China's allies do not trust China enough to use China's currency as their currency for international trade--what makes you think that the rest of the world will trust China? And China's largest bill denomination is worth about $16. Have you ever done a transaction in China worth several thousand USD? It takes a couple of hours for a bank to count that much money (almost enough to fill a shoebox), recount it (both by machine and by hand), and hand it over to you after checking your passport and other papers. China also has some severe long-term problems. They just spent about 35 years training a generation and a half of women to limit the number of children they have, and now that their economy is somewhat successful, they cannot untrain the women and get them to have babies. Their population will likely be cut in half by 2100. They also have an aging population that is rapidly approaching retirement age. And they have massive youth unemployment. Chairman Xi's answer? Tell the youth to forget their college degrees and start working in the fields. The only reason that China has not invaded Taiwan is that a U.S. leader has stated that we would defend Taiwan. That's called intimidation. China is scared of our military, no question. They know that they have some good weapons, but that only gets you so far in a war. They have little experience with warfare in the last few centuries. The U.S. won the war with Japan for them (after Japan pushed them back into the countryside), and they lost their war with Vietnam in 1979. The U.S. has much better aircraft and submarines than China does. China could probably defend their soil fairly easily against any outside invader, but if they invade another country and the U.S. defends it with all available assets, China is likely going down hard. As far as the U.S. economy collapsing, we're quite a ways away from that. Inflation is at 3.5-4.0%. The U.S. has survived inflation rates as high as 10-12% in the 1970's and 80's. A hundred billion a year to Ukraine is not going to affect that, with the exception of if Ukraine wins, we will get to reduce defense spending in the future by as much as $2.5 trillion.
Which country is stupid enough to trust China enough to trade with the yuan? China is nearly completely opaque to the outside world with how it manages its currency supply.
Ukrainians in Kharkiv are starting to get supplied with artillery shells. Ukrainian gunners finally get shells to stop Russians near Kharkiv
“Ever” is a strong word. I would say the present currency under the CCP has next-to-zero chance, unless the PRC wins a hegemonic war and is able to impose it. According to some of my readings, the average Chinese person (not members of the CCP) sees the Party as a temporary period in a larger Chinese history, not a permanent fixture as the Party sees itself. They have had despotic dynasties throughout their history, and those dynasties always fall eventually. A more open, democratic, and liberal China would almost certainly gain its territorial ambitions without needing to resort to war. Taiwan, for instance, would gladly enter into union in those circumstances; they just don’t want to be under the CCP. And I could see such a China becoming the world’s top economy and holding the world’s reserve currency. But not in my lifetime. To the second point, they absolutely want it but not at the expense of weakening the CCP’s grip on power, which it would today.
We are veering off topic but do you ever listen to Peter Zeihan? He has really interesting and insightful takes but often they seem exaggerated. He claims by 2050 China will not exist as we know it because the demographics and underlying economics are so awful that they won’t survive.
PM of Estonia musing about why it wouldn’t be bad thing to break Russia up into smaller countries. I’m sure this kind of talk will make Russia want to stop fighting …
No, I haven’t. It’s so difficult to predict things that far out. I have a hard time believing China (or Japan or South Korea, both of which face similar demographic challenges) “won’t survive” because of a current trend. I think that China will adjust as it always has.
Finally! Good to see this at least mentioned. “It’s 24/7, their infantry keeps coming, we keep fighting their attacks. At least we are trying to. Whenever possible, we take them down,” Pavlo, a gunner of Ukraine’s 92nd Separate Assault brigade operating a howitzer, told Reuters. ……”It’s much ‘hotter’ here. We didn’t have shells there. Here, at least we have shells, they started delivering them. We have something to work with, to fight.” Ukraine war briefing: Worse than Bakhmut but now we have shells, say Kharkiv defenders | Ukraine | The Guardian
Good to see the supplies are getting there in spite of the russkie's allies in congress trying to stop it or drag their feet on it.
I read a piece saying that Finland and Estonia thought this was not necessarily a big issues, standing alone, due to updated maps
Always a pleasure to see Russian invaders meet their end in Ukraine Russian troops sent flying as boat is blown up by Ukrainian drone (msn.com)
Nor should they. Both countries should just ignore it and continue business as usual. If Russia wants to provoke an incident and make our next move even easier, then I support that.
