DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
Tell me about it.
User ID: 745
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1hr ago
If Poland wants to sabotage strategic security of major Western European nations, they can do well without the European market. But I think it's not so hard to satisfy Poles. France should give them security guarantees, and generally expand their influence. Anyway American backing is already non-credible, and Europe is paying for its own defense. Poles will be fine with it, I think. They are not constitutional American slaves, it's always been transactional. The real problem is Baltics and American agents like Kallas.
Russia is also unnecessary in the long run, Canada can satisfy much of the European energy demand and Carney offers this openly.
People assume there will be no political will to implement reforms to resist open subjugation. I recommend you listen to how Trump is talking – if you swallow this, you might as well just apply for being a State. But they don't want that. Policies are already changing, and very rapidly. Merz talks of Russia being a «European country».
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2hr ago
Everyone enormously underestimates Europe. In reality American advantage is mostly psychological, just like the European disadvantage. We presume they cannot act rationally, or will only act rationally for a while, unwillingly, to snap back at the first opportunity. I think this centrist-Atlanticist regime was already pretty strained, what with the rise of right-wingers, deportation frenzy in Denmark (hilariously, a far more Aryan and National Socialist nation than the US will ever be, and yet accused by 56 percenters of demographic suicide), general Euroskepticism. If they do not course-correct and accept further open humiliation – and never before has it been more open – the whole political project of the EU just implodes, all the way to dissolution, at least we'll see unironic neonazis polling at >10%, and the center moves to the right.
And if they course-correct, then career trajectories for apparatchiks change robustly. They've already been course-correcting thanks to Russian threat, militarizing (Americans may not understand that they're both paying for the war now and ramping up production), changing attitude.
Trump isn't going anywhere within the next 3 years, most likely. Plenty of time to fix Europe.
What do they have against American might?
Trillions in treasuries and stocks, the largest American export market for high-margin goods (and good luck peddling American garbage to poorer countries who aren't ideologically opposed to China), ASML, Zeiss and a lot of other frontier technological nodes. They are militarily weak but they (well, France) have nuclear deterrence, unlike everyone the US likes to bully. They could reroute supply chains (rein in Ukrainians, accept Russian exports again, more EU-side JVs with China as Macron proposes) and kick the legs out from under the fraudulent American world-system. They are not actually obligated to just take this shit. It's a habit. So if Americans know what's good for them, they should shut Trump up and try to reinforce the habit again.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
4hr ago
I've said before that I had stopped posting here because it's a purely American Affairs Discussion community and, for a non-American, those affairs are only instrumentally interesting due to their effects elsewhere, and they become less interesting as America recedes from the world stage. The silence on the ongoing global events reinforces my impressions both of the US and of this forum. It's a pity because in terms of the culture war, it's very significant. The Red Tribe basically won politically. Nowhere has this been made more obvious than at the yesterday's session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, that hive of globalists Alex Jones warned us all about. For decades, the narrative around these parts has been that Europe has lost its way, is Communist, is being demographically replaced etc, and only the Serious Big Brother across the Atlantic can steer the ship. Lately there's even talk that Europe is basically «over», and America is what remains of the West, and so the US must take direct stewardship over the imperiled land. For example, one of the justifications for the seizure of Greenland from a MAGA loyalist Scott Greer:
Thanks to the power of anti-colonialist rhetoric over the actions of European leaders and international bodies, China gained a win in the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese could do something similar with Greenland. It’s easy to see an international uproar arising over Denmark’s “colonial” rule over the Greenlanders and the Danes face serious pressure to give up the territory. If the Chinese find a foothold in Greenland, they could manipulate independence to benefit themselves. They can make it harder for Americans to maintain a military presence and gain control over the Northwest Passage. The Danes, even more than the Brits, would be completely helpless to stop this scenario from playing it out.
(Needless to say, every accusation is a confession; very soon, Scott Bessent EXPOSED Denmark's treatment of Greenland in front of millions! – according to some Floridian patriot. This propaganda is gaining steam in conservative sources that belong to the American influence network).
I've seen that the rumors of European death are very much exaggerated. Europe very much still exists. But the sensibility of the United States of America on the world stage is now one of openly admitted exceptionalism and essentialist superiority. We've seen the birth of an assertive Judeo-Christian civilization-state with Latin American characteristics, and it's clearly separate from what can be called «Western Civilization». The focal point of the rupture was of course Greenland again.
I mainly want to get the conversaton going so I'll just share some quotes without commentary.
Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce:
HL: [Long passionate tirade against globalism] When America shines, the world shines. Close your eyes and imagine the world without America in it. It goes dark pretty darn quickly.
the moderator: Can I bring you back to Greenland?
HL: No. It's unnecessary. The Western Hemisphere is vital for the United states of America. Our national security people are on it, and they care about it, and I'll leave it to them to address with our allies, with our friends, and with everyone have it worked out. But the Western Hemisphere matters to the US of A, and the US of A as I've just articulated REALLY REALLY MATTERS to the world. When America shines, the world shines. Because they all need to make sure America is strong and powerful to take care of them, G-d forbid.
This is of course not so much Monroe/Donroe doctrine as invoking Light Unto the nations/Shining city upon a hill with some geopolitical dressing, only cruder, with more stick and less carrot than ever. The reactions are understandable.
Mark Carney, a long-term advisor to Justin Trudeau with all his disastrous policies, was projected to soundly lose the elections to Pierre Poilievre, a very US-style conservative self-identifying as a «simple goy from the prairies». What reversed their odds was Trump's tariff war on Canada plus endorsement of Pierre as his agent to make Canada the 51st state (Poilievre, being a simple goy but not insane, obviously denied any such intention).
Yesterday, Carney delivered a speech that I think ends the North American fraternal relationship and likely the entire post -WWII order. Some excerpts:
It’s a pleasure — and a duty — to be with you at this turning point for Canada and the world.
I’ll speak today about the rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the dawn of a brutal reality in which great-power geopolitics is unconstrained. But I submit to you all the same that other countries, in particular middle powers like Canada, aren’t powerless. They have the power to build a new order that integrates our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states. The power of the less powerful begins with honesty. […] It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down. For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.
We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for the world as we wish it to be. Canada is calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next. We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength. … We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements. We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months. In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.
[…] Which brings me back to Havel. What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?
It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.
It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the hegemon to restore an order it is dismantling, create institutions and agreements that function as described. And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.
We are taking the sign out of the window. The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just. This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.
Others are saying similar stuff, have been for a while. Merz on the end of the Pax Americana, Macron obviously.
The engagement with China is a common theme, spearheaded by Carney. His partnership with China in particular is prompting Americans to fantasize of seizing Alberta. Maybe that'll happen too.
You really should follow the WEF content on your own to form an opinion though.
The other day @TiltingGambit said:
Cultural export from China is crazily uncharismatic. And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community. Nobody likes china, nobody outside of china knows what's going on in china, and nobody in china knows what's going on inside china either.
I am not sure who's going to be American ally in WWIII now. It's my impression that @TiltingGambit has been projecting, because he, as a true American, felt that there is nothing worth learning about affairs of barbarians in China, Europe or anywhere else. This is a very Qing-like attitude. Yes, there's significant consumption of MCU capeshit, we all write in English, Americans are the top content creators on Tiktok, I'm just not seeing how this translates into political loyalty.
So. The costs of winning the Culture War. Any takes on this?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
Typical propaganda to help Westerners cope, their emissions have not increased for at least a year. This year virtually all new capacity is renewables.
Low solar utilization is an issue of inadequate battery capacity which they are now aggressively scaling.
The renewables they do have on their local grid only make small contributions
Without renewables, at this rate of generation growth they'd have been burning 30% more coal.
Just read the Analects. I don't know which translation is the best, I generally double check with LLMs.
but this seems okay: http://www.acmuller.net/con-dao/analects.html
[2:1] The Master said: “If you govern with the power of your virtue, you will be like the North Star. It just stays in its place while all the other stars position themselves around it.”
[2:3] The Master said: “If you govern the people legalistically and control them by punishment, they will avoid crime, but have no personal sense of shame. If you govern them by means of virtue and control them with propriety, they will gain their own sense of shame, and thus correct themselves.”
The Confucian notion of virtue (De, 德) is more like "moral charisma", the power to overawe lessers by your example and force them to try following it. That's what I see in Liang Wenfeng's project.
[4:11] The Master said: “The noble man cares about virtue; the inferior man cares about material things. The noble man seeks discipline; the inferior man seeks favors.”
[4:17] The Master said: “When you see a good person, think of becoming like him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.”
[7:26] The Master said: “I have not yet been able to meet a sage, but I would be satisfied to meet a noble man. I have not yet met a man of true goodness, but would be satisfied to meet a man of constancy. Lacking, yet possessing; empty, yet full; in difficulty yet at ease. How difficult it is to have constancy!”
[7:37] The Master said: “The noble man is always at ease with himself. The inferior man is always anxious.”
[9:14] The Master wanted to go and stay with the Nine Tribes of the East. Someone said, “They are unruly! Why do you want to do such a thing?”
Confucius said, “If a noble man dwells with them, how could they be unruly?”
[12:19] Ji Kang Zi asked Confucius about government saying: “Suppose I were to kill the unjust, in order to advance the just. Would that be all right?”
Confucius replied: “In doing government, what is the need of killing? If you desire good, the people will be good. The nature of the noble man is like the wind, the nature of the inferior man is like the grass. When the wind blows over the grass, it always bends.”
A great deal of the Analects is just discussion on the properties of the noble/superior man. Mencius also wrote on this of course.
Of note, Confucius was apparently exceptionally tall and strong, and so might have been a bit confused of how easy it is for a noble man to intimidate people into deference.
[1:8] The Master said: “If the noble man lacks gravitas, then he will not inspire awe in others. If you study, you will not be stubborn. Take loyalty and good faith to be of primary importance, and have no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. When you make a mistake, don't hesitate to correct it.”
[3:7] The Master said: “The noble man has nothing to compete for. But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match, wherein he ascends to his position, bowing in deference. Descending, he drinks the ritual cup. This is the competition of the noble man.”
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
And this is why, in my view, the US would end up with all the allies in WWIII and china would end up with the dregs of the international community.
The US is losing its luster very quickly in Europe.. Hard to expect better elsewhere.
they just cannot import Hollywood or Reddit. Because if they did, they'd feel the cascading oblivion of Western culture
Do you actually believe this? Hollywood and Reddit, in 2026, really, that's the all-crushing maw of the cultural singularity, the engine powering Cthulhu's inexorable march of progress?
The result is a pretty ghastly and stagnant cultural climate that's stuck in, at best, the 90s.
That's not really how the youth feels. Watch some streamers man.
Very much of this confident American commentary is just totally divorced from current reality. Their games are crushing it, their social media is extremely popular, their products are winning real respect. You're declining on literally every metric and don't even know it yet. You engage with the funny state propaganda staffed by the failsons of officials and assorted dregs of the Chinese society and think that's the spearpoint. It's the rear end.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
The West typically attempts to have objective reliable processes outputted by the government and corporate sectors that represents various things. China does not. For a recent and important example consider COVID policies, statistics, and information.
I repeat, "the West" routinely does corrupt shit that people in China get executed for. Virtually the entire American MIC would get the lethal injection in China, it's just legal and accepted. Being forthright about your vices is kind of a virtue, but only so long as people are not deceived that vice is actually okay.
What about COVID? They had wrong priorities, but broadly competent execution and thus very low deaths for the entire period of the lockdowns until Omicron. Maybe some data had been fudged at the margins. The denial is, again, circular.
What about statistics? For example they are often accused of distorting their GDP growth; the Fed thinks it's about accurate, just smoothed for whatever internal accounting reasons. They have significantly more honest accounting of manufacturing productivity, and accordingly higher productivity, both in units per worker and output per dollar of cost, which is to be expected seeing as how they clobber everyone in the global market. Tons of «Western objective reliable processes» is Eagle Burger Freedom Institute for Democracy inventing a contrived composite index to rank countries or companies from best to worst, it's so far divorced from base layer of reality that I have no idea who needs that. I don't know what you mean by «information».
The U.S., Western Europe, and the weaker countries all at least pretend. China acts like the other "evil" countries.
Regarding pretense: «China has stated its position on multiple occasions on Greenland. The international law underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is the foundation of the current international order and must be upheld. We urge the U.S. to stop using the so-called “China threat” as a pretext for itself to seek selfish gains.» I have no idea what you mean, they «pretend» as much as anyone, and they also don't bomb random countries or kidnap their presidents (they totally could stage coups in Africa for their benefit at this point, they do not). Your morality and idea of good and evil are comically self-serving.
To add to the angst is an anarcho-tyranical element, petty corruption is everywhere and the country just sweeps through areas every once and awhile to execute or imprison anyone misbehaving. The superficial competence of the regime makes it worse not better.
We've just had a Chinese person explain that this is wrong, the petty corruption is pretty much gone, why do you believe you have a better clue as to the state of their corruption or how «superficial» the competence is? I think Xi is a true believer in anti-corruption because he's a child of true believers, has been a true believer all his life, became Chairman on the anti-corruption agenda at the peak of Chinese corruption scandals, purges loyalists who've been growing corrupt, and by all visible indicators corruption is down. It's not anarcho-tyranical, there's no anarchy to speak of, at worst there's tyranny. You're just rehashing tropes 10-15 years old.
Other tropes about disappearances etc. are also unsubstantiated.
While China does contribute to some renewables
They do not "while contribute to some renewables". They are the only player in town., eg “in 2023 China produced 98% of solar wafers, 92% of cells and 85% of panels globally”. They carry the entire renewables revolution, pretty much single-handedly, for the last decade, they are the ones who kept investing in it and made it economical rather than a boutique graft opportunity for Europeans, and now they're exporting cleantech for higher value than the US exports fossils. This was a conscious choice, they could have just kept scaling coal consumption.. It's largely strategic but also ecologically minded.
Whether «the West» is broadly good or bad is uninteresting because the West is largely made up of two parts: deindustrializing decaying states like the UK and most of the EU, and major fossil producers like the US/Canada/Norway/Australia. Someone needs to have industry to produce all the goods our industrial civilizaiton relies on. This someone happens to China. In light of this fact they've done pretty well on developing towards a more ecologically friendly regime.
Basically, the question for me isn't whether they're good or bad in some absolute sense. The question is how responsibly have they acted in their particular circumstances, which is, starting (say, after the death of Mao – I won't get into the merits of Maoism now; his power was a product of his key role in the creation of the state itself and unfortunately he couldn't have been dislodged earlier) with a very large, very poor and very angry population, in possession of little resource endowment but massive military potential, and facing an ideologically hostile West committed to convert or destroy them in the long run. What did they prioritize, and how did they execute? The standard for such situations is very, very low. In this context, I say they've acted with nearly unprecedented prudence and restraint for a major power, and produced unexpectedly good results: reduction of poverty at home, exporting deflation abroad, bailing you guys out in 2008, maintaining the economic viability of dozens of small states now, and not going on a conquest spree, even as they've been the largest industrial power with the largest army for many years now.
Morally, it is comparable to the rise of the United States.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
Are China's economic fundamentals sound?
Absolutely. The world's strongest talent pipeline, the world's most competitive market, the world's best infrastructure. Some things like capital markets need major work, but they are simply the least bullshit large economy on Earth.
Do they not have a problem with cooked books and all the usual problems of a command economy
It's not really a command economy, their state plans are guidelines. What does happen is, for example, suboptimal investment due to provinces rushing to fill the quotas and creating unproductive competition. The cooking is not a big contributor at this point.
The US has no experience dealing with a competent adversary, so I understand reaching for a cached example, but it's laughable to compare them and their problems to the Soviets. Soviets exported… crude oil and timber, so I guess they were about as advanced an economy as Canada. Chinese export, for example, humanoid robots to work at Airbus and Texas Instruments. Is this all a big Potemkin village? Is everyone in the West just bribed (with money created by deficit spending probably) to purchase inferior goods and help Xi save face? Maybe, but then that means that Western economies and societies are inferior in another way, if they're vulnerable to such tactics. Personally I think it's mostly about productivity.
But that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of rot underneath.
The nature of the rot is what is in question. I will not deny stuff like oppressing Christians (though I will say that the specific Christians oppressed last time were revealed to be the Zion Church, with family members in American anti-China think tanks, and are obviously part of the US-Zionist intelligence network; more grassroots Christians also sometimes get stomped on). I could write about involution, or about the insanity of LGFVs, or cratering fertility and nearly South Korean gender animosity. But those are specifically Chinese issues. They are largely immune to «generic Communist» strains of rot because they are not generic Communists, have a completely unique system and can only be properly understood as their own civilization.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
A few things in order.
China is one of the world's most morally bankrupt societies
The common Scientific argument for this belief is the famous civic honesty study where the Chinese returned lost wallets at the lowest rate among all samples including clear shitholes, 7%. The authors decided to exclude Japan (a famously Based and Honorary Aryan society) from the study because the Japanese had similarly low return rates due to idiosyncrasy of their policy around lost items.
In the study design adapted to local customs (eg including WeChat rather than email contact in the wallet – the Chinese don't use email), the return rates jump to 59%, which is around Canadian result in the original study.
It's just bog standard biased research, confirmation of prior belief. Western sociology is pretty hollow once you look at it closely, both in its woke «Science has Spoken» and based «forbidden knowledge» branches.
they lie all the time to everyone (foreign and domestic)
This has become a self-reinforcing belief because the more impressive results they get, the less it is trusted. As a matter of fact I think Americans lie more at this point. For example, Chinese infrastructure definitely gets built, we can see it from space. Is there graft? Certainly, and much of it is likely not even needed. But graft is not the main story. Americans meanwhile just collectively appropriate vast sums, do nothing of value and lie to themselves that it's mere «inefficiency». Chinese products, especially high-end ones, work well enough to drive dozens of countries into trade deficit, Chinese scientists are sought after in the most ruthlessly competitive companies, Chinese commitments are fulfilled, concrete Chinese threats are followed by promised retaliations (unlike American ones). Where's the lie? They certainly lie at times, but probably no more than your typical developed nation. And importantly, they have improved a lot in just a few years, many travelers like Molson note it. Even a Georgetown China hawk Fedasuyk writes: «If the pessimists are right about American decline, if we really are headed toward some kind of Pax Sinica, it won’t be because of how many EVs roll off the line at a BYD factory — it will be because China has rediscovered something we’ve lost: How to make people feel part of something larger than themselves; how to take pride in historical achievement; how to sustain the promise of a national project worth contributing to.» Like, you can dismiss it as more Potemkin village, of course. But it's getting very solipsistic.
they have the most stealing of any country (primarily in the form IP theft),
«IP theft» was overwhelmingly done in the form of legal joint ventures, though there's too much noise written on this. Extraordinary estimates of lost value are premised on the false assumption that Western IP proprietors would have been able to produce at anywhere near Chinese scale. Currently they produce enough IP of their own to force Macron to beg for reverse tech transfer via JVs in France. I guess they've ran out of things to steal.
don't really believe in international treaties and society
Does anyone? Americans are are currently trying to annex a piece of an ally they're treaty-bound to defend. What «society»? On the object level, over the last two decades they've done more to help developing countries with BRI than the entire West did in five, they are the ones building roads and power plants in Africa. Their model is transactional but much more powerful than hopeless charity.
engage in genocide
For a very relaxed definition of genocide, I guess. «Cultural genocide» or something. Feels quaint after Gaza. More seriously it's just coercive modernization of a premodern people, and Uighur situation is arguably improved relative to pre-genocide times.
oppress their population
They deny their population certain political rights standard in the West, in exchange for improvement in life expectancy (already on par with the US), purchasing power and overall dignity of existence. Even in the last few years where real wage growth has been slow, they continually get more and better goods and infrastructure, with eg households consuming 8% more electricity year on year and already above the EU median. It's a very paternalistic form of oppression and I believe one preferable to something like Russia or the United Kingdom.
clearly want to steal Taiwan
Yes they've made it very clear, have been very consistent on this, and forced roughly everyone to stop recognizing Taiwan as a nation. I would prefer nations that strongly disapprove of that to recognize Taiwan again. From their perspective it's an unfinished civil war, which is a legitimate cause for annexation. Given that the ruling party of Taiwan has discredited itself with bad governance and petty tyranny and the pro-Mainland KMT is likely to win, and considering abusive American treatment of Taiwan and better life/jobs opportunities in the coastal cities of the Mainland, they are increasingly likely to get reunification by peaceful means. I will concede that the insistence on getting ready to use force is immoral.
during a time when we are realizing how much we've fucked the environment they refuse to do anything but worsen the problem
They are single-handedly solving climate change. They have driven costs of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines through the floor and continue to drive them lower. They've upgraded their coal fleet to pollute less, they're investing a lot in reforestation and cleaning up in regions with rare earth extraction etc. They pollute a lot becuse they do a lot of stuff, but they are in fact pretty sincere about ecology.
I have put vastly more effort into this than you did, but admittedly it's also mostly assertions that can be dismissed (I could support every one with a citation if I cared though). Just irritated at how easily people in rather mediocre societies can rattle off some half-baked condemnations.
conservative and nationalistic population
One of the cognitive biases that irritates me most in the Western thinking is «ideological similarity = moral good». Democracies are good if you're democratic, nationalisms are good if you're nationalist, Putin is good if you're Based, and the whole nonsense about the Judeo-Christian Tradition of course. It's probably an outgrowth of the Western European/Hajnal Line selection for participation in non-clannish moral communities – parishes, religions, nation states. Regardless of its historical adaptability in the parochial intra-European context, it's facile. Ideological similarity can help in alliance-building due to the shared conceptual language, but it can also create conflict if the ideology points you towards the same scarce resource rather than some mega-project. Different branches of Communism are mortal enemies because each wants to remake the world in their idiosyncratic manner, even as they are infinitely more similar to each other than to non-Communisms. And nationalisms are the primary example. The meta-level rule is just «my people first», for whatever definition of «people»; it's not even an ideology in the proper sense but an intellectual framework for advanced tribalism. What interests do a Han Chinese nationalist and a MAGA Heritage American have in common? They both want their people to have more resources and power to deny resources to the other tribe. Some rational win-win cooperation is possible, and common knowledge about incentives may help reaching the equilibrium, but ultimately it's a natural foundation for a zero-sum game. Ideally, you want others to cooperate unconditionally and be free to defect.
That said, I do think that the PRC is basically good. Or rather, they have a holistic notion of "good" that leads to a meaningfully healthier civilization, which is at once competitive and not very aggressive. Among all else, they have
- a deeply ingrained, shared by the ruling class, doctrine of performance legitimacy/Mandate of Heaven, as opposed to procedure/consent legitimacy that is supposed to be a strong general proxy for performance but in a universal suffrage democracy with lobbyism and spoils politics probably isn't;
- a similarly deep belief in the value of hard work and cultivation of assets, from personal education and iterative refinement of skills, to reinvestment into capital expansion and R&D, and all the way to the geography of the domain;
- a gleeful disregard for human equality and commensurate commitment to meritocracy, combined with internal locus of control. On this note, their «conformism» and «shame/face culture» are often misunderstood. It's not so much conformism in the Western sense, a dull Nordic/Germanic/Anglo desire to follow the Proper Etiquette and blend in, as basically striverism. People in Confucian cultures are supposed to be ashamed and pained by evidence of someone being demonstrably superior to themselves, and try to approximate that superior behavior; and on the contrary, seeing an «inferior person» try to seek his traits in themselves and root those out (literally, this is the gist of the theory of shame and virtue as given in the Analects of Confucius). Thus Tiger Moms demanding straight A's at any cost, thus rat races between companies cutting margins and boasting of the proportion of staff holding Ph.Ds, thus every crappy legacy tech company creating an internal DeepSeek-style lab within a year of DeepSeek's elevation to the ranks of a National Champion, while none in the West did anything similar despite easier access to compute and capital.
Now, it's not like the Chinese people have an infallible internal compass pointing to goodness; what is and what isn't seen as «superior behavior» is contingent on the social consensus. But the consensus isn't totally deluded or hypocritical either, and crucially, it can be steered by the elite that has skin in the game and wants to stay elite for generations to come.
It's a rare, strong and valuable package. It also has a plethora of failures not shared with the Western civilization and/or others, which may (or may not) be intrinsic to their system and impossible to ameliorate without compromising the strong parts.
I view it as an experiment among other experiments. Thus far it has been impressive, but research continues. It'll probably be good for the Han Chinese in the long run. Whether it'll be good for the rest of us… well, they'll definitely solve change on their own, for one thing. Just no way around it at this point, they have made solar dirt cheap, they're making battery storage dirt cheap, they've bulldozed through the European degrowth bullshit by proving that you can have both economic growth and low carbon emissions. Their own emissions have been stagnant for like 2 years now despite ≈6% annual electricity consumption growth, exports to the developing world have high double digit CAGR, it's a self-reinforcing loop with no discernible limit. Anthropogenic climate change used to be a big deal politically, Westerners are still debating kooky conspiracy theories at the behest of the fossil lobby, but soon people will realize we won't need to bother anymore, renewables simply make more economic sense.
That's one thing. There are more things. You can solve many problems with an insanely productive large scale economy. Mainly they'll be solving their problems, though. They don't have any moral commitment to international charity.
P.S. I have to say, while some skepticism on China is warranted, takes like @Amadan's here are very blackpilling.
most of its meritocracy and probably its economic numbers being as fake and gay as ours
Just how uncurious do you have to be to remain so ignorant of the 2nd biggest nation on the planet that makes half of all your shit, that has been the only state to retaliate and fight you back just in the course of this year's tariff insanity, your supposed arch-nemesis, the oldest surviving continuous civilization etc. etc.? As far as I'm concerned, Han Chinese are the closest thing we have to an alien species (maximally distinct and consequential of all non-Western groups), and China is the main story of the world's development over the last two millenia, only briefly deposed by the European diaspora; it's crazy interesting, but it's relegated to the same basket as Russia (the last European empire, mainly distinguished by its backwardness and large near-Arctic possessions) and «Gulf States» (…come on now). I've been saying on this forum for years that Based Russia is an embarrassing LARP cooked up by the likes of Surkov, that we're fake and gay corrupt atheists with some talent for theatricality (shared by yours truly) and bog standard nationalist-authoritarian schticks. I love my people, there are some very cool things about us, but it's just not a big deal. How can you not notice that, say, they can routinely create a new industrial equipment plant in 1 year? Or that they're The Only Country that has drastically increased its share in high-quality research in many critical fields? That it's no longer just «catching up»? From the fresh NBER review:
The US share of total global publications has fallen sharply from roughly 40% in 1980 to just 15% by 2022, with other high-income countries also declining, though less steeply. Meanwhile, China’s growth has been explosive: its share of total publications rose from near zero in 1980 to surpass both the US and high-income EU countries by the late 2010s, making up over 32% of all publications in 2022. … Surprisingly, such shift is also pronounced in top-tier science. The decline of the US persists and is even slightly larger in magnitude with a decrease of about 30∼35 percentage points since the 1980s. On the other hand, China produced less than 3% of top-journal publications in 2000; by 2022, it contributed nearly 35%, surpassing both the US and EU. These developments reflect China’s rapid industrialization, massive investments in higher education and research infrastructure, and the strategic prioritization of science and technology as national imperatives. Importantly, these patterns also counter the persistent perception that Chinese research is of low quality: evidence shows clear catch-up and even surpassing at the very top of the publication hierarchy. However, other middle- and low-income countries continue to face barriers to produce high-quality science. In 2022, over 20% of all publications were authored by researchers from these countries, but they accounted for only 5% of top-journal publications, a figure that remained virtually unchanged over the past 40 years. […] A clear pattern of specialization emerges: China is the absolute leader in Materials Engineering, Communications Engineering, and Physical Chemistry, holding over 60% of breakthrough publications within these domains. China is also leading fields like Data Science, Digital Hardware, Machine Learning, and Management, etc.
And it's all like this. Russia? Saudi Arabia? Really? Where does one get the chutzpah to look down on this? How is this psychologically possible? Is this just because the US has barred imports of high-tier branded Chinese goods like EVs and Huawei phones, and the industrial stuff they do export and dominate in (from advanced chemistry batteries to John Deere parts) gets wrapped into American-branded shells, so the only thing you see is dolls, baby strollers and crappy cheap plastic and chinesium tools from ebay?
I feign the bafflement, to be clear. Theirs is a highly illegible and uncharismatic culture, their advertisement smells fake and gauche, all those drone shots of LED-lit skyscrapers and tiktok reels with high-pitched alien music. It's very easy to appreciate intellectually but it's not in-your-face amazing like the US or Europe or Japan used to be. Still, I am blackpilled with the lack of intellectual… hunger among the Western commentariat.
Westerners enormously overrate the value of their taste and gut feeling. The Chinese don't really need to hide strength&bide time; their natural low charisma and Western preoccupation with signals isomorphic to reproductive value indicators did all the work for them.
It's darkly flattering how very seriously, in comparison, my own people had been taken during the Cold War — with all our grinding poverty, our low trust and laziness, our dysfunctional empire of subsidized third worlders, our bonkers suicidal economic system, and our petty, unvirtuous leadership. Essentially just because we can write, sing, dance, fuck well. Because we can pose and flex to make Americans cast Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago and imagine themselves scrappy underdogs, while being precisely the opposite.
So I'm trying to use our theatrical virtues to correct the record.
DaseindustriesLtd
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3d ago
ASML play is complicated. It depends on American IP and suppliers, like Cymer for light source. Nevertheless, just a month ago Macron did hint at something very close to that, and the Chinese are working on the entire stack, so…
Toujours dans un souci d'apaisement, le président propose « le démantèlement mutuel de nos politiques agressives, telles que les restrictions à l'exportation de machines pour semi-conducteurs du côté européen et des limitations à l'export des terres rares en ce qui concerne la partie chinoise ».
I hope Trump chases Europeans into a corner where they start considering live player options, options their Atlanticist handlers won't greenlight.
DaseindustriesLtd
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3d ago
I presume one difference is that the US can disable their weapons, at least F-35s, remotely. So that's not cucking.
DaseindustriesLtd
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3d ago
Greenland does in fact have some of the largest known reserves of valuable minerals in the world.
The Tanbreez deposit is not as far along in development—only completing its preliminary economic assessment in 2025—but is also estimated to contain a globally significant deposit of REEs, potentially the world’s largest, at 28.2 million metric tons. Over 27 percent of the project is estimated to consist of heavy rare earths.
That said, it is indeed very uneconomical to develop.
But no matter! Trump got excited even for non-existent Ukrainian rare earths, so this is a no-brainer. And in the glorious AGI-powered future, labor-intensive development will be much more economical, as labor will be mechanized and mass-produced.
«Arctic coastline» is a pathetic excuse, the US in practice faces no limits sans its own fiscal prudence on militarizing Greenland.
DaseindustriesLtd
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3d ago
It's about countering Russia and China. They both want increased presence in our sphere
This is a paper-thin pretext and you should be embarrassed to even give it the time of day, nevermind parrot it. First of all, Russia has ample opportunity to attack the US from thousands of miles of its arctic shoreline with the shortest path not passing over Greenland. The melting of ice will only magnify this as our submarines will be get far more space for maneuver. Second, normal NATO mechanisms allow the US to weaponize Greenland however, and the US is not even demanding more or better terms of military presence. Russia and China in general would have a very hard time securing Greenland, Russian expeditionary capacity is laughable and China would take decades to build theirs.
The simplest explanation is that Trump just wants Greenland, probably to strip mine it. Whether that makes economic sense, I am not sure.
DaseindustriesLtd
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3d ago
Do the Europoors understand how insulting and alienating this is given their concurrent begging for US help in Russia?
…Does the US understand how insulting it is to insist on tearing part of a resource-rich territory out of your steadfast ally and treaty member on a paper-thin pretext of ChinaRussia?
This Greenland thing would be good cause to pull out of NATO if it wasn’t so impotent and pathetic.
Yeah you go and do that.
DaseindustriesLtd
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7d ago
If you're gunning down crowds, I guess. If it's riot suppression, normally you wouldn't get anywhere close to that number, people don't behave like an army and just disperse.
DaseindustriesLtd
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8d ago
Estimates are now that 10k plus people have been killed
very likely bullshit to drown out eventual losses from the US/Israeli intervention. It's really hard to kill 10K people in days without heavy military operation with airstrikes and such.
DaseindustriesLtd
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8d ago
The alternative is to surrender wholly to China, which if China does will simply add another failed overseas shithole to Chinas collection of worthless foreign investments.
The problem is that they never surrendered even in part. All of these shitholes are a) very Sovereign and b) would rather submit to the US/Israel than to China, partially for racial reasons I think. Foreign Policy argues this may change, though:
Contrary to much Western analysis, Iran never fully embraced China—even after Trump’s 2018 exit from the nuclear deal. As the conservative Farhikhtegan newspaper recently noted, Tehran long treated Beijing as a fallback, abandoning major proposals whenever fleeting openings with the West arose. The paper asserts that Xi Jinping offered a $40 billion investment package in 2016, but it went nowhere, while the much-touted 25-year cooperation road map remained largely symbolic for lack of Iranian initiative.
Indeed, in the brief window of sanctions relief after the 2015 nuclear agreement, Tehran handed lucrative contracts to Western firms such as Total, Airbus, and Boeing—sidestepping Chinese companies. As Hossein Qaheri, the head of the Iranian-Chinese Strategic Studies Think Tank, admitted: “Time and again, for short-term gains, we have abandoned China—and the Chinese have repeatedly said they do not have strategic trust in Iran.”
The war’s aftermath and the “snapback” of U.N. sanctions have forced Tehran to rethink its approach: If it wants China to invest in infrastructure and defense, it must start acting like a genuine long-term partner, not just turning to Beijing in times of crisis. Even many reformists now echo this view. For instance, Jalaeipour, while pressing for broader democratic reforms at home, has likewise argued that Iran must demonstrate consistency and reliability if it expects China to invest at scale.
That message framed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, which offered the strongest indication yet of a decisive pivot toward Beijing. For Tehran, the timing was critical. Still reeling from the 12-day war and facing the activation of snapback sanctions, it gained rare diplomatic cover as SCO leaders condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes. At the same time, Araghchi joined his Russian and Chinese counterparts in a joint letter to the United Nations dismissing the snapback of sanctions as legally baseless and politically destructive.
Pezeshkian also used the summit to align openly with Beijing’s agenda, endorsing calls for global governance reform, de-dollarization, and new crisis response mechanisms while casting Chabahar, Iran’s Indian Ocean port, as a linchpin for China’s connectivity to Central Asia and beyond. In Beijing, Xi pledged respect for Iran’s nuclear rights, sovereignty, and dignity, and the two sides agreed on “maximum implementation” of their long-stalled 25-year pact. Most telling was Beijing’s symbolic gesture: inviting Iran—but not the United States, most of Europe, Israel, or some Gulf states—to its World War II “Victory Day” military parade, signaling Tehran’s place in China’s envisioned multipolar order. As Araghchi put it, “The president’s trip to China will go down as one of the most important in our history.”
But this is probably just Western fearmongering. There is no such thing as a Chinese puppet state, that actually advances their geopolitical goals, hosts their bases, receives their military training. It would be interesting to see.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
1. Cynical take.
I think we need to understand that leaders have biases which lead to not entirely rational decisions, and strongmen have little checks on their biases, enabling extreme (not in the normative sense but in the sense of sheer disruptive change) behavior. One can cook up a theory as to why the acquisition of Greenland is actually super important and worth fracturing NATO (or why the costs are overstated). Likely all your bullet points contribute. But so one can rationalize the Russian invasion of Ukraine (which seemed so dumb and negative-EV to me at the time I did not even consider it might happen) or Xi's Zero COVID. It's all not so complex. Putin is an arrogant murderous revanchist with poor awareness of Russia's real capabilities. Xi is a technocratic control freak with a can-do attitude who loves ham-fisted campaign-style governance. Trump is a petty upjumped merchant, a grabby narcissist who feels like a God when he takes something from someone. Money, prestige, land. He got hard for Ukrainian «rare earths», remember? (It was probably a translation error about «black soil» that Ukrainians with their agricultural legacy are so proud of, they don't have appreciable deposits and anyway rare earths are not rare in the Western bloc, the problem is overwhelmingly about refining infrastructure, IP and training). And he apparently believes Venezuelan oil is some goldmine (it's not). He projects this sensibility, too – he might really fear losing Greenland to non-NATO forces, but Russia and China have minimal naval force projection and very little interest in Greenland, relatively speaking, and negligible presence there at the time. Of course China would invest into development, they do that everywhere, but Denmark is a good and loyal ally. Below, @naraburns cites a Jan 8 2026 (wow things move fast) analysis from CSIS: “Already, Chinese rare earth company Shenghe Resources is the largest shareholder in the Kvanefjeld mine, with 12.5 percent ownership. Shenghe signed an MOU in 2018 to lead the processing and marketing of materials extracted from the site.”
OK, let's see the source on this largest shareholder. The link is to 2019 piece from NPR: “Access to Greenland's resources could help break U.S. dependency on China for rare earths. But already a Chinese state-owned company has more than a 12% stake in the Kvanefjeld deposit. Kvanefjeld is owned by Greenland Minerals, an Australian company, and China's Shenghe Resources is its largest shareholder and strategic partner.”
https://ggg.gl/partner/ is defunct, because the name was changed in 2022:
Energy Transition Minerals Ltd (formerly Greenland Minerals Limited,[1] ASX Code: ETM) is an ASX-listed company focused on the exploration, development and financing of minerals, and rare earths. The company’s current projects include the Kvanefjeld, located in Greenland, Villasrubias, located in Spain, and two Lithium projects located in the James Bay region in Canada.
OCJ investments Pty Ltd in Australia hold a 17% share of the company, while a Chinese company, Shenghe Resources holds a 7% share. The rest of the shares are held by other institutions and private investors.[13]
I don't know how much Shenghe Resources held in GGG. Currently ETM Ltd. has two Chinese non-executive directors, of which one seems to represent Shenghe.
That's just a sudden discovery of just how low-quality this war propaganda has gotten in validating Trumpian urgent framing. That's CSIS, not a journalist on Fox or a random poster who's doing ChatGPT+search to validate a take. Americans think themselves free from propaganda but it's a fish and water situation.
You don't threaten your allies (and no Dean, this is absolutely a threat, given the context of their refusal) over something as trivial as “a Chinese company has a 7% stake in one of your mines, which product you can't refine without China because the West has skill issues anyway”. It's not a rational move under any normal calculus. Trump can get anything the US needs from Denmark and Greenland, including militarization and total exclusion of Russian/Chinese activity, without the transfer of sovereignty over the land.
So either it's irrational or the calculus is not “normal”.
2. More cynical take.
…But if I were to entertain the hypothesis of Trump expressing the will of some rational decisionmaker – under which circumstances is total sovereign control actually necessary? I think it's a regime where the US competes with Denmark for resources to be exploited, and thus wants 100% of them, and Denmark would feel threatened and block that if it were in a position to do so. It's not a defensive measure but preparation for a world where raw commodities matter more than any alliance, where
2 weeks ago I said:
[…] Both nations are large, decently situated and can, in theory, produce all goods in prolific abundance within their own borders more economically than imports would be; and China is entitled to a larger and more diverse internal market on account of population size. There are some hard natural endowments – Australia has more accessible mineral wealth, Atacama desert has excellent solar resource, I don't know – but commodities are cheap. Maybe they'll become less cheap? What remains scarce after labor and R&D are commodified? Land? Copper? Wombs? We need to think of how the world would operate when major nations are capable of industrial autarky, because modulo some Butlerian Jihad we will have to deal with it anyway.
In the limit of this trajectory, [China] will only need to export enough to cover the raw commodities imports necessary for their internal economic activity. That's not a lot, in dollar terms. The more interesting question is what else we all will be trading in 2038.
I believe that's the proper framework to rationalize Trumpian land grab ambitions and indifference to allies.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
11d ago
Do you think that non-denial of willingness to acquire the territory of a sovereign ally by military means, in the context of said ally having strongly rejected the peaceful transfer of said territory, is of little importance? No shit Trump uses harsher language for ISIS than for Denmark.
DaseindustriesLtd
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16d ago
Come on, you understand Bayes no worse than me. No conclusive proof is plausible here, but had you dodged the question, it'd be a weird, stubborn, idiosyncratic failure of communication, which begs for explanation.
Yes I do literally think that at least a few feds will genuinely be scrupulous enough to maintain the kayfabe on an “anonymous” account, and if there is a place for such feds to poast, it'd be here.
DaseindustriesLtd
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16d ago
Just to remove any doubt that you are actually able to respond.
DaseindustriesLtd
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16d ago
Do you personally think that Israel has nukes, Amadan?
DaseindustriesLtd
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16d ago
I of course realize this, which precisely is why Dean staunchly adhering to “not confirm nor deny” party line is amusing. He is well within his rights to post whatever so long as it's compliant with the forum's rules, but I do not consider him entitled to others cooperating in the maintenance of plausible deniability – either regarding Israeli nukes or regarding his likely reasons to dance around the issue.
Or is there some rule against that? Don't hit me with “doxxing” please.
Or is there an American law that private citizens must aid Israel and the USG in this charade? That'd be news to me, though it makes sense.
This is either concern trolling or depressing lack of confidence.
It's fine if you accept your own subjugation, but it's not a healthy human condition. Maybe your country shouldn't exist as a nation if it's non-viable on its own, and you should apply to become a state. Would be more dignified.
Canada likely is viable. Resisting Chinese influence is significantly easier than American one – no shared language, no blood ties, no border, for starters. As can be seen, even Russia, which is constantly mocked as «Chinese resource colony», in fact is anything but and conducts whatever loony policy it wants. Canadian goal, in any case, is not «become economically reliant on China instead of being economically reliant on the USA» but to increase the share of non-US trade, principally with China, import Chinese industrial technology, become more competitive in the world that's coming, and build military deterrence and alliances. The alternative is to let the US fully dismantle your economy, complete its demoralization campaign, and then absorb your territory.
If you cannot even conceive of a nation executing this and only offer false dichotomies between patrons, then I repeat, again, you don't have what it takes to have a nation.
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