Boreham 安柏然 @AndyBxxx]

New York Times' Andrew Higgins returned to China and saw spies in "blank-faced" locals, threats in ordinary bag checks, and national paranoia over red ink.

In today's video, I break down his utter delusion.

WATCH:

[Estadodederechas @Estadodederech1]

@AndyBxxx Are you implying that NYT is a propaganda rag?
Shocked, I'm shocked. 😳

[China View @Chinaview0022]

1989年初：

美国人接触了柴玲，向她提供了100万美元、美国公民身份，外加一栋新房子。

交易内容：领导天安门广场的暴力革命抗议。

随着抗议失败，她哭诉广场没有血流成河。然而，他们还是把她偷偷送到了美国。