The China Thread

[LaAguilaNegra]

A Chinese class 054 destroyer was seen huffing and puffing near Chongqing. One might be thinking that this maritime specimen could be dieselpowered like the Russian rustbucket aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, but it isn't. Some say it's exhaust fumes, but the ship's probably on fire.




These types of accidents happen quite often bytheway. Sinking of yet another Chinese submarine in 2022 in the SCS has been left out, maybe it will be added at a later time.

 

[TruckDriver9]

A Chinese class 054 destroyer was seen huffing and puffing near Chongqing. One might be thinking that this maritime specimen could be dieselpowered like the Russian rustbucket aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, but it isn't. Some say it's exhaust fumes, but the ship's probably on fire.

The 054 class is a frigate, not a destroyer. And yes, she's diesel powered.

Type 054 frigate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Double-check those chink sources.

 

[Sandalwood Peak]

What stunning roads, the landscaping is wonderful.

 

[Cooper]

A Chinese class 054 destroyer was seen huffing and puffing near Chongqing. One might be thinking that this maritime specimen could be dieselpowered like the Russian rustbucket aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, but it isn't. Some say it's exhaust fumes, but the ship's probably on fire.




These types of accidents happen quite often bytheway. Sinking of yet another Chinese submarine in 2022 in the SCS has been left out, maybe it will be added at a later time.

I guess in those situations their naval command have to make a choice on whether to bother putting the fire down, or just build another dozen ships in the next couple of months instead...

China is building over 1,700 ships per year. This is not a typo. They build more ships than the rest of the world combined. Yet another indicator of their GDP not being bloated, but understated.



It doesn't take much to excite China haters these days, tiles falling off from an old building, smoke coming out from a ship, footage from 2011 of a kid being run over. Lower IQ tabloid worldview, with next to zero concept of the big picture.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

What stunning roads, the landscaping is wonderful.

Shenzhen was built up from a tiny fishing village of 20K people in 1980 to a large city that has become one of 4 majors in China.

I spent considerable time there over the years and was disappointed when I found that, although its subway is nice, new and shiny (but you have to pass strict security at every entrance in order to have all bags checked and aren't allowed many normal items), it could have benefited from basic city planning that would have made it world class.

The surface level is a strangled mess of poorly planned streets that make drunken Irishman Boston CBD look like Tang Dynasty feng shui 风水 masterpieces in the Forbidden City.

Almost everywhere I've been and seen in China is like this: a jumbled mess of synapses in a sclerotic brain scan that are weaving in and out of inefficient traffic patterns.

It took ages in Shenzhen to go from the middle of this north-south strip of land down the HK border when it could have been much easier.

Oh well, that's China! Nearly everything appears laid out by 90 IQ planners who've studied neither geometry nor geomancy.

On the plus side, even serpentza preferred Shenzhen's easy access to top restaurants and great shopping that are more concentrated and convenient than Guangzhou, and I did as well, so SZ does have it's good points.

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Re: Population;

I was in the middle of posting that video but Cooper beat me to it.

To add their TPR challenge is not as bad as other nations. Several reasons -

• Large Absolute Number of Youth. ~700m under 40, so they get around 15-20 years of buffer to restructure their economy or resolve the TPR challenge before their workforce shrinkage becomes severe. Their higher education system is starting to overcome the West as well.
• High Baseline and continued growing economy. 1.4B people and consistent 4~5% gdp gains per year.
• Fiscal Burden of Elderly is 1/5 of those in the US and the medical costs are a fraction to developed nations. They also still haven't raised the retirement age.
• Their Automation Industry is seriously really good so I believe it when it can be used to relief manual workforce challenges Cooper mentioned. I live in Hong Kong so I see it with my own eyes when I visit Shenzhen and the wider GBA area in the past 2 years.

This entire wall of cope is AI chatbot generated, man couldn't even bring up the courtesy to remove the typical AI bullet point presentation. Furthermore I am moving towards the position that expectation genuinely has problems comprehending simpler concepts like TFR and anything statistics related, ergo is legitimately suffering from intellectual deficiencies, whereas before malicious intent was suspected, aka he was just playing dumb.

This should not be misinterpreted and instead be likened to extending the hand and offering an olive branch. Just like one cannot blame a chimp for not being able to solve algebra equations one cannot blame expectation for saying silly things. If it's not here it's just not there. Yet this is also a general warning, engaging in discussions good-faith style is ultimately futile when the opposite side has difficulties understanding that a TFR of <1 is bad.

China is, of course, experiencing a disastrous demographic collapse. Their situation is on par with South Korea's, with the addendum that SK's trajectory is a few years ahead of China. When concerning SK, obviously and rightfully so, noone would dare to generate AI concocted copetakes like the one above, instant intellectual aura death. Only Chyna gets that weirdo silk glove treatment, big question mark as to the why.

Provincial map of Chinese fertility rates. This is 2023. 2024 saw a minor uptake due Chinese superstitional preferences related to astrological beliefs. 2025 numbers will be below 2023, some hospitals report a - 20 percent drop in births. Demography aficionados have put China's expected TFR for 2025 at 0.95.

The reasons are simple. One child preference is still the norm, Chinese girls are demanding, feminist and extremely materialistic in worldview, the economy is a mess and has been since Covid1984, careerism is prioritized over childrearing, and parenthood+family creation have been trashed for decades by Trad 'n Based Beijing in favor of powering GDP growth and achieving economic wealth and status on a personal level. The younger Chinese generation has 0-1 child, preferable in their late 20s/ early 30s but only if serious demands are met.

That's killing and a result of commie social engineering. Cost of living crisis + societal demands on a spouse are unrealistic and increasingly unattainable, putting off and eventually canceling what little childbearing desire there is left. Chinese society is communist, hypermaterialistic, hyperatheistic, nihilistic, scient-ist, autocratic, hyperconformist, predatory and low trust. Ergo this trend will not be turned around any time soon. China is on track to hit the 0.6-0.7 TFR mark within a decade.

Grim.

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Some hilarious moments captivating the litigation culture in China's developing high trust society, look at the stunning roads bytheway.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

Some hilarious moments captivating the litigation culture in China's developing high trust society, look at the stunning roads bytheway.

This is the reason my Chinese friens became so furious with me when I would stop and help injured people in the street, although they would never explain it. It finally took an incident for me to learn about peng ci 碰瓷, or Chinese injury fakers. The name comes from another scam when a tourist is in a souvenir shop and the proprietor causes something to fall and break after the tourist walks past, then he demands an exorbitant price for it and the shame-faced tourist complies.

I was cycling home from work one afternoon and came across three men lying unconscious in a small 2-lane street next to the campus, but a street that had a few full-size city bus lines running along it. The men were arranged about 20 yards from each other with one or two of their feet just on the inside of the yellow line by the curb. However, I knew a bus would be coming any minute and was likely to crush their legs, so I sprang into action.

I quickly dismounted and dragged the first one safely to the side, then ran to the second and moved him. Ran to the third guy, dragged him a few yards and then walked back to my bicycle that I'd dropped and saw that the first one was mysteriously back inside the yellow line.

Went to move him again and he resisted but, being the great white saving do-gooder, I overpowered him and pulled him far from the street, then went to the second guy, who'd also moved back across the yellow line. Started to move him until, being the quick learner that I am, I realized something was amiss.

Looked up and saw the third guy was inside the line, then looked back and the first guy had moved again. Then the second guy I was dragging by the armpits "woke up" and gave me an evil look, so I let him down, got back to my bike, rode home and meditated on the meaning of it all.

Next day I told the story to some of my students and they explained peng ci 碰瓷 to me, unable to hide their disgust. The only thing they hate more are beggars because many of them work for gangs of thieves, who force unfortunates from the country side into beggar slavery, often maiming them so they will receive more money.

 

[Cooper]

This entire wall of cope is AI chatbot generated, man couldn't even bring up the courtesy to remove the typical AI bullet point presentation. Furthermore I am moving towards the position that expectation genuinely has problems comprehending simpler concepts like TFR and anything statistics related, ergo is legitimately suffering from intellectual deficiencies, whereas before malicious intent was suspected, aka he was just playing dumb.

This should not be misinterpreted and instead be likened to extending the hand and offering an olive branch. Just like one cannot blame a chimp for not being able to solve algebra equations one cannot blame expectation for saying silly things. If it's not here it's just not there. Yet this is also a general warning, engaging in discussions good-faith style is ultimately futile when the opposite side has difficulties understanding that a TFR of <1 is bad.

China is, of course, experiencing a disastrous demographic collapse. Their situation is on par with South Korea's, with the addendum that SK's trajectory is a few years ahead of China. When concerning SK, obviously and rightfully so, noone would dare to generate AI concocted copetakes like the one above, instant intellectual aura death. Only Chyna gets that weirdo silk glove treatment, big question mark as to the why.

Provincial map of Chinese fertility rates. This is 2023. 2024 saw a minor uptake due Chinese superstitional preferences related to astrological beliefs. 2025 numbers will be below 2023, some hospitals report a - 20 percent drop in births. Demography aficionados have put China's expected TFR for 2025 at 0.95.

The reasons are simple. One child preference is still the norm, Chinese girls are demanding, feminist and extremely materialistic in worldview, the economy is a mess and has been since Covid1984, careerism is prioritized over childrearing, and parenthood+family creation have been trashed for decades by Trad 'n Based Beijing in favor of powering GDP growth and achieving economic wealth and status on a personal level. The younger Chinese generation has 0-1 child, preferable in their late 20s/ early 30s but only if serious demands are met.

That's killing and a result of commie social engineering. Cost of living crisis + societal demands on a spouse are unrealistic and increasingly unattainable, putting off and eventually canceling what little childbearing desire there is left. Chinese society is communist, hypermaterialistic, hyperatheistic, nihilistic, scient-ist, autocratic, hyperconformist, predatory and low trust. Ergo this trend will not be turned around any time soon. China is on track to hit the 0.6-0.7 TFR mark within a decade.

Grim.

View attachment 25656

You're rehashing the same arguments, ignoring points made above, which I shall repeat:

-China has an incredibly large population base. A decline from 1.4 billion to 1 billion or slightly less still leaves China with a huge population.

-The middle class, highly educated population in China which was tiny a few decades is still growing at a fast rate, and will continue to grow. Those are the people who will be driving China's future.

Key figures in recent history:

• 1998: Approximately 1 million new college graduates.
• 2017: A record 8 million graduates.
• 2023: 11.6 million graduates, representing 63% of the relevant age cohort, a dramatic increase from the 6% in the early 2000s.
• 2025: A projected 12.22 million graduates, with another 12.7 million expected in 2026.
• 2021-2025: The higher education system has produced over 55 million graduates during this five-year period.

-The urban population in China is not going to drop by much, as there is still a large reservoir of rural population that wants to move to the cities. With agriculture being increasingly mechanized, there is less need for agricultural labor. China still has a much larger percentage of rural population relative to other industrialized countries.

And relative to other industrialized countries facing the same predicament of population decline, the Chinese have policy and cultural tools that other countries don't, like for instance this:

Can you imagine something like this ever passing in any western country??

If at some point Chinese planners decide that there should be more children, they can for instance discriminate against single women in the workforce, or pay mothers to stay at home and raise their toddlers, the same way Germany did in the 1930s to solve unemployment and generate a demographic boom. Their leaders want their population to drop to around 1 billion down from 1.4B, if it gets any worse than that you will see policy enacted to increase fertility rates.

 

[Cooper]

China haters' favorite Serpentza simps for feminism:



He is referring to this cooling off Chinese law meant to stop impulsive divorce decisions:

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Seven apartment blocks caught fire in Hong Kong, fire spread rapidly due to scaffolding being made of bamboo. These are apparantly newly build residential buildings, yet despite the scaffolding and ongoing construction some reports that the towers were already in part inhabited. Fire alarms didn't go off. 13 people have been confirmed dead, unknown number are missing.

 

[Northern Pilgrim]

Seven apartment blocks caught fire in Hong Kong, fire spread rapidly due to scaffolding being made of bamboo. These are apparantly newly build residential buildings, yet despite the scaffolding and ongoing construction some reports that the towers were already in part inhabited. Fire alarms didn't go off. 13 people have been confirmed dead, unknown number are missing.

Honestly kinda surprised it's only 13 fatalities...

 

[expectation]

Honestly kinda surprised it's only 13 fatalities...

It's still early. I have someone in my network looking for a relative missing still.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

The case above about sick people not being attended to in Chinese hospitals is not representative. I have never been inside a Chinese hospital, but I have many friends who live there, some expats and several locals. The feedback I got from one who is married to a nurse is that locals never get turned down or thrown out from hospitals in the public system.

This is so far off. Everyone knows you won't be treated without money in China and you have to pay before treatment.

The entire physical infrastructure and patient process in China is that you have to pay for everything before you get it, and if you can't pay then you go away. I visited several hospitals in Guangzhou over the years, both as a patient and when accompanying foreign and local friends. I also taught English at one of the medical universities and had a lot of time with Chinese doctors.

This is the largest Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital in Guangzhou and the pics are of my visit there in 2016, when I lived in San Yuan Li, the neighborhood from where I posted a video a few months ago with typical food and prices.



Inside the hospital, you have to pay to see the doctor before you see him by going to a special payment window on a particular floor of the hospital, which in my experience was not the nearest window on the same floor as the doctor's office.



Next, the doctor orders a test, for which you have to pay at another different window before you get the test.



Now get back in line to see the doctor again so he can review the test results and prescribe medicine, for which you must pay at an entirely different window, usually a large centralized pharmacy with multiple client lines and one of the few places where such things are orderly. None of the other hospitals I visited were this large or this well-organized and there were no lines or numbers.

which is more than what you can say in the US where people avoid getting treatment if they don't have coverage, or in Canada where you have to wait several months, and even over a year, to schedule an appointment with a specialist.

Chinese hospitals, along with everything else there, had nowhere to go except up after 40 years of Mao, but it was obvious that the CCP was prioritizing improvements in health care, which they did. If you select a good hospital in a large city, which is not easy, and you don't get one of the fake doctors that day, then you will receive decent treatment at an affordable price.

 

[Cooper]

This is so far off. Everyone knows you won't be treated without money in China and you have to pay before treatment.

The entire physical infrastructure and patient process in China is that you have to pay for everything before you get it, and if you can't pay then you go away. I visited several hospitals in Guangzhou over the years, both as a patient and when accompanying foreign and local friends. I also taught English at one of the medical universities and had a lot of time with Chinese doctors

Chinese hospitals, along with everything else there, had nowhere to go except up after 40 years of Mao, but it was obvious that the CCP was prioritizing improvements in health care, which they did. If you select a good hospital in a large city, which is not easy, and you don't get one of the fake doctors that day, then you will receive decent treatment at an affordable price.

Your experience is dated, China's GDP per capita in 2016 was approximately $6,893 USD, today it is more than double that amount. Also:

Hospital Number Trends (2014-2024)

• Total Hospitals: The number of hospitals in China increased from approximately 25,860 in 2014 to around 39,000 in 2024, representing a net increase of over 13,000 hospitals.

General Healthcare System

• Insurance Coverage: Over 95% of the population has basic public health insurance, which heavily subsidizes medical costs. However, the coverage levels and out-of-pocket expenses can vary significantly depending on the region, the type of illness, and the specific treatments or medications required.

Specific Exceptions and Cases
While general treatment is not free, there are specific situations where the government has mandated free care:

• Major Infectious Diseases: During the COVID-19 pandemic, China's central government provided free medical care to all confirmed and suspected patients, regardless of their nationality or insurance status, as per a law that stipulates free treatment during major infectious disease outbreaks.
• Specific Conditions: The law also provides for free treatment for a limited number of specific diseases, including severe mental disorders, some forms of cancer (e.g., cervical and breast cancer), AIDS, tuberculosis, and certain congenital conditions like cleft lip and palate and heart disease.
• Uncompensated Care: Public hospitals, which function similarly to non-profit organizations, sometimes reduce or remit treatment costs for patients from low-income families who cannot afford care, but they cannot afford to provide this all the time without government support.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

Your experience is dated, China's GDP per capita in 2016 was approximately $6,893 USD, today it is more than double that amount. Also:

I was there through most of 2018.

General Healthcare System

• Insurance Coverage: Over 95% of the population has basic public health insurance, which heavily subsidizes medical costs. However, the coverage levels and out-of-pocket expenses can vary significantly depending on the region, the type of illness, and the specific treatments or medications required.

What are the specifics? The fine print you quoted is a weasel word salad of non-payment and it sounds like the statistics we heard when I was there from 2005-18.

Fresh off the boat foreigners were often shocked to learn there was no socialized medicine and "medical insurance" was 50 RMB/month for some uses and given only to some old-timers from the danwei's (work units) that had been broken up in the late 90's.

• Major Infectious Diseases: During the COVID-19 pandemic, China's central government provided free medical care to all confirmed and suspected patients, regardless of their nationality or insurance status, as per a law that stipulates free treatment during major infectious disease outbreaks.

It was widely reported during covid that if you got hauled away to a forced covid quarantine camp, you had to pay for the stay and the food yourself. This was also true when someone in a building popped red on their covid app and the entire place got locked down for two weeks. You had to pay for staying in the impromptu quarantine zone as well as your own food, which led to many instances of people panicking and evacuating large buildings when they heard someone down the hall had popped red. They would try and run out before the cops could seal them in, which also occurred in Guangzhou in the world's largest convention center where over 50,000 people were trapped after the grand algorithm in the sky popped a few of their covid apps red on their smartphones.

Many, many, many foreigners reported that when they were entering China during covid they had to pay for a forced 2 - 4 week quarantine in a hotel when they arrived.

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Honestly kinda surprised it's only 13 fatalities...

Current death toll is 44, 279 are missing and dozens are injured. Three individuals have been arrested on charges of involuntary manslaughter

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

Pretty sure you have never been to China, otherwise your takes would be a bit less cartoonish. The first time I went there was in the 90s, after a year of Mandarin in college, I would guess several years before anybody on this board had visited there, back when there were more bicycles than cars on Beijing roads. I've also been to Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia/Singapore, Vietnam and Bali.

No serious China veteran could claim that a city like Phoenix that is only 40% White, with its large share of Chicano gangbangers, strung out druggies and 10,000 homeless is safer than any Chinese city.

Why not? Guangzhou was widely known as the worst and most dangerous big Chinese city. The version of the travel guide a year or two before I arrived warned of using taxi cabs because there were so many different scams, including kidnapping.

A friend who was there just a year before I arrived saw a woman get her hand hacked off at the wrist in the most upscale part of Guangzhou because the thieves wanted her jewelry.

My host family's mom was nearly kidnapped in the same place around that time when she was shopping at night and some guys got out of a car and held a medicated cloth over her mouth, then tried to force her into the vehicle.

While Guangzhou was the worst, I heard these same stories from people all over China. It was crime-ridden all the years I was there and I find it difficult to believe that problem has been solved. Improved? Okay, I saw Guangzhou get a little better over the years myself, but not solved.

You are extrapolating imaginary averages out of fake stats and then refusing to believe the specificity of actual occurrences. The city where I live now in the USA is much more dangerous than Phoenix, but I never encounter any dangerous situations, partly because I don't and never have used public transport in the USA. I'm also big and aware of my surroundings, but Chinese gangs of thieves and pickpockets don't care because they have all the advantages in numbers, weapons, and police apathy.

We covered this before how you don't seem to know much about life in America. I've operated my own vehicle since I was 14 years old and my high school student parking lot was full of similar American drivers in their mid-teens. I used the public bus once in my life in my home town and the subway also just once, and never took a taxi here, and only once in my life in another US city.

Maybe you use public transport more in Toronto, but we don't. In fact, there are only a few cities in the USA with a lot of public transportation, whereas in China it's the norm, which exposes you to a lot of danger.

 

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

Coop, I get the feeling you think I'm making things up and you're guessing why, but that's just not the case.

I can understand how people who've lived there for years were enamored of the place because I knew many who were.

It's really not that difficult to accept the other viewpoint when you see it coming from so many different sources whose motives for doing so can not be explained based on any evidence.

 

[LaAguilaNegra]

Seems China is an open air prison meets a labor camp.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone with a speck of knowledge on world affairs and contemporary history. It's the blueprint laid out for the West and intended end result of East Asian conformism meets bug mentality, coupled with Jewish ideologies taking over China by way of the CCP.

The CCP is a Bolshevik Jewish creation. The CCP's founder is Grigory Voitinsky, who was born Grigory Naumovich Voitinsky. Born in a Jewish family in the Russian Empire, he was sent to Republican China in 1920 to infiltrate the country and set up communist cells across the country. In that he succeeded.

Voitinsky was a Comintern agent, COMmunism INTERNational being the agency tasked with spreading worldwide revolution. The CCP cadres were funded by Soviet money, and educated through Marxist texts. Although Voitinsky was the chief architect in China, he was ultimately a liaison to the Comintern HQ in Moscow which at that time was headed by Grigory Zinoviev, born Ovsei Gershon Aronovich Radomylsky. Also a Jew. The Comintern back then was one of the main Soviet agencies as the Bolshevik leadership were still swept away by revolutionary fervor, especially Trotsky advocated for aggressive fomenting abroad

Spreading communism across Republicans China was a wholly Jewish undertaking, with early USSR being payrolled by wealthy Jewish donors from especially the US and UK to boot. Voitinsky was therefore the first in a long list of grubby Jewish movers and shakers in communist China. Will soon move onto the Rothschilds, the Silvermaster Spyring, Zohar Zissapel, Israeli backdooring, the WEF, the WHO, Israel Shapiro, the Belt and Road, the UN, Mao Zedong, Henry Kissinger, the Bunting Leaf Clover Map, the BiS, Leninism-Maoism and a whole other lot of topics. Unfortunately this cannot be done all at once because the CCP big pimpin' network will immediately get activated in order to bury that hypothetical banger of a post.