My sources for the preamble come mostly from here, here, and here.

The thread image depicts Kenyan police, trained by the Zionist entity, in a meeting with President Ruto before being sent to Haiti, sourced from this article.


As has been planned for the last couple years, foreign police officers have been inside Haiti for a few months now. It will surprise nobody to learn that this has not gone very well. Gangs continue to control much of the country, and violence has continued in the form of massacres and forced relocations (approximately 1.3 million). Something like 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, is under the control of one gang or another.

The aim by the US was to import 2500 police officers to Haiti from a wide variety of countries. One of those was Kenya; President Ruto had to fight his own country’s courts to force this through, and ironically is now apparently considering withdrawing those officers once the UN mandate expires on October 2nd. The issue here is not only the limited manpower (Haiti has a population of 12 million), but also very pedestrian things, like the fact that the officers who arrive don’t even speak the language.

The situation in Haiti appears to be a fairly standard operation of American national control, in which both battling sides are being supported by the US in order to create maximum disorganization and prevent a coherent political force from arising and thus threatening their Caribbean interests. While the US funds foreign forces to arrive in Haiti to “control the situation” or similar justifications, the Haitian gangs get their weapons smuggled in from the US itself. That this is happening alongside escalations against Venezuela is obviously not a coincidence - in a world in which American interests are being gradually shrugged off, and where the American state military is becoming rapidly more impotent and unable to dissuade and defeat even tiny states like Yemen, total imperial dominion of their immediate surrounding territory must be ensured by any means necessary.

The police and the gangs are likely designed to be mutually reinforcing, without even much kayfabe of fighting each other. As an example, once the Kenyan police arrived, they immediately began brutalizing anti-government protestors instead of focussing on gang activity. They were trained by the Zionist entity, after all.


Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the RedAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

Israel's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.


  • PalestinianDream [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    GSF announced italy is deploying a naval vessel to safeguard Italian nationals on the flotilla, seems like a big deal to me

    We note the announcement of the Italian Ministry of Defence regarding the deployment of a naval vessel to the area of the GSF, with the stated purpose of safeguarding Italian nationals aboard.

    We welcome the recognition by Minister Crosetto of the democratic and non-violent nature of our mission, and his condemnation of the recent attacks on our vessels.

    Earlier today, we called on all UN Member States—and in particular those whose nationals are aboard our ships—to ensure and facilitate effective protection, including maritime escort, accredited diplomatic observers, and an overt protective State presence. Italy has now taken a first step in this direction.

    We emphasise that such measures must remain protective and facilitative in nature, consistent with the principles of non-interference and the humanitarian purpose of our mission. We therefore call on other states to follow suit in providing protective presence to guarantee the safe passage of their nationals and to uphold international law.

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      8 minutes ago

      Holy shit, that’s huge. Thank you, Italian workers and leftists, for your efforts in the struggle to protect the flotilla and defend the people of Gaza. This is a massive material win.

    • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      39 minutes ago

      It’s amazing! I didn’t know expect it to come from Italy but I guess all their protests have actually been helping to shift the country’s politics for the better. I feel like I can breathe a lot easier for the fate of the flotilla.

  • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 hour ago

    NYCrimes: Three People Shot at Dallas ICE Facility

    Three people were shot at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Dallas on Wednesday morning, ICE officials said. Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, said there were “multiple injuries and fatalities” and the shooter was found dead of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

    Details of the circumstances were not immediately available. “While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them,” Ms. Noem said. “It must stop.”

  • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 hours ago

    Union Blockade Forces Danish Lobbyists To Boot Lawless Contractor

    Construction workers halted work at one of Denmark’s most watched building sites Monday morning, sealing every gate to the reconstruction site of Copenhagen’s historic Stock Exchange in protest against the use of a firm that refuses to sign a union contract.

    Read more...

    Members of the union BJMF arrived before dawn after learning that Domus Ejendomsservice, black-listed by the labour movement for undercutting wages and refusing to sign a union contract, had been hired by project owner, the business lobby group Dansk Erhverv. The lobbyists, who own the landmark building, had previously denied BJMF access to make routine inspections of the construction site. The blockade lasted four hours and ended only when the lobby group conceded to every union demand: conflict-hit companies will be removed from the site, unions will be allowed to make routine site inspections and main contractors will accept financial responsibility if any subcontractor breaches Danish pay and safety standards.

    Carsten Bansholm Hansen, who chairs the BJMF construction section, said the action was necessary to defend the “Danish model” of negotiated wages. “In Denmark, things are supposed to be in order, people must earn a living wage not be subjected to wage dumping. If that principle collapses on a large site like the Stock Exchange, how are we going to enforce it on the smaller ones?”

    The 400-year-old Stock Exchange was heavily damaged by a fire in February 2024, in which its iconic dragon spire collapsed. It is now being reconstructed.

    Source:

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    https://archive.ph/iU3sR

    USAF must focus maintainers on key planes as readiness suffers: Meink

    The U.S. Air Force must focus its limited maintenance resources on aircraft that are capable of surviving in a contested environment, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday.

    more

    In a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Meink highlighted the service’s lackluster aircraft readiness as one of its major challenges. “We have some of the best aircraft,” Meink said, citing the F-22 and F-35 fighters and the B-2 bomber as examples. The scope of the readiness challenge “surprised me a bit,” Meink said. “I knew there was a readiness challenge,” Meink said. “I didn’t appreciate how significant that readiness challenge was.”

    The Air Force’s aircraft readiness rates have steadily trended down for several years, and last year hit a recent low. The fiscal 2024 fleet-wide mission-capable rate — which measures how many aircraft are able to carry out their missions on an average day — hit 62%, meaning nearly four in every 10 aircraft were unable to perform their job at any given time. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin raised alarms about the decline at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in March. During that speech, Allvin displayed a chart showing another statistic, aircraft availability, which had declined from 73% in 1994 to 54% in 2024. One major factor driving declining readiness rates, experts agree, is that the Air Force’s planes are decades old — and getting older all the time. Allvin’s chart in March showed that over the past three decades, the average aircraft age in the fleet almost doubled from 17 to nearly 32 years old.

    Meink said Monday that the Air Force has “some of the best aircraft” of any military, and praised the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the B-2 Spirit bomber. But he pointed to Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, where F-22s are stationed, as an example of the problems the Air Force is facing. The F-22 is “a phenomenal platform,” Meink said. “But when I go out to Langley and there’s a number of aircraft, nonoperational, sitting around the ramp that aren’t even being worked on because we simply don’t have the parts to do that — that’s a problem, right? We have to fix that.” In an afternoon roundtable with reporters, Meink said maintenance and sustainment have been a major cost driver for the Air Force over the last roughly 15 years. Lawmakers, the administration and top Pentagon leadership are working to help increase the Air Force’s maintenance budget, he said. But with the Air Force’s resources stretched thin, Meink said, it must be efficient and focus maintainers on its top priorities — systems that will be able to survive in a future war’s highly contested airspace.

    “If a system is not capable of operating in a contested environment, then we need to be second-guessing and/or thinking about how much money we’re dumping into readiness on those platforms,” Meink said. And as the Air Force retires older, outdated aircraft, Meink said, it will be able to shift skilled maintainers and other resources to planes that will be needed in a future conflict. Meink pointed to Ukraine’s success in using modified quadcopters worth a few thousand dollars to destroy multimillion-dollar Russian drones as an example of the new air warfare environment the U.S. will have to operate in. Meink said the Air Force also must hold its contractors accountable for the reliability of their systems.

    the US government holding contractors accountable? lol. lmao

    “When we’re getting a part that’s supposed to last 400 hours, and it lasts 100 hours, that’s unacceptable,” Meink said. “We need to work with the government and contractors to make the right investments to improve the serviceability and reliability of our weapon systems and the parts we’re putting in those weapon systems.” William Bailey, who is performing the duties of the assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the increasing modularity of new aircraft and other in-the-works systems will allow them to be more easily maintained and replaced. Bailey also said the acquisition community plans to conduct a deep dive into the service’s supply chains to identify where “pinch points” are holding up the delivery of vital spare parts. The Air Force must use also advanced data analytic techniques to better understand the state of its weapon systems, Meink said.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    metallisch gear soliden zwei (tbf, the Arsenal Gear is just inspired by the actual IRL concept of an arsenal ship, but still kojima) https://archive.ph/UdirZ

    Germany To Build Uncrewed Missile-Toting Arsenal Ships For Its Frigates

    Germany is the latest country to announce plans for a missile-toting new class of uncrewed vessels that will serve as arsenal ship ‘wingmen,’ supporting conventional surface combatants. The Large Remote Missile Vessels (LRMV) are part of the German Navy’s modernization drive and may be especially relevant to help offset limitations in the firepower of some of its other warships, an issue we have discussed in the past.

    more

    The plan to procure three LRMVs is outlined in the German Navy’s Kurs Marine document, which outlines the fleet that it wants to operate by 2035. While the LRMVs will serve as arsenal ships to supplement the new class of F127 frigates, the German Navy also wants to buy 18 smaller uncrewed surface vessels, known as Future Combat Surface Systems (FCSS), to supplement its corvettes, and at least 12 Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (LUUV) to support its submarines. The most striking development, however, concerns the LRMV, which is planned from the outset for uncrewed operations, although presumably they could also be used in an optionally crewed capacity.

    It’s not exactly clear what kind of size the LRMVs will be. Presuming a diagram published in the Kurs Marine document is fairly accurate, they would be around half the length of the F127 frigate, which would make them around 260 feet long, roughly corvette-sized. However, according to the German defense and security website hartpunkt, citing naval insiders, the dimensions and displacement of the vessels hadn’t been determined, so not too much should be read into the diagram. Clearer is the role that the LRMVs will undertake, essentially as floating missile platforms that can bolster the magazine capacity of the planned six F127 frigates, in particular. The arsenal ships will be equipped with vertical launchers for different missiles, to support the F127’s air defense and maritime strike taskings. The number of launch containers is also not yet finalized, hartpunkt reports. Meanwhile, the F127 is expected to feature 64 cells, as part of the popular Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS). The VLS cells in the LRMV will likely be loaded with the same weapons that arm the F127 frigate: Standard Missile 2 (SM-2) for general-area air defense and RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) for short-/medium-range air defense. They could also possibly field SM-6 for long-range air and missile defense, as well as strike, and Tomahawk cruise missiles for longer range strike. SM-6 and Tomahawk would require longer “strike length” VLS cells. The preliminary artwork in the Kurs Marine document shows an array of vertical launchers mounted, at least partly, above the deck at the rear of the ship. However, this should be considered highly provisional. The German government is currently reviewing a plan to buy the Tomahawk, which would place it in an elite operators’ club. Other options could include the 3SM Tyrfing supersonic cruise naval missile currently being developed by Germany and Norway, and potentially even the new “deep precision strike” weapon, a missile with a range of over 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) that Germany and the United Kingdom are working on.

    In its air defense role, the ‘parent’ frigate would be responsible for target detection and targeting, commanding missile launches from the smaller LRMV, which will effectively serve as additional floating magazine capacity. This also means the LRMV doesn’t need to accommodate its own expensive sensors. Alternatively, another surface vessel could provide the data, or it could be received from any other platform, with data relayed via satellite link. Reportedly, the LRMV would also carry some limited self-defense armament, which would presumably have to be controlled from another (crewed) platform. While seen as a ‘wingman’ to the F127 frigate, it could also complement the anti-submarine-warfare-optimized F126 class of frigates. As we have discussed before, these warships are comparatively lightly armed for their size, with a Mk 41 VLS for up to 64 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) Block 2 missiles, and launchers for eight Kongsberg Naval Strike Missiles (NSM), but no current plans to arm them with Standard Missiles or Tomahawk.

    The LRMV makes an interesting parallel with the two new support vessels planned for the Royal Netherlands Navy. These ships will be around 174 feet long and will displace around 600 tons, including containerized weapons and sensors for a variety of different missions, and a relatively tiny crew. Like the German design, the Dutch support vessels will bring additional air defense missiles to help existing Dutch frigates. As well as being entirely uncrewed, the LRMV is also intended to operate in very different conditions. While the Dutch support vessel is optimized for use in the North Sea and for patrol duties, the LRMV will be an ocean-going design that can serve in the Atlantic. The German ships will need to have much more robust seaworthiness and will likely need to be considerably larger. On the other hand, the operating concept for the LRMV foresees them loitering in a specific sea area for an extended period, so they won’t necessarily have to have the same level of performance as the F127 frigate, or an equivalent surface combatant.

    While the shipbuilding phase for the LRMV is not necessarily a significant challenge, Germany will still need to develop resilient and reliable command and communications to ensure the ships can operate safely in a potentially highly contested environment. Experience with the Future Combat Surface System (FCSS) program, for a more modest arsenal ship, should help in this regard. Having a lower-cost supplement to the F127 class is also a key consideration, with the new frigates being the most expensive current German defense procurement, with a program cost of more than $30 billion for all six ships. Overall, Germany’s plans for the LRMV reflect a growing interest in support vessels with an arsenal ship role. These tend to be either uncrewed or with very small crews, and they are indicative of the current operational realities, in which conventional ships threaten to be overwhelmed by massed missile and drone attacks.

    The need to boost naval air defense coverage, in particular, has been made clear by the campaign against Houthi missiles and drones targeting shipping in the Middle East in recent months, as well as Iran’s unprecedented, massed attack on Israel, using the same kinds of weapons. In particular, the limited stock of air defense missiles found on most warships has emerged as a concern, and one that the support vessels will help address. Developments elsewhere in the world, including in China, suggest that swarming drones as well as ever more capable missiles will be a feature of naval warfare from now on. These same concerns are seeing interest in the United States and other countries in large uncrewed surface vessels with modular weapons payloads, allowing them to be adapted for a range of missions as required. While it’s unclear what kind of modularity the LRMV might offer, having an uncrewed ship, even simply to increase the basic weapons magazine available to surface combatants, could be very useful for the German Navy and help pave the way toward more regular and extensive uncrewed operations at sea. At the same time, there are a lot of unknowns about actually operating an uncrewed ship equipped with heavy armament on operational patrols and over great distances. Command and control and networking architecture will be a huge factor in the success of any such concept. There are also security concerns, clearly. The idea that more naval capacity can be relatively inexpensively gained through uncrewed surface combatants of the larger variety is extremely attractive, but actually doing it reliably is still something that’s yet to be seen on a wide operational scale.

    • larrikin99 [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 hour ago

      Why does a big arsenal ship need to be uncrewed? shouldn’t you have one guy on board to unplug and replug the router if it looses connection, and a 2nd guy to Bruce Willis in the vents if thieves posing as terrorists commandeer the ship and threaten to fire all the missiles unless their ransom demands while really trying to buy time for their hacker to unlock the ship’s computer and transfer 500-million in Deutschbank NFT bonds to their blockchain wallet?

  • Aradino [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    10 hours ago

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-24/antoinette-lattouf-costs-decision-in-abc-unlawful-termination/105810052

    The A(Australian)BC has to pay $150,000 plus $70,000 previously paid for firing a presenter for pro-palestine comments

    Justice Darryl Rangiah found the decision was made to appease pro-Israel lobbyists behind a campaign of complaints and the ABC had unlawfully terminated Ms Lattouf’s employment for reasons “including that she held a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”.

    “However, the ABC’s conduct in surrendering to the demands of the pro-Israel lobbyists and taking Ms Lattouf off air ignored the equally important statutory obligation of maintaining its independence and integrity,” Justice Rangiah said.

    “The ABC let down the Australian public badly when it abjectly surrendered the rights of its employee Ms Lattouf to appease a lobby group.”

    They spent around two million in legal fees. The ABC is publicly funded.

  • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    16 hours ago

    Al-Jazeera reporter on board one of the flotilla ships is reporting there was a loud explosion near the fleet and drones are flying overhead. Marine VHF radios are currently being jammed.

    • Beetle [hy/hym]@hexbear.net
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      11 hours ago

      It’s psychological warfare, the occupation is targeting a few ships to try to scare everyone so they turn around. They have prepared for this scenario so I don’t think it will work.

  • vegeta1 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    17 hours ago

    Trump said "Your countries are going to hell.” at the UN

    Rambling on about windmills not blowing enough

    Blames climate change on immigrants thats-why-im-confused

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      He hasn’t proposed that (yet) but two things are very interesting:

      1. He is implicitly lumping China with the rest of the global north powers and in so doing, criticizing them for their inaction in the climate crisis and also not having a larger role in financing green projects in the global south.
      2. He dogwhistles communism so much, its so great lol.

      WAIT 3. He just said Stalin’s revolution should’ve gone global? WHAT

      1. There it is, armed intervention. I fucking love him so much.
      • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        11 hours ago

        His criticism of China is one thing in particular that I think bears noting and we should expect other Global South leaders to echo. China may have some super secret, incomprehensible reasons for running an enormous trade surplus and accumulating trillions in foreign reserves; this strategy comes at the expense of their domestic labor force, but to some extent we could say that, hey, it’s a democratically run communist party so the people’s consent is implicit. It’s just long term thinking or whatever. However, when we are currently blowing past so many climate turning points and the effects that climate change will have in the next few decades is already certain, China using this economic strategy when it could potentially be unleashing its foreign reserves to make massive green energy investments or grant money to countries trapped in IMF SAPs comes at the detriment of billions of people.

        I appreciate that there’s logistical problems with trying to do that, and that the point of the BRI (at least partially) was to open up a large volume of trade with the Global South, but this has been interrupted with various regional conflicts (not least of which the current genocide and greater regional war, with Iran being attacked directly by the greater and little Satan). I don’t really think that their attitude demonstrates the urgency appropriate to deal with these hurdles though.

        • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          However, when we are currently blowing past so many climate turning points and the effects that climate change will have in the next few decades is already certain, China using this economic strategy when it could potentially be unleashing its foreign reserves to make massive green energy investments or grant money to countries trapped in IMF SAPs comes at the detriment of billions of people.

          You’re extremely correct and just to double down on this I even think you’re somewhat putting it mildly at best. There is no damn long term strategy at all, otherwise how does someone even begin to square this with Xi’s reinforced commitment to opening up the economy, denouncing BRICS as “not a bloc” years ago, renouncing the cold war as being decidedly over, praising neoliberal imperialism(“globalization”) as a no alternative system we can only hope to improve somewhat?

          Some people said e.g neolib thinkthanks that China had a “grand strategy” for the ME, go look at Atlantic, CIS, RAND etc etc…

          Some Atlantic ghoul says this

          Another factor is the Chinese have had a very clear understanding from the very beginning that not all Middle Eastern countries are in need of Chinese financing. They are more so clients of Chinese technology and Chinese products rather than the recipients of Chinese assistance. That is also another element that shapes Chinese thinking when they look at the Middle East: they see partners. They don’t necessarily see countries that are deeply in need of China’s help.

          This is something you find in google in literaly 10s flat. Are their analysis right or wrong? Well just look at the damn results, look at the massive ghoulish disasters on the back of these clowns, financing Israel as some grand plan to stabilize the ME? Bringing KSA into BRICS? Patting themselves on the back for doing some BS money printing on their capital built on top of slaves? Building “green energy” shit while shaking hands with the US-Israel? Etc the list goes on and on.

          There is no god damn long term strategy because their actions have zero coherent patterns besides doing some good which is immediately followed with something bad. Someone is more interested in using HSR stations a cudgel instead of addressing the massive failure in bringing any sort of progress to the class struggle or addressing the logical conclusion of dengs reformism and opening up in the current climate.

          if there was we would’ve seen even tiny crumbles of this over these past 10-15 years, there was none. Maybe Pelosi could`ve been that moment, but yet another issue as I pointed many times, pro-China rethoric can only resort to smol bean excuses, unironicaly while doing military parade porn.

          We’ve become the meme, its sad, but China is simultaneously very very powerful, but also riddled with problems, weak, surrounded and incapable of doing literaly anything etc… But wait there is a military parade now, so back to China is very powerful etc… but oh wait we noticed they made another deal with the US, back to China has no options, its pragmatic etc.

          Ultimately we’re harsh because China is not acting in their self interest by abandoning the world and global south anti-imperialism. Making excuses and rationalizations shouldn’t come from a chauvinist perspective(“China owes us nothing” dipshits on twitter) unless you’re ready to admit the consequences will also fall on them for not acting now.

  • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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    17 hours ago

    Did any fellow newsheads see Trump’s speech at the UN? He went on about what is essentially the “great replacement” theory towards Europe (being invaded and replaced by immigrants who don’t share “western values”), ranted about renewable energy, praised Israeli and US military strikes on Iran while criticising UN inaction, said that Europe must completely stop buying Russian oil, etc. The whole thing was just a big middle finger to the UN. Any thoughts?

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      17 hours ago

      I did. I just sounded like my racist MAGA uncle when he’s had a bit too much coffee. I don’t even know what to make of it.

      I find I can’t really laugh at this stuff anymore. What everyone on Planet Earth needs to realize right now is that the United States is starting to get really fucking dangerous. While I am someone who is skeptical of early reports of the demise of the American Empire, I do think we are seeing the empire lash out in the face of challenges internal and external. It’s not just that the US has a death drive, but that the US has a death drive and the plan is drag everyone down to hell with us if we can’t be the imperial hegemon.

      At least with Nazi Germany, one could look over the horizon and see that there were forces like the USSR and US that could stop them. Who is going to stop the US now? It seems like everyone in positions of power outside the US thinks they can just kiss Trump’s ass and it will all go back to normal. Hell even China seems to just want everything to go back to 2012 again.

      I am not an accelerationist or a doomer. I have kids and I don’t want to see them suffer in their lives. But right now I cannot see a way out for humanity unless there is sufficient pressure for the US to implode on itself and inshallah not take the rest of the world down with it. Because right now it seems the rest of the world does not understand the seriousness of the situation.

      I really feel like Gaza was the turning point. The US has been allowed to subcontract out a genocide that everyone knows is evil incarnate, but no one dares to cross the US (other than the heroic people of Yemen of course).

      • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        It was never going to end any other way. The ruling class of the United States can accept no peer, let alone being number two - but they are constitutionally incapable of investing in the social infrastructure necessary to remain at the pinnacle of technology and culture. We are going to witness a temper tantrum of world historical proportions.

      • ColombianLenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        I think the issue is any country that tries to stop the rabid dog is gonna get nuked, so it is better to wait the dog to die of rabies on its own.

        Death by climate change and fascism vs nuclear hellfire, I guess.

      • s0ykaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        the United States is starting to get really fucking dangerous

        i fully agree, but i feel like they’re way more dangerous internally than externally. i don’t think there’s enough social cohesion for america to do too much externally, they’d have to fix that first. given trump is a hyper capitalist i don’t think he’d be able to

        • redchert@lemmygrad.ml
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          i don’t think there’s enough social cohesion for america to do too much externally

          Do we tell him or…

        • ColombianLenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          but i feel like they’re way more dangerous internally than externally.

          Brother, they are enabling a genocide and now bombing people in the caribbean.

          • s0ykaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            so, nothing new?

            my point is america is not gonna be able to do much more than what they’ve always done

        • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          I understand what you are saying about external danger, but consider this: if the US started to threaten countries by saying “give us exclusive rights to your lithium at a steep discount or we nuke your capital city”… would anyone try and stop them?

          Maybe the US isn’t quite there yet, but after a massive economic downturn like the Great Depression, you don’t think they might try it in order to reclaim hegemony and jump start the economy?

          • s0ykaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            39 minutes ago

            Maybe the US isn’t quite there yet, but after a massive economic downturn like the Great Depression, you don’t think they might try it in order to reclaim hegemony and jump start the economy?

            i would say that the current conditions of the domestic economy, as well as the general sentiment among americans, don’t allow america to do that. they don’t have the industrial base, nor economists or an administration who would be willing to set off the necessary state policies, even for a preparation phase. the downturn wouldn’t change that

            the real change in america is that the violence of the american state is increasingly turning inwards, this is what i mean. that’s the real change, the growing fascism. everything else is the same, and can’t be much more than that because the country simply doesn’t have what it takes. and this is the assessment of not only trump’s own advisors, like stephen miran, but of trump himself. we’ll see lots of posturing, as well as random violence against smaller countries, but no larger war will take place (for now)

            domestically, though? things are probably gonna get much, much worse

    • built_on_hope [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      15 hours ago

      I liked the part where he told Europe it was going to hell lol. It’s refreshing to see the US being honest about how it sees Europe. The message of “you have to stop using energy and stop importing labour” just adds up to what we’ve been saying here the whole time, the US forcing Europe to de-industrialise in order to prop up the US export market.

      Most of the rest of it seemed to be just random incoherent boasting and ranting.

    • vegeta1 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      17 hours ago

      Went on to blame climate change on immigrants. But wasn’t that a hoax according to him? This idiot has told over 30 000 lies on television… I shit you not.

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      17 hours ago

      “The escalator and teleprompter not working are auspicious signs from Heaven that the UN that once served the interest of the US is now unfit due to rot and decay from within.” - Great Khan Trump

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    Key details of China’s Unified National Market have finally been revealed. I will not go through the entire text here, you’re welcome to use machine translation to get a glimpse of the tedious details. I will highlight a few important paragraphs instead.

    This is very likely to happen under the 15th Five Year Plan, as a push towards boosting domestic consumption and tackling the overcapacity problem through anti-involution policies.

    The upshot is that government interference will now be minimized to allow the private market to dictate the investment and economic development. On the other hand, the government’s role will be reduced to ensuring fairness, transparency and openness.

    Currently, China still regulates the flow of movement of labor (through the hukou system, which is being dismantled) and many local/municipal governments provide subsidies and through local protectionism, to attract investments to boost the local economy. The outcome is that every province wants to build new housing, every city wants to get on the train of green technology like EV and solar panels, etc. As a result, you end up with overcapacity issue because everyone invests in the same thing and caused intense and even bitter peer competition between cities and provinces, for everyone knows that when the consolidation of the industries finally arrives, some of them are going to be the losers.

    Back in July, Xi Jinping gave an unusually harsh criticism against the local governments: “上项目,一说就是几样:人工智能、算力、新能源汽车,是不是全国各省份都要往这些方向去发展产业?” (“Every time a new project is mentioned, it’s always the familiar ones: artificial intelligence, computation, renewable energy cars, do every province across the country have to develop these same industries?”)

    As such, the Unified Common Market will create a standardized market that will allow for the free flow of labor and capital. The governments can no longer intervene in where people can or should migrate to, nor can they interfere with the investments made by private capital. If the market believes that Anhui (as an example) should be the new biotech hub, then other cities are not allowed to intervene with the market force in any way. This will ensure the diversification of goods and services rather than the local governments all trying to invest in the same thing. Instead, the market will play a stronger role in deciding how the economy should be developed and diversified:

    平衡好有效市场与有为政府的关系。 把握“五统一、一开放”基本要求,关键是要正确处理政府与市场的关系。一方面,要充分发挥市场在资源配置中的决定性作用,让市场机制有效引导要素流动和配置,防止“有形的手”干扰“无形的手”;另一方面,政府要健全统一市场规则,保障公平竞争,维护市场秩序,提供优质公共服务,为市场发展营造良好环境,更好发挥在宏观调控、市场监管、公共服务等方面的职能,也要对市场失灵的领域进行必要干预。只有有效市场与有为政府有机结合,形成“两只手”协同发力的格局,才能推动全国统一大市场建设行稳致远。

    Translation: Balance the relationship between an efficient market and a responsible government: To achieve the basic requirements of “five unifications, one opening up”, the key is to correctly resolve the relationship between the government and the market. On one hand, to maximize the decisive role of the market in resource distribution, to enable market mechanisms to efficiently guide the logistics and allocation, to prevent the “visible hand” from intervening with the “invisible hand”; on the other hand, the government has to enact regulations for a unified market, ensure fair competition, to protect market order, and to provide high quality public services in order to promote a good environment for the market to operate. The government is to play a better role in macroeconomic policy adjustments, market regulation and public services, as well as to provide necessary interfere when the market is not operating as intended. Only with an organic combination between an efficient market and a responsible market, to allow “both hands” to work together, can we drive the development of a Unified National Market in a steady and long-lasting manner.

    a couple other paragraphs

    破除地方保护,营造良好营商环境。建立长效清理机制,加快清理妨碍统一市场和公平竞争的规定和做法,打破地区间行政壁垒。加强对地方政府行为的监督考核,建立健全问责机制,引导地方树立正确的政绩观。推动区域间市场规则对接,促进区域市场一体化发展。加强区域间合作交流,通过共建产业园区、合作开发项目等方式,实现优势互补、互利共赢。

    Translation: Eliminate local protectionism, and promote good business environment: To establish mechanisms for long-term clean-up, as well as to speed up the cleanup of regulations and practices that hinder unified market and fair competition. To eliminate the administrative barriers between regions. To strengthen the supervision and assessment of the local governments’ behavior, to enhance accountability mechanism, and to guide local governments to establish a correct concept of political performance. To promote the integration of inter-regional market rules and the integrated development of regional markets. To strengthen inter-regional cooperation and exchange, and to realize complementary advantages and mutually beneficial “win-win” cooperation through joint construction of industrial parks and cooperative development projects.

    提升对内开放水平,推进高水平对外开放。立足畅通国内大循环,加快培育完整内需体系。畅通出口转内销渠道,加大财税、金融等方面支持,推动内外贸一体化发展。建设高标准市场体系,营造市场化、法治化、国际化一流营商环境。稳步扩大制度型开放,加强规则、规制、管理、标准等制度建设。坚持合作共赢,推动共建“一带一路”高质量发展。

    Translation: Improve the level of opening up internally and promote a high level of opening up externally: To establish the great internal circulation with minimal hindrance, to accelerate the cultivation of a complete domestic demand institution. To minimize barriers for export-to-domestic sales channel, to expand the support for fiscal, taxation and financial aspects. To promote the integrated development of domestic and foreign trade. To construct a high-standard market institution, to create a market-oriented, rule-based and internationalized first class business environment. To steadily expand the opening up of institutions, strengthen rules, regulations, management, standards and various other institutions. To adhere to win-win cooperation, and promote the high quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative.

    Not sure how I think about it yet. A lot of it has to do with minimizing the role of the government (both central and local) for economic planning and let the market to decide where labor should migrate to, where and what investments should be made. Seems like giving a lot of power to private capital?

    From reading analyses from others, this is a step forward for China to emulate the advanced economies in the West where the government gradually gives up its “visible hand” role and let the market dictate economic planning.

    • built_on_hope [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      15 hours ago

      I can see why they would want to minimise local government involvement, after the debt problems, corruption, and protectionism. It is broadly speaking inefficient for every province to be investing in the same industries. But it seems to me that the problem is in the incentive, not in the local government power itself. I remember in another post you said local officials wanted to pump up GDP numbers in order to get promotions. It seems like they should be reforming the internal party reward structures / targets as a priority.

      Overall markets are an efficient way to distribute goods. I don’t think there’s a huge problem with allowing more internal market forces inherently, as long as the government retains political power over them, continues to control key national industries and services, and reins in financial speculation.

      • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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        8 hours ago

        Yeah, overall markets are not efficient, and allowing the free movement of labor between provinces creates problems.

        With free movement of labor, people are going to migrate from low wage regions to high wage regions, creating labor oversupply in some places and undersupply in others.

        And obviously markets, oof. We don’t need to pretend as if dengists are 100% correct about everything. Economic planning is provably superior to markets. This has been a known result since at least the 1930s with kantorovitch and leontieff.

        A market mechanism is like a stochastic gradient descent through commodity space, while economic planning simply computes the commodity space in advance and aims towards the optimal point.

        • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          2 hours ago

          With free movement of labor, people are going to migrate from low wage regions to high wage regions, creating labor oversupply in some places and undersupply in others.

          There is actually a meme in China about high-speed rails, which goes something like how those high speed rails have connected small provincial towns that should have stimulated their growth, but instead it became a one-way ticket for the rural youth to easily flee to the big cities.

          We have a lot of beautiful provincial towns and villages, nice infrastructure development, with high speed rail stations (some even have two!!) but… they have no economy. As a result, the youth simply left for the large cities for job opportunities, which adds to the churn of the already intense competition in the urban regions. It’s sad to see but that’s already a reality for many small towns.

          So, it’s already happening over the past few years.

      • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        10 hours ago

        Overall markets are an efficient way to distribute goods.

        A Hexbear quote in 2025. How can anyone believe this? Even at face value by the time you take all the measure necessary for a “fair” market for all participants i.e the population it is no longer a “market” but some sort of BS distribution system with shit incentives and an absurd number of strings attached that only functions out of a sunk cost fallacy because the people in charge don’t want to try any other alternative.

        • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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          58 minutes ago

          It is quite silly how people on Hexbear can both claim to be against capitalism, but also to claim that restoring capitalists as a class, and giving them more and more power is actually somehow good, and that everybody who agrees with people like Stalin on economics is an ‘ultra’ and bad.
          I wish people had a better understanding of the effect the presence of the profit motive has an economy, compared to maintaining a planned economy.

        • MLRL_Commie [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 hours ago

          This is just a flavor of ultra-marxism, railing against markets as such with no regard for their function. Saying that markets are efficient says nothing about them being the most efficient all the time, but it in a specific context. China still benefits from organizing things using markets because they are efficient in their current stage and due to the relationships they have to hold with their external context (a largely capitalist-run world).

          Of course we all understand limitaitons of markets, and Xi likely understands it very well. But it helps nobody to just rail against them generally as if its some principle of marxism that markets are inherently bad

          • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            8 hours ago

            as if its some principle of marxism that markets are inherently bad

            Indeed, an actual Marxist interpretation understands that there are always aspects of the previous economic formation within the emerging formation, especially early in the transition. China is in the very infancy of socialist transition in an otherwise still hyper capitalist world. ultras have a similar view as anarchists, expecting a much more advanced form of communism than the material conditions demand, and anything less than this ideal is an enemy. somehow they end up spending all their energy criticizing the enemies of capitalists on the internet and never really organizing

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        There are legitimate frictions caused by the inter-regional market obstacles right now, because local governments put up protectionist policies to prevent companies from other cities from expanding into their cities.

        There are two sides to this: for one, you prevent your domestic industries from being out-competed by the larger companies from the other wealthier cities, but at the same time, it makes the market less efficient and successful companies difficult to gain traction nationally. You have many companies investing in the same thing and end up in a situation where you have to kill off your competitors.

        So I think the unified market can boost consumption, but it does so in a way that yields power to the “invisible hand”.

        I’d much rather the government runs large deficits to give people the money to spend (such as through a jobs guarantee program that would eliminate unemployment), rather than relying on the wisdom of the private sector. But this would not allow the government to balance the budget, so they are ideologically constrained from doing so.

    • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      17 hours ago

      A possible charitable reading of it… in the US, local governments compete with each other for capital investment, creating a situation where “attracting” a business to your city ends up being a net negative. This creates unhelpful competition between states and even localities. In my home town, each small little municipality competes with each other over development, which ends up being a race to the bottom and the incentives given to the localities ends up costing more than the economic benefits could possibly be. If this is anything like what happens in China, it could be that Xi is just looking to reduce this sort of unhelpful competition between local governments, but this is me not knowing the situation in China and also being very credulous to Xi’s plans here.

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        Rebalancing the central and local governments, as well as curbing competition, are the right idea. However, you don’t need to yield to the “invisible hand” to do the job.

        MMT still has the right idea: jobs guarantee by the government as a price anchor which controls inflation.

        In this case, the government runs deficit to reduce unemployment through a jobs guarantee program, which paradoxically stabilizes the prices despite running large deficits and boosting consumption. (Stalin used a similar concept until Khrushchev undid everything).

        In China, most of the money creation came from deposits created by commercial bank loans. This is why China’s M2 money supply has grown twice the size of the US money supply. This, together with export revenues (foreign currencies as assets), allowed the central government to keep its deficit spending below 3%.

        So we are still back to China trying to balance the budget. I would much rather the government run large deficits than to yield more authority to private capital.

        • CleverOleg [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          14 hours ago

          Yes, I believe we are on the same page vis-a-vis MMT. There are much better solutions out there for China to implement, and yet they seem to insist on sticking with neoliberalism for now. I am hopeful though that, even if some lessons will need to be learned the hard way, simply by seeking out practical solutions Chinese leadership will land on a better path. Said another way, I don’t think there necessarily needs to be some ideological shift within the CPC. Neoliberalism is failing across the globe; even in China eventually it’s going to come up against its limits. But the reason I am hopeful is that while the capitalist west has no solution for the end of neoliberalism, China has the toolkit (both practical and ideological) to move away from neoliberalism as it fails.

          • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            It may be neoliberal in some aspects but when all the land and natural resources are owned by the state, it isn’t really neoliberalism. Until there is some talk to privatize the SOEs, TVEs, natural resources and land, it’s hard to say China is truly following the neoliberal model. If anything they have adopted neo liberal accounting principles because they are primarily trading with neoliberal nations

            • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              Until there is some talk to privatize the SOEs, TVEs, natural resources and land

              This is quite literaly what top Chinese economists have been proposing in the recent years. Look at what someone some CPC economists themselves say.

              Zhou Tianyong is Director of the National Economic Engineering Laboratory at Dongbei University of Finance & Economics and Director of the Economic Accounting and Innovative Development Committee, China Society of Economic Reform (CSER). He is also former Deputy Director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies, Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (National Academy of Governance).

              1. Implement household registration and state sector reform

              Household registration restrictions should be fully lifted to allow children to access education in the cities where their families work. At the same time, providing diversified housing supply to reduce living costs and improving social security coverage for migrant populations are essential. Together, these measures would support the transfer of labour from low-productivity rural agriculture to higher-productivity urban industrial and service sectors.

              SOE reform should deepen through an overhaul of employment systems. Fiscal management should be restructured by placing county-level finances under direct provincial oversight and township finances under county administration. In parallel, merging and downsizing agencies and streamlining non-productive personnel would improve SOE efficiency and the effectiveness of public service delivery.

              The share of state-owned assets in total capital should be reduced from 40% in 2023 to below 20%. Alternatively, reforms could follow the Temasek model by using profit margins as the primary metric for SOE performance. Another approach would be to adopt asset profitability as the core evaluation criterion, with most SOEs required to meet or exceed the average return on total capital. For non-monopoly SOEs, mixed-ownership reform could also be expanded to introduce private capital, which is more efficient, as the dominant stakeholder.

              This neoliberal garbage is what passes for mainstream economic discussion in some China circles.

              You can find more if you care to actualy search for it.

              • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                10 hours ago

                I’m not going to pretend that one guy in a country of over a billion saying things is a sign of what is to come. It is no secret that there are libbed out Chinese people, even within the CPC. There has always been debate within the CPC across the whole spectrum of political thought, and when you are talking about the largest population in the world, you could surely find as many people with perspectives contrary to Zhou Tianyong as you can people who agree with him. When I say some talk, I mean the party itself, not one person. Even if his work is taken into consideration by the CPC in their planning, it will be considered along with the work of people of differing perspectives.

            • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              12 hours ago

              I am still waiting for anyone to give an explanation on why should China run an export-led growth economy by selling cheap goods to the West in exchange for accumulating financial assets that is not rooted in neoliberalism?

              The exchange here is real goods and services made using Chinese labor and resources are exported to the wealthy Western (aka Global North) countries, while receiving a financial asset (foreign currency) in return that it cannot use. The only explanation one can have for this is to balance the budget. There is literally no other reason to accumulate $3.3T US dollars in your reserve. I would love to be enlightened though lol.

              Also, you have to remember that any country only has to do austerity if they cannot earn enough export revenues to pay back their external debt, or to finance their own internal budget deficit (because of the need to balance the budget). This is what a lot of the post-Soviet Eastern European states faced when they opened up to liberal reforms.

              A country like China with a huge labor pool easily out-competed all the other exporting countries since joining the WTO in the 2000s (remember the Four Asian Dragons?) and accumulated such a vast amount of dollars that it never had to run any austerity.

              And the US was (and still is) happy to concentrate the world’s manufacturing capacity in China because it renders all the other exporting countries in the Global South vulnerable to US imperialism. Those are the countries who end up having to take IMF loans when their economies fail.

              privatize the SOEs

              Most of the SOEs have already been privatized in the 1990s.

              Remember the 5-6-7-8-9 rule of private sector. It’s very easy to remember.

              Private enterprises contribute:
              50% of the national tax revenue.
              60% of GDP, fixed capital investment and external investment.
              70% of high tech industries.
              80% of urban employment, and
              90% of new jobs creation

              There are about 70 million people working in the public sector, and most people work for private companies. The other - the bottom 40% - most of whom living in the rural area, are screwed the worst though.

              • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                7 hours ago

                I am still waiting for anyone to give an explanation on why should China run an export-led growth economy by selling cheap goods to the West in exchange for accumulating financial assets that is not rooted in neoliberalism?

                I’m not arguing for or against the model I’m just saying the economy at large isn’t neoliberal when land itself can’t even be owned privately, all the natural resources are publicly owned, and the majority of the economy is publicly owned. That isn’t what neoliberalism is. There may be a subsection of the economy that is running entirely on neoliberal principles in order to interact with a world economy that is neoliberal but that is not the same thing.

                And the US was (and still is) happy to concentrate the world’s manufacturing capacity in China because it renders all the other exporting countries in the Global South vulnerable to US imperialism. Those are the countries who end up having to take IMF loans when their economies fail.

                Except for the countries taking loans from China instead of IMF. there are many talks on youtube from people who negotiated directly with China for their own nations like Gyude Moore, Yanis Varoufakis, and others giving insight about how they were able to get better arrangements via China, the first avenue to circumvent IMF and World Bank that has been available in the modern era. Let us not pretend that before reform and opening up the global south was not vulnerable to US imperialism, and it was China’s economic model that made them vulnerable suddenly. Framing things in this way seems knowingly misleading to me. China is not responsible for US imperialism, and China’s model is the only one that has offered an alternative since the fall of the USSR, which they have only been able to do at the scale they have because of their economic model. It is obvious that China has built up their own productive capacity to the point that they have been able to spread that around to dozens of other nations.

                Most of the SOEs have already been privatized in the 1990s.

                and yet over half the economy is still SOEs, not even counting TVEs. The majority of the economy is publicly owned. That’s simply not neoliberalism. There is no argument that can say that a majority publicly owned economy is neoliberalism. It is literally antithetical to neoliberalism to have a majority publicly owned economy. On top of that, all the major private companies have CPC bodies within them monitoring and guiding their decision making. This is again, antithetical to neoliberalism.

                and most people work for private companies.

                and most Chinese private companies have less than 10 employees. Let us not pretend that this is some neoliberal model. Does every wet market, street vendor, and house cleaner need to be publicly owned? Does it make sense right now for every city to directly control how many bowls of noodles get sold on the street corner? The idea that “most people work in the private sector” is a very specific way of phrasing this, it alludes to a false notion that a capitalist class is controlling the workers, instead of some mom and pop shop mostly staffed by people who are related to each other or live in the same neighborhood. In the very beginning of socialist transition, I don’t think a bunch of Chinese people having small businesses in their local communities is a warning sign that China is slipping into neoliberalism, into an economic model that is driven entirely by private interests for the purpose of profit seeking above all else.

                • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  A lot of unsubstantiated claims but you still haven’t answered the main question:

                  Why should China run a huge trade surplus economy just to accumulate financial assets (e.g. dollars) that they cannot use? What is the point of that, if not a neoliberal economic model?

                  Why is it NOT neoliberalism when there is a net flow of actual goods and services (made by Chinese labor and resources that should have been used to improve the lives of the people domestically) to the Global North countries over decades? Think in real terms of trade!

                  Why does the Chinese government have to balance the budget? Why can’t it directly run the deficit to directly raise the income of the working people so they actually have money to spend? Why can’t it provide jobs guarantee to the high rate of youth unemployment right now? Again, think in real terms of the economy.

                  You can say all you want about public vs private sector and how many mom and pop shops there are in China (again, lots of misinformation there) but you still haven’t gotten to the core of the issues that truly reflect the economic policies being run in China today (e.g. why is there “overcapacity”? why is there deflation? why are people reluctant to spend money?). You need to answer those questions in order to argue that this is not an economic model rooted in neoliberal thinking.

                  Except for the countries taking loans from China instead of IMF.

                  Please explain how are these countries going to earn the RMB to pay back to the Chinese creditors if China is running a trade surplus against them? China has been reducing its net import (domestic consumption is low), which means there are even less RMB out there for countries to earn from.

                  Yes, they are getting better terms from the Chinese creditors, but they still have to sell to wealthy Western countries to pay back their Chinese creditors.

                  If the loan was dollar-denominated, then they will have to earn USD or exchange whatever currencies they earned for USD in the first place.

              • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                11 hours ago

                Remember the 5-6-7-8-9 rule of private sector. It’s very easy to remember.

                There are about 70 million people working in the public sector, and most people work for private companies. The other - the bottom 40% - most of whom living in the rural area, are screwed the worst though.

                Ok, I’m actually confused now - knowing this fact - what leverage of the proletarian dictatorship does the party have over Capital to even register call it socialist, let alone communist nation-state? You know what - I may have to give BynarsAreOkay some credit I guess -

                • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  2 hours ago

                  State-owned enterprises give very good benefits, although the jobs are limited. Ten years ago few people would want to join the SOEs because they are somewhat career limiting - you might be working the same job with little promotion for a couple decades for the rest of your adult life. These days, with an economic downturn, people compete to join SOEs because there is at least stability in employment and you get decent wages and benefits. Better to stay employed for the next 20 years doing a boring job than to get laid off in the private sector.

                  You can also join the civil servant, which requires you to take the national civil servant exam (考公). Once you are “in the system”, you will have stable employment for the rest of your life with decent benefits as well. However, the spots are extremely limited. In 2022, there were over 2 million people (!) competing for 30k spots - the intake ratio was 68-to-1.

      • ColombianLenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        17 hours ago

        Most likely China is trying to squeeze capitalism for all it’s worth, until eventually this market-state hybrid form of capitalism also collapses under its own weight. The question is if the CPC will be bold enough to move towards real socialism or it will collapse into yet another USSR fiasco, this time without any major foreign hegemon in the horizon.

      • xiaohongshu [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        15 hours ago

        Wait and see what it looks like first. The unified national market has been proposed and drafted since 2022 (at least when I first heard about it), but it is only this month that clearer details about the implementation are being revealed.

        • 0__0 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          12 hours ago

          I’m surprised you’re the optimist here lol. Still, even if this eliminates redundancies in the operation of local governments and sets free labor and capital to migrate to other spheres, giving power to the fucking porkies in any way is a huge step back. What China needs right now, which is only logical considering everything happening in the west, is of course further centralization, in the hands of the government as the supreme organizational body, not further decentralization in the hands of corporations, domestic or foreign alike. The talking points honestly remind me of local stormfronters thinking that free trade is by itself a goal, and not an economic mechanism.

          But what is most troubling is this “opening up” to me. Can’t help but feel they have at least given consideration to bringing down the firewall, and letting the western tech incels run wild. Now of course, if this included WeChat for the american market, maybe China could flip the tables, but you just know the burgerlanders will absolutely never allow that.

          • built_on_hope [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            10 hours ago

            I think the difference for me is that the government in China still has the agency to decide whether it’s going to open up or close off. They have the ability to think long term and act deliberately. If this movement works out poorly they can always change track later. That’s much more reassuring than the subjugation of Western governments to capital and US imperialism.

            • 0__0 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              24 minutes ago

              Of course, for now, but giving more power to capital is indeed a gateway into submission. Maybe it will be reversed before it becomes too late, who knows. But ultimately, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, especially regarding the rhetoric in the text above.

              Probably the worst thing Stalin did was the abandonment of democratic centralism and with it, the vanguard. Sure, the purges were supposed to be a self-correction mechanism, but this is like saying that the crisis of capitalism are supposed to perform a similar function. Ultimately, what should have been done, is putting a hard cap on party membership relative to population. Separate the professional revolutionaries from the technocrats and careerists. The CPC has 100 million fucking members. Assuming that even 0.1% of those people have genuinely read and understood theory is already a stretch.

    • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.netM
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      16 hours ago

      The upshot is that government interference will now be minimized to allow the private market to dictate the investment and economic development.

      This…is an upshot for you? Fascinating. Private markets dictating economic development has historically worked so well for the humans that are forced to live in those markets

    • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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      17 hours ago

      The complete stalling out of Russia’s summer offensive and a failure to implement a significant buffer zone in Sumy has emboldened the US and Europe. The petrol/gasoline situation is only going to get worse if Ukraine keep up the current pace of long range attacks. Expect more responses/provocations/escalations from Russia towards NATO in Europe. Probably more strikes on Ukrainian electrical and energy infrastructure too.

      • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 hours ago

        Are you just getting all your information from pro-Ukrainian Twitter accounts like Trump seems to be? Because i cannot explain such a misinformed comment otherwise.

        There is no observable “stalling” on the front, especially not of an offensive that was never declared by Russia but purely made up by garbage OSINT accounts. All mapping shows Russia continuing to advance at a steady pace. There is no “petrol/gasoline situation”, again this exists solely in the imagination of pro-Ukrainian Twitter. Ask anyone in Russia. Go to any Russian gas station and see if there is a shortage. And there is no evidence of Russian provocations in Europe, all there is is a bunch of allegations, accusations and fearmongering from NATO countries backed by little to no evidence.

        I don’t understand how you can live in this alternate reality where everything that NATO and Twitter OSINT say is just taken at face value when we know that they just make shit up all the time.

        I see no change in the Russian posture nor any urgency to fundamentally change their strategy in the SMO, given that everything is working out in their favor at the moment. The casualties are more lopsided than ever, the Kiev regime is desperately plugging holes with reserves they don’t have, the Russian domestic economic situation is better than it has been in the entire history of the Russian Federation, the “international isolation” of Russia has been a complete and utter failure, the US is a total shitshow at home, NATO is scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of weapon deliveries, and Europe is just one big basketcase of crises.

      • companero [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        17 hours ago

        The complete stalling out of Russia’s summer offensive and a failure to implement a significant buffer zone in Sumy has emboldened the US and Europe.

        I don’t see it that way, personally, though I never expected a major summer offensive.

        The Dnipropetrovsk/Zaporizhzhia front is steadily crumbling from the east, and the previously impenetrable fortresses of Siversk, Lyman, and Kupyansk are on their last legs. Pokrovsk is operationally encircled, and Ukraine’s refusal to withdraw is once again resulting in massive attrition. Also, Russia punched through Ukraine’s major Donbass fallback line at Kucheriv Yar. Then there’s the huge Kharkiv pocket which is in a very precarious situation.

        Meanwhile Russia has been building reserves of heavy equipment and troops. In my opinion, the stage is indeed set for a winter offensive, which I have been predicting for a while now. Though I don’t deny the possibility that the attrition war could continue for a while longer if Ukraine is especially stubborn.

      • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        18 hours ago

        Not really, Biden banned Ukraine from striking Russian oil facilities (for re-election purposes/electing Harris, keeping oil prices low). Trump and Europe, for the past few months, have essentially let Ukraine hit whatever oil facility and petroleum refinery they want in Russia with Ukrainian cruise missiles and one way attack drones (financing though is European). They hit one every few nights and inflict significant damage, with the drones and missiles being accurate enough to hit specific components of the refineries (like the distillation towers). This is an unsustainable situation for Russia, hence recent provocations by Russia towards Europe, flying drones deep into Poland (and potentially Norway and Denmark), along with aircraft violating Norwegian and Estonian airspace. Trump has also said that NATO should shoot down any Russian aircraft in NATO airspace. On the current course, we are heading for a Turkey 2015 type showdown (which ended with a Russian Su-24 shot down over Syria after violating Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, with warnings occuring for 5 minutes before that).

        • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netM
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          17 hours ago

          I appreciate that there are some differences, I’m more making a cheeky remark about how many libs thought that Trump was going to pull the pin on project ukraine in exchange for some trump tower deal in Moscow.

          • MarmiteLover123 [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.net
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            15 hours ago

            Not really, there was a spike at the start of June, but it stabilised. Ukrainian attacks are more aimed at specific components of petroleum refineries than crude oil storage facilities, so that also plays a part. The price of unleaded petrol/gasoline in Russia though has risen steadily throughout 2025, but the bigger issue is shortages rather than price. For now only the “less important” parts of Russia and Russian controlled territory are facing any significant shortages, but it major cities were to start, that would be a huge issue. Of Russia’s three largest refineries, Kirishi and Ryazan are currently operating at reduced capacity due to damage from Ukrainian attacks. So it’s very important that Omsk, the largest refinery in Russia, continues to operate uncompromised and that there are no further reductions in capacity at the other two.

  • Redcuban1959 [any]@hexbear.net
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    19 hours ago

    French President Emmanuel Macron was blocked on the streets of New York City, United States, as he left the United Nations (UN) headquarters to allow the motorcade of his American counterpart, Donald Trump, to pass. The unusual scene took place on Monday night, October 22, and was captured by the French news portal Brut.

    Macron was leaving the UN, where he had announced France’s official recognition of the State of Palestine, when he saw his path blocked by police officers providing security for the American president’s entourage. Unfazed, the president called Trump, joking about the situation and asking for the road to be cleared. However, Macron’s request was not granted, and he had to continue on foot for another 30 minutes, according to Brut. During the walk through the streets of New York, the French president’s entourage was approached by many passersby, who greeted him and took photos with him.

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