My thoughts on China. Not news.

I see the Towns have been empty for decades rotting in place. Boarded up as the old Song goes, it's all gone now. The engines of our once dominant industry of all kinds shipped over seas in my life time. Gone. Excepting a few chosen ones that stagger on regardless of cost.

Our people has become monitized in the form of smart phones incessant advertising exhorting us to spend ever more. It's not enough to have a 20 dollar cell phone and a 10 a month plan they drumbeat the need to evolve into some sort of 24/7 face burning glare of 150 dollar a month consumption of digital crap. That rot the children. When they are reduced to 18 century western techology or even further back to that of the Colonial America they cannot function. And will starve.

Farmers long ago stored seed from the harvest. Sometimes tried to keep the annual seed in good condition for the following year crop. Now our crops seeds are injected, modified and sent to the farmers without nutrition to you and I. We process it in our bodies but we grow fat and slow rather than lean and strong UNLESS you source food a way not overseen by large corporations.

We had a small taste of food grown on our land potatos, onions, tomatoes and peppers etc. When they come in it's possible to seed the new year when it's warm enough to plant. We overflowed with food some years our own.

Essentially sometimes we fall back on the older technology as a form of remembering, and possibly keeping the rust off what we were once. I chopped a small tract of trees over 6 years to keep a number of families who had nothing warm with their children in those winter months. The mountains of chopped and seasoned wood dried ready to go lined their driveways.

IF you chopped them down further, you have shakes, shingles and what not. Just need big poles and means of lifting with tackle and combination wheels. To have a cabin. It's all there.

We might have to use that knowledge someday when things go bad. But what will happen will happen. I do a little bit because it's possible to gain information which that is useful for as long it's permitted to do so by those who own the systems, fiber lines and so on.

There is also a generation who grew up without a internet anything. And a generation who does not know a life without a internet. If you put a bunch into a room made for social time you find they are each buried in their phones. The room had no purpose to them.

When we old ones are gone and something happens in this world and all of this gets damaged or goes away they are going to have to figure it out or perish.

 

Golden Shield Project - Wikipedia

I wonder what would have happened if Japan had thier way...

 

They also practice a form of social credit score. If your score is too bad for being antisocial or whatever you lose access to trains, planes etc. Other than your two feet to get around. And not even buying much of anything. No banking etc.

The ones who have the money have been trying to get out overseas while they can. Now the banking is forcing everyone to transact in yaun. If you tried to withdraw 200 dollars American in any Chinese bank, a warning is sent to authorities and you will be denied that. And get your money in Yaun. 200 American is about 1400 yaun in devalued currency. Versus say 200 American will be around 260 pounds UK at a 1.30 rate. For example. So American dollars is being hoarded or kept where the Chinese banks cannot control it. And so the clamp on communications and so on by the State is increasing. Apparently the people are living with it. What are they going to do? Nothing.

America has been very quietly working towards a social score system, under that I would not exist online anywhere. Banking would be out as everything else. IF it was the Chinese system. Trucking? no way. You would not be able to apply or keep a license for it. The State denies that sort of thing. Databases evolve to maintain the virtual clamp. Or great chinese wall.

If things got bad we probably can hold China off in war. But it will hurt us as well. Now if there was no war for say 50 years, then you can imagine 60 Aircraft Carrier groups swarming our west coast as 2 million invade with a million or three being fitting out to follow. We do not have those numbers as they do. It will take the USA 6 months to put 14 million 18 year to 45 year old and a rifle west. China can have 2 million active duty constantly. With millions more.

Their stragety in land war with us is simple. Bury us in wave until our ammunition supply is out. Roll over those US units and seek out the next point of resistance. Roll over them If the US Citizen gets guns and hides behind every bush then it will hurt them but eradicate us. It will have to go Nuclear. Small tactical weapons that are being put on fighter jets now and refitting into D2 Posideon. Take out a city block but leave the rest of the place intact. Hundreds to thousands of them for that swarm. Just sprinkle a bunch on em and that's that.

 

Foxconn is a Taiwan company.
I can tell you a lot about cheap labor and how their combatting that, but that gets into the politics and we'll be breaking the forum rules on this particular thread. If this was on the political thread I can give more details.

 

I have built computers using parts from Taiwan, particularly MSI. Now I know nothing about who owns MSI, but I built their 2nd series branded Military two computer and overclocked the HELL out of it. 4.6 or so. 32 gig and on and on with first stacks of old Raptor 150 blacks and then later SSD's The board lasted 4 years before enough capacitors supposidely from Japan failed.

I am running a computer at stock 3.8 and it's just so monster that there is no need to overclock as I did before.

However. Foxconn is into everything arent they? In 15 years of building computers I have never seen anything specifically sourced or labeled foxconn arrive at my house from either Japan, Taiwan, Korea etc. And some for American spec drives from IBM, Intel in particular and some AMD that did really well. But some of those are built overseas in Malaysia, Costa Rico and other places. Where labor is cheap.

I used to work for Martin Marietta long ago before trucking. As such I was taught a little bit about their clean room operations and non secrets. Of which some are active secrets not allowed for us. To me it was a temple of computer stuff. But I did not take my life into that direction. One little screw up of a tool and that's Kaput. A million dollars out of your pay.

HA...

 

What galls me listening to the news lament the tariff war we've gotten ourselves into is that if you think a 10% tariff is causing great harm to our economy, can you imagine what a shock to the system it would have been if China just decided to cut us off?

It's like an addict in rehab, you can have a little pain now or a whole lot of pain (or death) later.

For 50 years it's been, "Outsource! Outsource! Outsource!" This is the canary in the coal mine moment. If we hadn't gotten into this pissing contest now we might have continued along until almost everything was critically dependent on imports. As it is things are just,,, difficult and inconvenient.

It's just good policy to diversify, global trade? Great. But don't let your entire economy become dependent on some other country.

(For the sake of brevity, I won't get into the pay gap, difference in living standards or environmental laws, but it's NOT by any stretch a level playing field and it makes my blood boil when reporters, politicians and business people completely gloss over that.)