The situation in East Asia cannot be sustained - Prepare for War

[COMMI3 MARK]

How much is the CCP paying you to spew this bullshit, you little prick?

Not enough it would seem.

 

[mindlessobserver]

You missed a spot, technically there's a small chunk of Kashmir claimed by China that dates back to the days of the Qing Empire. Considering how much China despises India over the whole Tibet thing, I wouldn't be surprised if they help Pakistan make India glow in the dark if conflict breaks out.

There's another thing though. China is on a ticking clock. Their population is getting older, and they didn't have enough kids to replace them. As a Communist country, they have a very exstensive set of public and social welfare programs to care for the elderly (debate the effectiveness of them if you want, point is they're there) so once the bulk of the population passes into senescence there will be an apocalyptically huge strain on the economy that, frankly, might fucking cause China to implode altogether. And they can't just arbitrarily take those welfare programs away either, otherwise we'd see some serious, bloody rioting that would make Tianamen Square look like an LGBT Pride march.

Their leaders know all of this, which is why they are enacting all of this crazy shit right now. Off the top of my head, here's China's list of shit to do, in no particular order:

• Take those stupid islands (presumably there's oil under there nobody is talking about, or something.)
• Do something to get Taiwan back.
• Get North Korea to calm down, shut up and stop fucking with their plans for the US.
• Figure out how to fuckstomp India so they shut the fuck up about Tibet.
• Gladhand Pakistan enough so they switch sides from us to China, presumably for leverage against India.
• Get that insane Silk Road continental infrastructural plan off the ground so they can steal Central Asia out from under Russia.
• Possibly look into building that gas pipeline across the Caspian Sea so they can stick their dick into Caucasus too.
• Install friendly regimes in Africa for those sweet, sweet rare earth and radioactive resources.
• Transition to some form of clean or atomic energy so it stops raining used motor oil in major cities and placing a further burden on their socialized healthcare system.
• Figure out some way to get ASEAN to either break up or bow down to them. I presume this is why they keep fucking with Australia.
• Vietnam and Indonesia to my knowledge still despise China (odd couple, I know) and will work against any plan to dick with ASEAN, so they have to figure out how to neutralize them too.

Stop me if I left anything out.

By the way, your estimated timeframe of about 20 years is on the money but not in the way you think. I'd say China has about 20 years left before the sun sets. The senior members of China's hierarchy are already old fuckers and by 20 years from now much of their core population is gonna be either getting up there in age or gonna be old as fuck. So either the PLA is either gonna come down with a serious case of alzheimers or they're gonna need to transition to a heavily automated system using lots of drones and robots. So that giant list of crap above, something I'd wager would take a century done properly, has to all be crammed into a single generation's worth of operations.

It's all so tiresome.

Cant argue with this. The big issue I see with East Asia is that there are simply too many failure points. Even at the worst of the cold war the o ly real failure point the US had with the Soviets was over who was in charge in Europe. But even there the US and Russia didnt have actual disputes over where the borders were, let alone have them be exasperated by centuries of historical grievances. What historical grievances were present were studiously sat on by both sides. By America who didnt give a shit about what the Europeans thought and the Russians by achieving all their historical ambitions and then some when they captured and held Berlin.

That just is not the case in East Asia. There is a definite multipolar great power dynamic establishing itself and the US is not going to be strong enough to sit on everyone involved indefinitely

 

[TFT-A9]

Cant argue with this. The big issue I see with East Asia is that there are simply too many failure points. Even at the worst of the cold war the o ly real failure point the US had with the Soviets was over who was in charge in Europe. But even there the US and Russia didnt have actual disputes over where the borders were, let alone have them be exasperated by centuries of historical grievances. What historical grievances were present were studiously sat on by both sides. By America who didnt give a shit about what the Europeans thought and the Russians by achieving all their historical ambitions and then some when they captured and held Berlin.

That just is not the case in East Asia. There is a definite multipolar great power dynamic establishing itself and the US is not going to be strong enough to sit on everyone involved indefinitely

If the US is no longer the biggest swinging dick in the room does that mean we won't have to play World Police for every other "Western democracy" out there? Is that a good thing or a bad thing in the long run? I'm kind of sick of "nation-building" bullshit.

 

[L50LasPak]

The sad truth is that other than Japan we never had a grip on East Asia, or really Asia in general. Its too big and complicated. As much as I'd love for the American Empire to dominate and sell the Chinese the fabled $1 TV like in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy its just not practical. Besides, East Asia has deep-seated hatreds far beyond what we understand as normal racism. They despise each other worse than any white, black or hispanic will ever despise the other; and they're all waiting for just that right moment for the string to break and everyone to rip each other to shreds. Their hatred goes back centuries before Europe even colonized the Americas. If we try to get in the way of that, there'll be hell to pay, on top of how much they hate the west for interfering in their affairs.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The real problem in Asia is the People's Republic of China.

You take out or at least subjugate the PRC, and a lot of dominoes will fall. North Korea won't be able to keep itself together as easily without the People's Republic of China propping them up for border security reasons (The CCP doesn't really like the Kims anymore, but they don't want the ROK near their border nor do they want to be flooded with refugees) and then the biggest conflicts will be between South Korea and Japan (both countries are close American allies, which can help us) and the more important and high-stakes conflict between India and Pakistan.

Honestly, the United States should be backing our traditional allies of Japan and South Korea, and also take a wider stance that is more pro-India and anti-China

 

[Coleslaw]

I'm a realist and this is coming from the situation on the ground. Perspective is objective in this case. I've been in and around Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou for the past 3 weeks. Currently posting from a shanghai hotel room.

No homeless, no beggars, no crime, no grafitti, no bullshit.

Even the street sweepers and trash collectors are smiling and happy and doing their jobs with a spring in their step. This is an indicator of ya'll about to get fucked. A nation at its core is comprised of individual people, and these here individuals are pumped up and ready to be numbah won. The streets are being paved with fucking gold. Let's rebel goys. Let's go back to killing and poverty lol.

Talk of civil war or rebellion against the regime in this atmosphere is fucking hilariously off-mark. You have no idea. Imagine you've just won the lottery. Are you going to contemplate suicide? Nope. Even Chinese maids with their $2 hour salaries know they've won the lottery.

Have some pics coz ya'll need some perspective.

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How'd you manage to see the science museum when it was empty? (Honest question, I like talking about my city.)

 

[MrTickles]

How'd you manage to see the science museum when it was empty? (Honest question, I like talking about my city.)

It was not empty. There were at least a few hundred school kids in there. I hoped it would be empty but it was filled with little brats.

 

[Coleslaw]

It was not empty. There were at least a few hundred school kids in there. I hoped it would be empty but it was filled with little brats.

Haha yeah, everyone and his grandmother goes there for a school trip. Did you see Century Park?

 

[MrTickles]

Haha yeah, everyone and his grandmother goes there for a school trip. Did you see Century Park?

Yup. Seen about 20+ galleries and museums and stuff in Shanghai. Here for another few weeks will see more stuff. The propaganda poster museum was weird. Just a bunch of old junk in some dudes basement.

 

[Coleslaw]

Yup. Seen about 20+ galleries and museums and stuff in Shanghai. Here for another few weeks will see more stuff. The propaganda poster museum was weird. Just a bunch of old junk in some dudes basement.

Make sure to head out west and see the subway museum. There's a place where you can pretend to drive a train.

 

[Unyielding Stupidity]

Considering the general building quality of most modern Chinese buildings thanks to substandard materials being used to quickly inflate their GDP, pretty much anything that explodes with more power than a hand grenade would probably bring down such buildings with ease. China wouldn't really be able to fight for that long without all their new shiny ghost cities turning into a fine grey mist.

 

[soy_king]

What I dont understand is why the US Decided to push for ASEAN to include notoriously pro Chinese states like Cambodia and Laos? All it does is render that organization essentially toothless, and reduce it from a unified front to a score of bickering nations that China can defeat piecemeal

 

[Sweet and Savoury]

You want to worry about nuclear war in Asia?

Worry about India and Pakistan. They hate each other with an undying passion and the Paki's have an inferiority complex about their bigger neighbors.

If nukes are going to fly...it will be from there.

 

[Still Anonymous For This]

EDIT: Holy shit, this was far longer than I intended. TL;DR: China is a bit shit.

China might figure out a way to win, but the PRC itself is one major recession away from a bloody civil war, if not outright counter-revolution and the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Chinese people are mostly compliant and willingly go along with the totalitarian abuses of the Communist Party only because of the economic prosperity that has been going on for the past thirty years. Once the bubble bursts, the people will be pissed and chaos will take over.

They managed to skate by during the late 2000's global meltdown, so a lot of people are convinced of China being an invincible superpower in the making.

The problem with China is that it's a weird mishmash of a paper tiger and a potential superpower. But it's hard to tell where the superpower ends and the paper tiger begins, precisely because the Chinese government is so secretive about it.

I'm about a month late to this party, but whatever.

An overwhelming majority of Chinese do not give two actual fucks about their government. I've never met anyone in China who wasn't patriotic about China, but I've never met one who earnestly gives two shits about the Party. Almost everyone in the nation plays along in order to do business: I know of more than one businessman in China who belongs to the Party for the sole reason that it makes it much easier for them to run their own little stores. Everyone knows the Chinese Communist Party is shit, but there's just not enough incentive to get shot in the face yet over it.

But this isn't 2003. The CCP is losing their grip on the internet in the country. Spend any amount of time in China as a foreigner and within a day of meeting someone, you're very likely going to be asked if you can help them get a VPN. Chinese citizens crave Western media and social media.

Majority (60%) is in cities. And I have been there, will share some pics soon. Countryside is actually cleaner and more pleasant than the bustling cities.

This is an absolute load of bullshit. Areas in which foreigners might be seen are kept immaculately clean. Cities in China are, to be fair, fairly clean. Go to Shanghai or Hangzhou and you'll see a veritable army of elderly men and women shuffling around with trash-cans and brooms in orange jumpsuits sweeping the place up. They absolutely do not hop around with a spring in their step: they're almost all over sixty and they're never smiling.

Outside of centers of commerce and outside of tourist attractions, there absolutely is abject poverty in China and it absolutely is not clean. Taizhou comes to mind, where roads are not paved and tenement housing is stacked up on top of each other. Houses are poorly built and poorly maintained.

What MrTickles has not explained in his photos is the distinct lack of people. There is an exceptionally small amount of people in the locations he took pictures of, because nobody in China can either be fucked or can afford to go to those places. Take a picture of either of Hangzhou's train stations and the lines at the ticket booths that go out the fucking door and wrap around the building and get back to me about cleanliness and efficiency. And the tellers who close their fucking windows when there's still people waiting in line, because fuck them, she has to take a break and can't be fucked to wait for her replacement.

I welcome anyone to visit a hotel in China and try to get literally anything done. The Chinese have a long and storied history during the CCP age, where if they don't know you, they will do anything and everything to pass off your quest onto someone else. And if that person, who told another person, who told another person, who told another person, didn't do it? Well, fuck you, they tried to help you, why are you upset?

They wrote the art of war, they will figure out a way to win.

That was the 6th Century BC. That's like saying the Greeks are the true military powerhouse of Europe, because Sparta.

China does not have a warrior culture, no matter how many shitty Russian knock-off tanks they parade through Tiananmen Square. For the past few centuries at least, soldiering was considered a waste of a man's time. Arts and commerce was considered the honorable trades for men. You couldn't make your family a fortune if you got decapitated by Mongols on the steppe. There's a reason why China during World War II was such a fuck-up: avoiding military service gets you props in that country not shame like it does in the United States.

I love ragging on how unprofessional and poorly equipped the Russian military is: it is a paper tiger. With that said, the Russians could shit all over the Chinese military (which swears allegiance to the party and not to China) any day of the week. It's actually kind of interesting when you look at Chinese military equipment. If you're a nation who does already have a military industrial complex, nor do you have the inclination or the ability to develop one, you essentially have two options: you either buy from a NATO power and spend a pretty penny on American, French, German, British, etc equipment. Whether that be a Leopard 2 or an F-16 Falcon. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, and you just need shit that works and is pretty okay, you buy from Russia. Whether that's a T-72 variant or a MiG-29.

Outside of Pakistan and Myanmar, China cannot compete against NATO and Russia in the export market. Their equipment is nowhere near as good as NATO equipment and unless China is trying to bully your shitty African nation into buying even more cheap Type 56 rifle knock-offs because they just built that shiny road for you, there's no reason not to buy from the Russians. The Type 90 Chinese tank was supposed to be an export tank for China, since they didn't approve it for service in the PLA, but nobody outside the Pakistanis bought it. Nobody except the Sudanese have bought the Type 96. Why? Because a T-72 with a bunch of shit plastered on it is still a better tank and that's not necessarily a high bar to meet.

You want to worry about nuclear war in Asia?

Worry about India and Pakistan. They hate each other with an undying passion and the Paki's have an inferiority complex about their bigger neighbors.

If nukes are going to fly...it will be from there.

I used to worry about an Indian-Pakistani conflict going nuclear, but considering the performances of both militaries during their last spat, I sincerely doubt either of them are competent enough to even get their warheads into the air and on target.

That's not a joke.

 

[MrJokerRager]

That was the 6th Century BC. That's like saying the Greeks are the true military powerhouse of Europe, because Sparta.

China does not have a warrior culture, no matter how many shitty Russian knock-off tanks they parade through Tiananmen Square. For the past few centuries at least, soldiering was considered a waste of a man's time. Arts and commerce was considered the honorable trades for men. You couldn't make your family a fortune if you got decapitated by Mongols on the steppe. There's a reason why China during World War II was such a fuck-up: avoiding military service gets you props in that country not shame like it does in the United States.

I love ragging on how unprofessional and poorly equipped the Russian military is: it is a paper tiger. With that said, the Russians could shit all over the Chinese military (which swears allegiance to the party and not to China) any day of the week. It's actually kind of interesting when you look at Chinese military equipment. If you're a nation who does already have a military industrial complex, nor do you have the inclination or the ability to develop one, you essentially have two options: you either buy from a NATO power and spend a pretty penny on American, French, German, British, etc equipment. Whether that be a Leopard 2 or an F-16 Falcon. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, and you just need shit that works and is pretty okay, you buy from Russia. Whether that's a T-72 variant or a MiG-29.

But Battlefield 4 told me China Stronk. I remember talking about the Chinese stuff is a copycat of American or Russian to a Chinese Mainlander once, he told me yeah that Chinese military hardware sucks. That was just a personal anecdote. I know this is unrelated but EA has proven that you can make great visual games, just abandon the story mode cause it sucked for all Battlefield games except maybe 1 cause that was somewhat unique then they fuck it up in 5.

Didn't China fail in World War 2 because before that conflict, it got colonized by literally all the major world powers during one of their opium rebellions and it took Uncle Sam to tell everyone to fuck off but the damage was done. And the Japanese definitely were stronger and more experienced by the time World War 2 happened. They were also in the middle of a civil war between Communists and Nationalists when Hirohito decided to join the party. Can't expect them to wage a war when the country was not unified till after the end of the war.

Also Russia tried to threaten China and made one of their classical errors when they tried to show off their T-62 tank, state of the art at the time, and it broke down in Chinese territory during a skirmish. They failed to destroy it and the Chinese took that thing and started their native tank development based off it.

Edit: Also told them how to make the Atom Bomb, kind changes a lot of things when it comes to leverage.

 

[Coleslaw]

EDIT: Holy shit, this was far longer than I intended. TL;DR: China is a bit shit.



I'm about a month late to this party, but whatever.

An overwhelming majority of Chinese do not give two actual fucks about their government. I've never met anyone in China who wasn't patriotic about China, but I've never met one who earnestly gives two shits about the Party. Almost everyone in the nation plays along in order to do business: I know of more than one businessman in China who belongs to the Party for the sole reason that it makes it much easier for them to run their own little stores. Everyone knows the Chinese Communist Party is shit, but there's just not enough incentive to get shot in the face yet over it.

But this isn't 2003. The CCP is losing their grip on the internet in the country. Spend any amount of time in China as a foreigner and within a day of meeting someone, you're very likely going to be asked if you can help them get a VPN. Chinese citizens crave Western media and social media.



This is an absolute load of bullshit. Areas in which foreigners might be seen are kept immaculately clean. Cities in China are, to be fair, fairly clean. Go to Shanghai or Hangzhou and you'll see a veritable army of elderly men and women shuffling around with trash-cans and brooms in orange jumpsuits sweeping the place up. They absolutely do not hop around with a spring in their step: they're almost all over sixty and they're never smiling.

Outside of centers of commerce and outside of tourist attractions, there absolutely is abject poverty in China and it absolutely is not clean. Taizhou comes to mind, where roads are not paved and tenement housing is stacked up on top of each other. Houses are poorly built and poorly maintained.

What MrTickles has not explained in his photos is the distinct lack of people. There is an exceptionally small amount of people in the locations he took pictures of, because nobody in China can either be fucked or can afford to go to those places. Take a picture of either of Hangzhou's train stations and the lines at the ticket booths that go out the fucking door and wrap around the building and get back to me about cleanliness and efficiency. And the tellers who close their fucking windows when there's still people waiting in line, because fuck them, she has to take a break and can't be fucked to wait for her replacement.

I welcome anyone to visit a hotel in China and try to get literally anything done. The Chinese have a long and storied history during the CCP age, where if they don't know you, they will do anything and everything to pass off your quest onto someone else. And if that person, who told another person, who told another person, who told another person, didn't do it? Well, fuck you, they tried to help you, why are you upset?



That was the 6th Century BC. That's like saying the Greeks are the true military powerhouse of Europe, because Sparta.

China does not have a warrior culture, no matter how many shitty Russian knock-off tanks they parade through Tiananmen Square. For the past few centuries at least, soldiering was considered a waste of a man's time. Arts and commerce was considered the honorable trades for men. You couldn't make your family a fortune if you got decapitated by Mongols on the steppe. There's a reason why China during World War II was such a fuck-up: avoiding military service gets you props in that country not shame like it does in the United States.

I love ragging on how unprofessional and poorly equipped the Russian military is: it is a paper tiger. With that said, the Russians could shit all over the Chinese military (which swears allegiance to the party and not to China) any day of the week. It's actually kind of interesting when you look at Chinese military equipment. If you're a nation who does already have a military industrial complex, nor do you have the inclination or the ability to develop one, you essentially have two options: you either buy from a NATO power and spend a pretty penny on American, French, German, British, etc equipment. Whether that be a Leopard 2 or an F-16 Falcon. If you don't want to spend a lot of money, and you just need shit that works and is pretty okay, you buy from Russia. Whether that's a T-72 variant or a MiG-29.

Outside of Pakistan and Myanmar, China cannot compete against NATO and Russia in the export market. Their equipment is nowhere near as good as NATO equipment and unless China is trying to bully your shitty African nation into buying even more cheap Type 56 rifle knock-offs because they just built that shiny road for you, there's no reason not to buy from the Russians. The Type 90 Chinese tank was supposed to be an export tank for China, since they didn't approve it for service in the PLA, but nobody outside the Pakistanis bought it. Nobody except the Sudanese have bought the Type 96. Why? Because a T-72 with a bunch of shit plastered on it is still a better tank and that's not necessarily a high bar to meet.



I used to worry about an Indian-Pakistani conflict going nuclear, but considering the performances of both militaries during their last spat, I sincerely doubt either of them are competent enough to even get their warheads into the air and on target.

That's not a joke.

Southern Jiangsu has been historically and currently a wealthy and fertile area, so even if he went to the country, it would not represent all of rural China.
Source: Family is from there.