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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9747 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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This analysis is nuts. Xi just purged his top two generals, and the CCP looks like it’s actually going to stand up to him about that. China is in no position to go to war, especially after finding out from Venezuela and Iran that Chinese radars can’t beat American stealth. Before the war we were assured that Iranian missiles would quickly overwhelm our interceptors, and we’ve instead found that we can wipe out Iranian missile launcher sites while keeping our carriers safe and sound. Iran is getting crushed, and they resorted to putting the impotent son of the old Ayatollah in charge, the one who is so incompetent that his dad specifically ordered in his will that he not be put in charge. Oil is cheaper now than it was in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, and it looks to stay that way.

The only part of this analysis I agree with is that the Iran war makes war with China much less likely, because China would be crazy to try to take Taiwan now that they’ve seen how outmatched they would be, and that Trump is willing to break things and let the chips fall where they may.

The “Xi is surely finished - the CCP elites are rising against him” is such a tired genre after Bo Xilai is out. And the ability and will for the Chinese government to control information flow is much stronger now compared to then. Tell me what are the signs that he’s losing control?

I beg Americans to stop consuming YouTube or xitter slops on Chinese politics. The Chinese themselves don’t even understand Chinese politics enough to give you that level of insights. A couple of neurotic Chinese dissidents assuring that Xi is surely finished this time or English teacher in China/grifters posting the coming collapse of China ver#192 don’t know shit. Please ask your most trusted AI to summarize their previous findings and check their predictive power. That’ll save everyone’s time.

and the CCP looks like it’s actually going to stand up to him about that

I would like to know more. I've heard about the firings, but not about any signs of the rest of the party developing a backbone.

My understanding is that while Xi purged Zhang and Liu in January, the National People’s Congress have so far declined to remove their delegate status. Normally purge victims are stripped of their status pretty quick, and it was expected that would happen during the NPC’s February meeting, but it didn’t. So either they didn’t vote on it, or they voted on it and it didn’t pass. Legally speaking NPC delegates can’t be formally investigated the way Zhang and Liu have been. So this could be an act of resistance against Xi, refusing to make his actions against the generals retroactively legal, the way they usually have in the past.

That’s where Epoch Times and other Chinese expats take you. Some call themselves “bed listeners”, ie if you’re under someone’s bed to listen to the cracking sounds when they have sex. The point being that you can’t get information directly from the communist party, just like you can’t be a transparent voyeur, so you’d have to infer things from the way they arrange cups during politburo meetings, the orders they call out names in government papers etc. It’s a clever name and they do occasionally get things right, but the noise level is incredibly high.

Btw Americans should have realized a long time ago that x country diaspora don’t usually give you more insights than trusted American domain experts. Diasporoids like Pahlavis or Southern Vietnamese or Chinese dissidents are more neurotic than average and wanted to summon Roman Legions to do their biddings, and have incentives to distort reality to get what they want.

We can wipe out Iranian missile launcher sites while keeping our carriers safe and sound

The way they did that was by just not using the carriers, and running the entire first week of the war by an elaborate relay of aerial tankers to run squadrons in from far away for sorties. Smart, but not an effective tactic in the pacific and not a good sign either.

China is in no position to go to war, especially after finding out from Venezuela and Iran that Chinese radars can’t beat American stealth.

Dunno man - they seem to work pretty realiably. The moment one of them explodes, you know there is F-35 nearby.

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