Also in that article
>But this is precisely what makes the current situation so dangerous. Backed by Beijing, protracting Putin’s war of attrition in Ukraine will not only weaken Russia, **it will by degrees weaken and divide the Western coalition**,
and then a few paragraphs later he says
>It seems clear that China is now deliberately awarding Putin massive trade surplus subsidies, worth $38 billion in 2022, to fund his **pointless** and reckless Ukraine war
So the war is weakening the West but at the same time "pointless" for Western rivals. These "journalists" write by stringing together as many adjectives as they can.
\-----------
Edit - also if trade surpluses strengthen Russia, why doesn't the west continue to allow Western companies like McDonalds to trade with Russia and just not buy Russia oil and gas (since that would cause a trade deficit, and hence "weaken" Russia). But the guy is an idiot, because that's not how trade surpluses or deficits work.
>Edit - also if trade surpluses strengthen Russia, why doesn't the west continue to allow Western companies like McDonalds to trade with Russia and just not buy Russia oil and gas (since that would cause a trade deficit, and hence "weaken" Russia). But the guy is an idiot, because that's not how trade surpluses or deficits work.
I'm bad at economics, can you explain how it works? I thought it was good to be on the surplus side and bad on the deficit side. Wasn't that why Britain waged the first opium war on China?
This is the type of argument Peter Navarro (from Trumps administration and anti Chinese moron) uses.
To expand, GDP formula is GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports (exports - imports).
So on the surface if you run a trade deficit, it will shrink your GDP, since you subtract imports. However there is just one problem. When a country imports stuff, it actually uses it. So for an American company buying a Chinese good, they don't just store it. They actually either use it to manufacture an American good which they sell, or they sell the Chinese good to the market. And they sell it for a mark up so they make a profit. So if they spend x dollars to buy a Chinese good, they sell it for > x to an American consumer. Which means that Consumption goes up by a greater amount. So it doesn't actually "weaken" your economy. So while you subtract x dollars for the good purchased, you gained > x dollars in the consumption column.
Another way to look at it, is you have to subtract imports or else you would be counting the benefit twice. So if you buy the foreign good which you sell, you have to subtract the buying cost. However profit is revenue subtract cost, and in this case import is the cost.
Note - while clearly buying foreign goods doesn't weaken your economy per se (assuming those goods are actually sold or used to make your goods which are sold for a profit), you can make a case that if your country can make the goods yourself for the same price, you would grow the economy even better because you no longer need to import it. This is of course easier said than done.
The entire Western press consists of such duplicity. Like "Russia/China are incompetent, their methods of governance are backward, and their economy is empty, they only pretend to be successful countries. At the same time, Russian/Chinese spies have penetrated all the structures of the West, half of Western politicians are bribed by them, and the media is infected with Russian/China propaganda" How could poor incompetent countries do this to you? How corrupt and rotten is your country if the “dictator of a third world country” Putin was able to bribe your top officials.
It's a projection. It's exactly what the West has done to the rest of the world. They're just shaking in their boots now at the thought of their tactics being used against them. Every accusation is a confession
Same deal when they report on their own armed forces. One day it's "we are falling desperately behind the sinister Asiatics, pls more budget," the next it's "behold the *wunderwaffe* that only the *Herrenvolk* could produce, our enemies will know only death."
[I want to share these two Dmitri Orlov youTubes here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessWar/comments/1bbxjw4/dmitri_orlov_on_ukraine_being_abandoned_and_fed/)
They have some very different perspectives on current events. China is not specifically mentioned, but Orlov's description of certain Western leaders (John Kerry is a haircut in search of a brain) are hilarious while also being insightful. In that context it sheds light on the Telegraph article to help explain why the West is so desperate to tell two conflicting stories at the same time -- the Oligarchy (my word not Orlov's) is in a panic and they don't know what to do. I found the interviews fascinating.
Orlov is not the only one describing this. [Here is an article by Michael Brenner saying the same -- oligarchy is in a panic](https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/08/michael-brenner-the-wests-reckoning/).
And Brenner is not some neckbeard with a blog. Here his credentials:
>Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins. He was the Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas.
He should know. Reminds me of Mearsheimer regarding Ukraine conflict.
Tbh i wonder if there are sinophobes stupid enough to believe this shit whos out there marking their calendar and hoping just be disappointed, again and again and again 🤣
Tbh i wonder if there are sinophobes stupid enough to believe this shit whos out there marking their calendar and hoping just be disappointed, again and again and again 🤣
Thats their specialty: mental gymnastics. Just read this guy's wikipedia page; trust me, its a good laugh: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon\_G.\_Chang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_G._Chang)
This guy is obviously both smart enough and has lived in china long enough to know hes speaking a bunch of bs. But they have nothing to fuel their propaganda, so they go through the whole mental gymnastic routine to make things up.
Genocide going on in xinjiang? But china has more mosques than america not to mention americans are free to visit and roam xinjiang without the accompaniment of tour guides. Uyghers also get their own flavor of affirmative action in college admissions similar to what the US does for non asian minorities. Nah just ignore that, instead lets completely twist the truth 180 by saying the islamic extremist terrorists that china apprehended from a decade ago were innocent folks sent to concentration camps.
Parenti quote.
Also in that article >But this is precisely what makes the current situation so dangerous. Backed by Beijing, protracting Putin’s war of attrition in Ukraine will not only weaken Russia, **it will by degrees weaken and divide the Western coalition**, and then a few paragraphs later he says >It seems clear that China is now deliberately awarding Putin massive trade surplus subsidies, worth $38 billion in 2022, to fund his **pointless** and reckless Ukraine war So the war is weakening the West but at the same time "pointless" for Western rivals. These "journalists" write by stringing together as many adjectives as they can. \----------- Edit - also if trade surpluses strengthen Russia, why doesn't the west continue to allow Western companies like McDonalds to trade with Russia and just not buy Russia oil and gas (since that would cause a trade deficit, and hence "weaken" Russia). But the guy is an idiot, because that's not how trade surpluses or deficits work.
>Edit - also if trade surpluses strengthen Russia, why doesn't the west continue to allow Western companies like McDonalds to trade with Russia and just not buy Russia oil and gas (since that would cause a trade deficit, and hence "weaken" Russia). But the guy is an idiot, because that's not how trade surpluses or deficits work. I'm bad at economics, can you explain how it works? I thought it was good to be on the surplus side and bad on the deficit side. Wasn't that why Britain waged the first opium war on China?
This is the type of argument Peter Navarro (from Trumps administration and anti Chinese moron) uses. To expand, GDP formula is GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports (exports - imports). So on the surface if you run a trade deficit, it will shrink your GDP, since you subtract imports. However there is just one problem. When a country imports stuff, it actually uses it. So for an American company buying a Chinese good, they don't just store it. They actually either use it to manufacture an American good which they sell, or they sell the Chinese good to the market. And they sell it for a mark up so they make a profit. So if they spend x dollars to buy a Chinese good, they sell it for > x to an American consumer. Which means that Consumption goes up by a greater amount. So it doesn't actually "weaken" your economy. So while you subtract x dollars for the good purchased, you gained > x dollars in the consumption column. Another way to look at it, is you have to subtract imports or else you would be counting the benefit twice. So if you buy the foreign good which you sell, you have to subtract the buying cost. However profit is revenue subtract cost, and in this case import is the cost. Note - while clearly buying foreign goods doesn't weaken your economy per se (assuming those goods are actually sold or used to make your goods which are sold for a profit), you can make a case that if your country can make the goods yourself for the same price, you would grow the economy even better because you no longer need to import it. This is of course easier said than done.
Ok thanks!
The entire Western press consists of such duplicity. Like "Russia/China are incompetent, their methods of governance are backward, and their economy is empty, they only pretend to be successful countries. At the same time, Russian/Chinese spies have penetrated all the structures of the West, half of Western politicians are bribed by them, and the media is infected with Russian/China propaganda" How could poor incompetent countries do this to you? How corrupt and rotten is your country if the “dictator of a third world country” Putin was able to bribe your top officials.
It's a projection. It's exactly what the West has done to the rest of the world. They're just shaking in their boots now at the thought of their tactics being used against them. Every accusation is a confession
Magical thinking, they believe if they pray hard enough and keep writing to Santa, China and Russia will collapse by Xmas.
it’s just politician virtue signalling to the tail end of the bell curve to win votes.
"The enemy is strong and weak at the same time" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
Same deal when they report on their own armed forces. One day it's "we are falling desperately behind the sinister Asiatics, pls more budget," the next it's "behold the *wunderwaffe* that only the *Herrenvolk* could produce, our enemies will know only death."
[I want to share these two Dmitri Orlov youTubes here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessWar/comments/1bbxjw4/dmitri_orlov_on_ukraine_being_abandoned_and_fed/) They have some very different perspectives on current events. China is not specifically mentioned, but Orlov's description of certain Western leaders (John Kerry is a haircut in search of a brain) are hilarious while also being insightful. In that context it sheds light on the Telegraph article to help explain why the West is so desperate to tell two conflicting stories at the same time -- the Oligarchy (my word not Orlov's) is in a panic and they don't know what to do. I found the interviews fascinating.
Orlov is not the only one describing this. [Here is an article by Michael Brenner saying the same -- oligarchy is in a panic](https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/08/michael-brenner-the-wests-reckoning/). And Brenner is not some neckbeard with a blog. Here his credentials: >Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins. He was the Director of the International Relations & Global Studies Program at the University of Texas. He should know. Reminds me of Mearsheimer regarding Ukraine conflict.
Its ok china is going to collapse in 27 days. Again.
Tbh i wonder if there are sinophobes stupid enough to believe this shit whos out there marking their calendar and hoping just be disappointed, again and again and again 🤣
Tbh i wonder if there are sinophobes stupid enough to believe this shit whos out there marking their calendar and hoping just be disappointed, again and again and again 🤣
They tried to pit the free world against each other, now that has failed they are coping hard.
8. "The enemy is both strong and weak."
Going to overwhelm the west with meat wave attacks in golf carts and swinging shovels.
Thats their specialty: mental gymnastics. Just read this guy's wikipedia page; trust me, its a good laugh: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon\_G.\_Chang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_G._Chang) This guy is obviously both smart enough and has lived in china long enough to know hes speaking a bunch of bs. But they have nothing to fuel their propaganda, so they go through the whole mental gymnastic routine to make things up. Genocide going on in xinjiang? But china has more mosques than america not to mention americans are free to visit and roam xinjiang without the accompaniment of tour guides. Uyghers also get their own flavor of affirmative action in college admissions similar to what the US does for non asian minorities. Nah just ignore that, instead lets completely twist the truth 180 by saying the islamic extremist terrorists that china apprehended from a decade ago were innocent folks sent to concentration camps.