China state media warns of war over South China Sea unless U.S. backs down
Active Defense in action. I wonder if the news in question was completely sanctioned by the CCP.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
I've heard that there's been some internal unrest going on from within the Party this past week - it may have something to do with the sudden saber rattling.
Never Trust
I've heard vague rumbles about a mounting economic cris in China. Anyone want to clarify?
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Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
They're having a private debt crisis, it seems.
Meanwhile, CCTV seems to believe that Mobile Suit Gundams are actually in service with the JSDF.
that might be because of the wild fluctuations in the Chinese stock markets. But the sentiment seems to be pretty bullish.
I would say the rumours of a Chinese Bubble are greatly exaggerated.
Besides the country is so big and so tightly regulated that a part of China could enter a financial crisis while another part is having a bonanza. China is too big and consolidated so it has a degree of macroeconomic stability that is quite outstanding compared to the west. It would take a global catastrophe, an open and generalized rebellion against the Communist Party, or a real state bubble to bring down the Chinese economy at this point.
edited 1st Jul '15 9:34:34 PM by BAFFU
They've really stepped up with the saber rattling and other rhetoric. Feels like someone's slipping.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Moomin-themed amusement park to open in Saitama in 2017
Well, wasn't expecting that.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Well, the Moomins are quite popular in Japan, so it's logical that they opened that. I think there was also a restaurant with Moomin figures/sculptures sitting at the various tables or something.
In the wake of Abe's trouble with mainstream Okinawa, there's an editorial from 2013 about the issue of American occupation.
http://worldmeets.us/RyukyuShimpoShimbun000005.shtml#axzz3ezQC145j
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
&I once saw a Moomin shop in London. Before that I had no idea the series was ever broadcast outside of Finland and Japan. (I know it now, obviously.)
A procrastination in of itself
It's got a decent following in the UK, my best friend has a tattoo of it.
betaalpha
I was terrified by The Moomins as a child. I loved it :)
I may well go and check that shop out now I know about it.
Aaand now I know a Moomin movie came out a couple months back. With Snorkmaiden wearing a bikini. Which just makes me lol. Sorry Snorkmaiden.
edited 5th Jul '15 4:15:30 PM by betaalpha
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...Wait. This is OTC.
Sorry for participating in that derail.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Chinese stock markets are continuing to drop despite support actions by the Chinese goverment.
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Black humor at its finest: "Due to stock market's collapse the rooftop is now closed to prevent accidents."
(Probably not true, as it's just sourced from the Internet, but darkly hilarious anyway.)
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Don't know if the sign is real or fake, but the Chinese words on it does say that. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
You're missing the second part, which says, "The re-opening time will be determined by rebound of the market."
edited 8th Jul '15 3:53:43 PM by nightwyrm_zero
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Don't forget the note that those who wish to dry clothing on the roof will have to find an alternative solution.
Chinese Foreign Ministry released a press statement that any reports of problems with the Uighurs in the media are greatly exaggerated. BBC reported it a while ago.
Figures.
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What figures?
The Chinese stock market rebounds after a move to ban people from selling shares Looks like the Chinese will not suffer an economic crisis, and will continue to kick our asses at everything for the forceable future.
edited 9th Jul '15 7:49:50 AM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
Not sure whether it's a typo or not, but I find the term "forceable future" somewhat amusing.
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It's a typo. Sorry about that
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On China's political economy and how its authoritarianism is seriously hurting its long-term stability. It boils down to this: China needs long-term reforms, and the CCP realizes this as much as everyone else; indeed, CCP leaders have been drawing attention to this for years.
The problem is, these reforms would require short-term pain for a lot of elite stakeholders, and they are politically powerful and autonomous enough to make implemention difficult or impossible.
A few years ago, China announced that the country would cut steel production. I asked a journalist who covers Chinese industry if this was good news. After all, China was producing and exporting way too much steel, flooding global markets and dropping prices — not to mention keeping China's economy on the export-led model it needs to drop. So this must be a good step, right?
He responded that it probably would be if not for the fact that China had been announcing this policy for years, and for years Chinese steel production had been rising. Beijing, he said, could make all the declarations it likes, but there are a lot of high- and mid-level officials, not to mention the powerful state-run industries, that might not see it as in their interest to go along. Often, they don't, sometimes rewriting policy as it happens.'
China's steel production did finally dip a bit in the first quarter of this year, the first production drop in 20 years, after US and EU producers called for tariffs to punish Chinese overproduction. This goes to show how hard it is for China to make any sort of economic pivot; it wasn't until steel producers faced the threat of tariffs that they finally obeyed the order to drop production.
A major problem of the Chinese system, which can look efficient and monolithic from the outside, is that local officials, mid-level officials, and senior officials sometimes have divergent incentives — and they often have enough political autonomy to go on their own way. Beijing might ban forced abortions, for example, but the practice still happens in places where the local official thinks he or she knows better.
This gets to the larger problem with China's needed economic transition to a consumer economy: The leadership can't pull it off unless the larger Chinese system wants to make it happen. And the system gives every indication of not wanting it to happen, for the simple reason that it would be bad for the people who dominate that system.
China's growth has created some very powerful industries and interests in the country. The firms that made a lot of money became politically connected, and vice versa. State-run industries and rich elites hold an awful lot of power in China, to the extent that the line between officialdom and the business elite is blurred at best. All of them benefit generally from the status quo, and specifically from the current system that prioritizes state-run enterprises, export industries, and certain domestic industries such as housing and construction that are not healthy outlets for growth.
These people are going to want to resist change, even change that's good for China overall. That's true of efforts to shift to a consumption-driven economy, which would be bad for their business and political interests. And it's true of redistributive policies to build up the middle class, which would hurt their interests.
(Or as the old, old Chinese saying about local corruption goes: the mountains are high, and the emperor is far away.)
[http://eurasiagroup.net/item-files/China%27s%20Great%20Rebalancing%20Act/China%20Rebalancing.pdf Here]] is the Eurasia Group report cited. The takeaway is that the Chinese political system is not monolithic and efficient, no matter how much it may seem to be from the outside.
Since the CCP loves to purge enemies left and right (pun intended? 
), why not purge the hardliners that only know how to repress people? They do no good for the populace and the country.
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Because you can only fire people from their jobs if they're politically vulnerable. Among party elites, there's no one person who can order anyone else arrested completely without pretext, "just because"; nobody holds that kind of political power.
Plus, the elite consensus is that a necessary level of force is needed to maintain stability. Thus, while someone caught using excessive force in, say, Shanghai or Nanjing might get punished (the Party typically having no trouble throwing unpopular misbehaving officials under the bus), someone doing the same thing in Xinjiang might be rewarded for it.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
Also, bringing up World War II repeatedly seems to be an excuse both China and Russia keep playing to ignore what happened afterwards. During the Cold War, China was (and is) still divided in two warring factions, the West was alienated by Chinese and Russian policies, and Taiwan and Japan were on the same side.