[Newfie]

Previously in this thread I had made a comment about the Chinese population being far smaller than is admitted by the government.

Here is one article that explaines how they came up with that conclusion.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/comme ... an-2022-07


We know that China lies about much, for example it takes vastly more fish than it is allotted by treaty. So maybe they are also grossly over stating their population. If this is true then China is much further along the road to degrowth than is generally recognized. There are many more older people than younger, at least before Covid. This means their manufacturing base capability is deteriorating.

Perhaps.

[vtsnowedin]

The one child policy has certainly given them problems going forward. For one thing their military age men are all pampered princes and not likely to become good soldiers no matter how they are trained.
Perhaps they will try to import Russian Women that have had their potential husbands wasted in Ukraine.

[Newfie]

Funny, I had not considered the "pampered prince" syndrome.

Makes sense.

[vtsnowedin]

Funny, I had not considered the "pampered prince" syndrome.

Makes sense.

Add in the fact they have not fought a ground war of any size sense 1975 with a few border skirmishes with India in the Himalayas being the only exception. That means they have no officers or non coms with any real combat experience.

[Newfie]

But Taiwan would be the same, no?

[vtsnowedin]

But Taiwan would be the same, no?

Yes on the combat experience, but no on the one child policy and little princes. Also Taiwan would be defending it's homeland just like the Ukrainians and have everything to lose while most Chinese would gain little to nothing by a conquest of Taiwan.

[Newfie]

What scares me about Ukraine is that the whole mess makes no sense from a Russian view point, but knucklehead went forward anyway. Who is to say Xi is more sane than Putin? Xi has a history of making what seem to be dumb decisions.

And I do believe there is more going on there than we/I know of. I keep going back to the weeks. BEFORE Covid, when China was turning away contracted ship loads of iron ore. Something bad was going on before Covid.

[vtsnowedin]

And I do believe there is more going on there than we/I know of. I keep going back to the weeks. BEFORE Covid, when China was turning away contracted ship loads of iron ore. Something bad was going on before Covid.

I have not heard of that one but it does not surprise me to find that things in China were not as hunkydory as Xi's government made out.
The question becomes do they need to take Taiwan, pretty much intact, to balance their books and will they risk it considering the example of possible failure Ukraine has presented to the world. After the US retreat from Afghanistan and before the start of Ukraine they might have thought it would be a slam dunk but now not so much.

[Newfie]

VT,

I agree with your assessment, unfortunately that does not matter.

IMHO it is a mistake to try to understand the Chinese, or Russian, logic.

Both Putin and Xi have done a lot of things that defy our logic. They work by some other form of logic we don’t understand. I think it is special to dictators, it is how they got there and how they stay there logic. Not ours.

[Tanada]

What scares me about Ukraine is that the whole mess makes no sense from a Russian view point, but knucklehead went forward anyway.

When you say that I think you are not looking at it from the viewpoint of Russia at all. This was not something that just blew up overnight, there is a very long and tortured history behind the invasion. For one thing before the current leadership came in there was a coupe de tet in 2014 encouraged by the USA/NATO which in turn led to revolts in Crimea and further revolts in the eastern provinces which have a Russian ethnic majority population. Just because the western media more or less either ignored or justified the Coup leadership and their activities doesn't mean Russia or the population doing the revolting and being harshly suppressed were happy go lucky over events. Russia and the eastern provinces argue that during the USSR days the redrawing of the borders of Russia and Ukraine was done to bolster Ukraine influence. These borders are much like the borders the UK&France drew when they split up the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire in the post WW I chaos. Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Palestine (Israel), Syria, Lebanon were all carved out of the Ottoman Empire in totally arbitrary ways to serve the wishes of the British and French governments of the 1920's. In a similar fashion when the USSR fell apart in the 1990's the NATO/USA diplomats offered financial help only so long as the borders they liked were followed and Russia was in bad enough condition they agreed despite losing significant ethnic Russian populations in the process. This was a bad idea in 1918-1939 and it was still a bad idea in 1989-2001 when Russia was in bad economic condition. These kind of top down outside imposed borders are historically never a stable solution unless there is a thorough case of ethnic cleansing done to change the population dynamics of the resulting area of potential conflict. This can be done by deportations or murder on a mass scale. The USA did our version of it to the native inhabitants many times over the 1607-1945 period of our history and Canada did its own version under UK influence right up through the internal wars against the natives that lasted into the 20th century. Hitler tried the mass murder version of the ethnic cleansing while Stalin used the deportation and slave gulag labor version and neither were fully successful. However by the time the USSR fell apart the populations of the Baltic states had been significantly shifted to have large Russian minorities. If the process had continued another century the Baltic states would have been almost completely Russian by background. In all fairness the Teutonic Knights of the Middle Ages Period had been the reverse with Germans moving in and displacing the local Slavic population from the Brandenburg region all the way up the Baltic coast. Prussia was originally a Slavic populated area, the knights conquered their way around the coast enslaving and slaughtering the local population until it became a Germanic ethnic area from 1150-1750, Stalin was just reversing the process by shifting Slavic people in and Germanic people out.

Borders area great deal more flexible than most people seem to think, different governments have been shifting them back and forth all through human history. Pretending any political border is sacrosanct is being blind to historical reality.

Also on Putin, if Z had accepted the USA offer of asylum back in February as expected the whole war would have been over in a couple weeks and new borders would have been drawn and for the most part internationally accepted. Even today China doesn't give a hoot about the Ukraine conflict accept for the fact that it made trade with Russia even more important to Russia giving them more leverage in trade negotiations for raw materials and petroleum/natural gas.

[vtsnowedin]

However by the time the USSR fell apart the populations of the Baltic states had been significantly shifted to have large Russian minorities.

A large minority is still a minority and should not hold power.

[Newfie]

Tanada,

Understand your point. And a good long perspective analysis.

My comment was more to the short term execution of the event. It makes no sense to e courage corruption within your armed forces and then expect them to perform. The original battle plan was not thought out. Having separate military groups with separate leadership is a problem. Using your missles on civilian targets. Encouraging rape and pillage by your troops is a sure way to build western support for Ukraine.

There were more effective was for Putin to strengthen Russia, encouraging economic entanglement for example. But he chose a path for which he did not prepare properly, now it is producing negative results, by Western standards anyway. By our standards he should have prepared for the invasion better and had some unified command. I suspect he is very wary of a strong military, that is why he has Wagner and others. All the bickering between leadership means no on is strong enough to mount a coup.

Everything I read says the same, Putin is alone and isolated and making poor decisions.

Every thing I read about Xi makes the same points, isolation and poor decisions.

[vtsnowedin]

Tanada,

Understand your point. And a good long perspective analysis.

My comment was more to the short term execution of the event. It makes no sense to e courage corruption within your armed forces and then expect them to perform. The original battle plan was not thought out. Having separate military groups with separate leadership is a problem. Using your missles on civilian targets. Encouraging rape and pillage by your troops is a sure way to build western support for Ukraine.

There were more effective was for Putin to strengthen Russia, encouraging economic entanglement for example. But he chose a path for which he did not prepare properly, now it is producing negative results, by Western standards anyway. By our standards he should have prepared for the invasion better and had some unified command. I suspect he is very wary of a strong military, that is why he has Wagner and others. All the bickering between leadership means no on is strong enough to mount a coup.

Everything I read says the same, Putin is alone and isolated and making poor decisions.

Every thing I read about Xi makes the same points, isolation and poor decisions.

The question is will Taiwan and the USA make good decisions.
We should make Taiwan a prickly porcupine with skunk glands that only the stupidest dog would try to bite.

[Newfie]

Yeah, BUT I have seen lots of pictures of dogs with porcupine bristles, sometimes kills them. The way to get skunk sti k out of a dog is with tomato juice, I once had a very stupid dog that would not learn.

[vtsnowedin]

Yeah, BUT I have seen lots of pictures of dogs with porcupine bristles, sometimes kills them. The way to get skunk sti k out of a dog is with tomato juice, I once had a very stupid dog that would not learn.

Well yes there are a lot of stupid dogs having pulled more then a few quills from my dogs noses and tongues. But adding in the skunk stint might make even the dumbest Chinese dog think twice.
II hope we can do that as China invading Taiwan would be killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

[Newfie]

Completely agree. I just never underestimate the power of stupid.

[Tanada]

Yeah, BUT I have seen lots of pictures of dogs with porcupine bristles, sometimes kills them. The way to get skunk stink out of a dog is with tomato juice, I once had a very stupid dog that would not learn.

Most folks pick Tomato juice as the cheapest easy to get source of citric acid. Pretty much any fruit juice will work, but you want juices without added sugar as it just slows the reaction rate down. I never tried it but I have been told vinegar and cheap wine also do the trick of dissolving the skunk oil into solution but even cheap wine is much pricier than tomato juice.

[theluckycountry]

pampered princes and not likely to become good soldiers no matter how they are trained.

Oh I don't know, they were pretty good at driving the US forces out of North Korea back in the day and they have tooled up a lot since then. I think you will find that's it's the US military that is full of miscreants and no hopers these days.

On August 21, 2017 10 sailors were killed when the destroyer collided with an oil tanker as it entered the busy waterway into the port of Singapore. The collision occurred two months after seven sailors were killed when the destroyer USS Fitzgerald collided with a container ship off the coast of Japan.

The US navy? Mexican navy?

[AdamB]

I think you will find that's it's the US military that is full of miscreants and no hopers these days.

Indeed, what does the US military know, other than how to take and hold territory on the other side of the planet? The national building was entertaining, and unsuccessful. Some folks just don't want modern. I suppose the only way to compare the US to any other military power would be like saying that the US can invade most everyone else in the world as effectively as..oh...Australia could invade Antarctica? And that is a bit of a tossup, some of those scientist types will have hair pins and scissors and stuff to fight off a powder puff military force of Sissys....sorry...Aussies....

Now, New Zealand, that gang could easily conquer Antartica, and probably knock off Australia just to get another forward operating base to do it from.

[vtsnowedin]

I think you will find that's it's the US military that is full of miscreants and no hopers these days.

Indeed, what does the US military know, other than how to take and hold territory on the other side of the planet? The national building was entertaining, and unsuccessful. Some folks just don't want modern. I suppose the only way to compare the US to any other military power would be like saying that the US can invade most everyone else in the world as effectively as..oh...Australia could invade Antarctica? And that is a bit of a tossup, some of those scientist types will have hair pins and scissors and stuff to fight off a powder puff military force of Sissys....sorry...Aussies....

Now, New Zealand, that gang could easily conquer Antartica, and probably knock off Australia just to get another forward operating base to do it from.

What nonsense.
You really need to but a better grade of weed so you can come back to something close to reality.