Something I kinda want to talk about since it'll be relevant to the Biden admin's policies in Asia is the current inter-party LDP election happening in Japan. For context, Japan is a free democracy with plenty of opposition parties, but it is a de-facto one party state whose politics are securely controlled by the Liberal Democratic Party. These people make the American Cabal's factionalism and shadow warring look like fucking nothing.
As of this post being typed results for the first vote are coming in. First vote is important, because it's very likely nobody will get a 50% majority and win. Following this vote there will be a quick runoff vote, where Japan's House of Representatives votes for one of the two highest leading candidates. It only takes an hour from start of voting to all the votes being counted, for reference.
View attachment 2579423
There are four candidates being voted on right now. From left to right:
Taro Kono (Orange), Fumio Kishida (Red), Sanae Takaichi (Blue), and Seiko Noda (Green).
Kono is the current favorite to win the title of LDP's candidate for Prime Minister (which will make him the Prime Minister, essentially). He's a few percentage points of winning right now, however. Kishida and Takaichi's supporters however have agreed to combine their votes to oppose Kono, and as for Noda... Noda voters are irrelevant.
As a basic tl;dr, all three (see: "Noda voters are irrelevant.") of these candidates are experienced Japanese politicians with no health issues and only limited controversies. Kono and Kishida are typical conservatives but Takaichi is a nationalist, who among other things insists on praying at Yasukuni (a Shinto shrine that reveres Japanese war criminals as spirits, or kami). This makes the Chinese very upset and she says she'll continue to pray there even if she becomes Premier. I'll edit this post in a bit to add their policy positions but this election moves fast, unlike the American one, so I'll put this out to get some eyes on it. As for why no thread, it's too late for one methinks.