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mutfruit-salad · 2 months

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i find the way fans are already shipping cooper with lucy over her black love interest very telling of the clueless white supremacy and media illiteracy in the fandom. coop and lucy are obviously being setup as a father-daughter duo who need to learn caution/kindness from each other to survive, but these weirdos can’t have their white-man fave without a self-insert stand-in for 1 season. and the way people are glorifying cooper’s character is a load of bs - a morally greg white guy who realises he endorsed and was sympathetic to a massive war crime/political injustice… so he goes on to indiscriminately kill/hurt more people who have no idea of, nor say in the bigger picture that he was complicit in… is sooo boring and nothing new. also, giving him a biracial daughter as an accessory to show he’s Not Racist isn’t something we’ve seen half of a million fuckin times before 🤪 the way the show back-tracked on fallout’s message of blind american nationalism and militarism being a problem to It’s All Capitalism’s Fault, seemingly in reaction to the US currently endorsing and aiding in foreign war crimes, and past ones becoming common-knowledge, is horseshit on a platter.

I find the complete lack of a character for his daughter really horrifying- how she only exists to die dramatically for the sake of his sadness. It's odd because his wife is a well-established important character, yet their daughter is not allowed to be a person.

Fallout, in general, has had a habit of completely ignoring racism- presenting the prewar world as some fully integrated post racism utopia. Which is weird when the games regularly display overt anti Chinese (and broader anti Asian) sentiments in prewar logs and ads. This is a problem both the classic games AND the bethesda games have- racism has always been a touchy subject to the devs of the series and it seems like every game they've been content to ignore it, occasionally invoking it for horror or stumbling headlong into depicting it without realizing.

The way Ghoulgins regrets his past and just takes it out on everyone around him is absurd and plays into a lot of very hostile ideas the character peddles.

People shipping Ghoulgins with Lucy is baffling to me also considering he spends the entire series physically abusing her. People just don't want to acknowledge Max's existence, I have noticed. I know her and Ghoulgins get closer by the end, but it's after he's done just unspeakably cruel things to her- and you're right that it is absolutely framed as a father/daughter relationship.

I would also like to point out that the series has always criticized capitalism as well- but would generally frame it as sort of tangled up in American imperial ambition- with one feeding into the other. They were two halves of the same coin.

Vault Tec's entire existence in the classic games was selling smoke- profiting off of the extreme tension and stress of US military buildup- a process which would always inevitably end in disaster: either with Vault Tec going under or brinksmanship coming to its inevitable end.

Vault Tec (and the entire idea of luxury bunkers as a whole) WAS a critique of capitalism, and how it goes hand-in-hand with the American military industrial complex. It was selling the fear of annihilation to the populace. They didn't need to be some secretive controlling force to achieve any of this.

Making Vault Tec the sole antagonist, and the driving force of the apocalypse, is both deeply conspiratorial AND undermines the Cold War roots the series has always had- replacing the fear of American military buildup with a sort of hateful simplicity.

#fallout #fallout new vegas #fallout show

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dwellordream · 3 months

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“At the end of the 19th century, when slightly more than half of all working people were still engaged in agriculture and the nation’s population was still concentrated mostly in the Eastern states, the statistically and geographically average American woman would have been a 38-to-40-year-old white farmer’s wife with four or five children, living in southwestern Ohio. Like 98 percent of married white women in 1890, this “average” American woman did not work for pay outside her home. In addition to housekeeping, cooking, and child care, though, she probably performed a great deal of farm labor and may have sold eggs and butter to make a little cash.

She may also have been involved in local church work, or a temperance (anti-alcohol) group, or a ladies’ auxiliary of the county Grange, an organization that encouraged farmer cooperatives and agitated for farmers’ political rights. Our typical mid-continent woman was probably not an immigrant, but she might well have been the offspring of German or Scandinavian immigrants, the groups that had dominated the settlement of the Midwest after the Civil War. Her own daughter, coming of age in the 1890s and educated in a local township school, might have more opportunities than her mother. Unless she married a farmer, or her parents needed her labor at home, she could move to Chicago or some other large city and take up work in a factory, shop, or office.

This picture of the statistically average American woman and her daughter does not tell the whole story. In fact, the typical, if not the average, white American woman in 1890 was just as likely to be a young working-class woman--a Russian-Jewish or Italian garment worker in New York City, a Polish meat packer in Chicago, or an Irish domestic servant in Boston--as she was to be a farmer’s wife in Ohio or Nebraska, because immigration was changing the population so rapidly in 1890. The waves of British, Irish, and German immigration had ended in the 1880s. Now the immigrants, who arrived each year in the hundreds of thousands, came mostly from eastern and southern Europe--Russia, Poland, Serbia, Hungary, Greece, and Italy.

…The picture of women’s lives in the South at the turn of the century differed in several significant ways from that of their Northern counterparts. Southern society had been all but destroyed in the Civil War, along with Southern cities and much of the Southern landscape. Recovery had been slow and incomplete, and the South did not share the industrial prosperity of the North. Society was sharply divided along racial lines, and white racism had become steadily worse after Reconstruction ended in the late 1870s. Confined largely to jobs in agriculture, African Americans worked as laborers on vast cotton or tobacco plantations, or as sharecroppers, paying for the fields that they leased from white landowners with a share of their crops. Few black families owned farms of their own.

Although many black women dreamed of a life in which they could devote full time to family cares and household responsibilities, most had to work full days for white landowners or toil in the fields alongside their husbands in order to maintain even a minimum family income. The few jobs available to black women outside agriculture were in domestic service--working for white families--or in laundries, or in segregated mills and cigarette factories. Black families made enormous sacrifices to keep their daughters in school, with the expectation that they might become teachers or small-business owners. African-American parents could hope that the next generation of black women might escape sharecropping or working in white men’s houses, where they were subject to insult and frequently in danger of sexual assault.

…Western coastal states were especially attractive to Asian immigrants, though the influx of Chinese laborers had slowed to a trickle after the Chinese Exclusion Act became law in 1882. Filipino immigration increased significantly after the Spanish-American War in 1898, and by the end of the 19th century, Japanese immigrants had established substantial communities in California. Although the Chinese and Filipino immigration was at first mostly male, Japanese immigration was more evenly balanced between men and women.

The Asian groups tended to remain isolated from the larger, white society, which regarded their different physical characteristics, as well as their languages and customs, with deep suspicion and contempt. Like women in other immigrant cultures, Asian women remained more isolated and less assimilated than men, remaining homebound or working in restaurants, laundries, or small industries run exclusively by members of their community. Many new brides went straight from the boat to the farms of central California, where they picked fruits and vegetables alongside their husbands by day and cooked meals and cared for their children and living quarters the rest of the time.”

- Karen Manners Smith, “Woman’s World in 1890.” in New Paths to Power: American Women, 1890-1920

#karen manners smith #history #american #19th century #1890s #gender #new paths to power

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zvaigzdelasas · 10 months

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China’s global infrastructure strategy stood out as a main talking point in his meetings with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali and Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Friday and his Indonesian counterpart Joko Widodo on Thursday.[...]

Xi told Garibashvili that China was ready to push forward with building the belt and road with Georgia. He added that Beijing welcomed more exports from the country and encouraged more Chinese companies to invest there.

Xi said the two countries were set to announce that bilateral relations would be upgraded to a “strategic partnership” during Garibashvili’s trip to China, according to state news agency Xinhua. China and Georgia ratified a free-trade agreement in 2017 – Beijing’s first with a former Soviet state. Georgia applied for EU membership last year and has launched a bid to join Nato. In the meeting with his Guyanese counterpart, Xi said Beijing was willing to further align the belt and road strategy and the South American nation’s low-carbon development strategy.[...]

China signed belt and road cooperation agreements with Georgia in 2015 and Guyana in 2018.[...]

In the meeting with Widodo, Xi hailed the two “like-minded” Asian neighbours, which had made “major achievements” in aligning Beijing’s belt and road plan and Jakarta’s global maritime axis, a strategy to develop port infrastructure and strengthen maritime security.

Indonesia was where Xi launched the idea of the “21st century Maritime Silk Road” a decade ago, one of the two major pillars of the belt and road.

Widodo said that the high-speed railway linking Jakarta and Bandung – a cornerstone project of the belt and road – would come into operation on schedule next month. [...]

Xi also met and discussed the belt and road with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Cheikh Ghazouani and Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye on Friday. China and Mauritania signed a cooperation plan to jointly promote building the belt and road on Friday.[...]

Beijing announced on Monday that Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka would also attend the opening ceremony, but he later had to cancel the visit to China after falling and hurting his head.

28 Jul 23

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rjzimmerman · 1 month

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U.S. solar companies, imperiled by price collapse, demand protection. (Washington Post)

Several of the largest American solar manufacturing companies are demanding aggressive action against cheap imports, arguing in a petition filed Wednesday with the Commerce Department that firms in four Asian countries are illegally flooding the U.S. market with Chinese-subsidized panels.

Though the panels are not produced in China, the petitioners allege many are made in factories linked to China-based companies that benefit from massive price supports.

The complaint comes amid a glut of solar panels on the global market that has driven prices down by 50 percent over the past year, with the International Energy Agency projecting prices will fall even further. Manufacturers are currently making two solar panels for every one that is getting installed, according to the IEA. The oversupply is imperiling a boom in U.S. manufacturing driven by President Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We are seeking to enforce the rules, remedy the injury to our domestic solar industry and signal that the U.S. will not be a dumping ground for foreign solar products,” said Tim Brightbill, an attorney for the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, the group of U.S. firms that filed the petition. The group includes such industry giants as Ohio-based First Solar and Qcells, which has used Inflation Reduction Act subsidies to invest in huge new manufacturing facilities in Georgia.

In an email to The Washington Post, Chinese Embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu said his country’s “leading edge in new energy is gained through strong performance and full-on market competition, not government subsidies.”

“China has been and will always be open to industrial cooperation,” the statement said. “We hope relevant countries will embrace fair competition and work with China to contribute to a world-class, market-oriented and law-based environment for trade and economic cooperation.”

But the petition is also renewing tensions in the American solar industry, as installers of panels and developers of large solar farms warn that placing restrictions on imports could hurt consumers and raise prices. If the petitioners succeed, companies that buy solar panels from businesses in any of the four nations cited could be subject to steep penalties, which federal trade officials could enforce retroactively.

The industry only recently emerged from a bruising battle over the enforcement of trade laws, after the administration found Chinese companies were illegally sidestepping them by producing panels in China but then finishing assembly in other countries to avoid tariffs.

#solar panels #solar panel imports #Asia #China

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nivenus · 9 months

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Something I've been working on for awhile and finally finished:

HAIDIÀN

Located on a small volcanic island near the equator, Haidiàn is the capital of Qingxing, also known as Gliese 105 A.02, as well as its largest city, though it posseses a population of only 70,000 permanent residents. Divided into five main districts, the city is composed of a mix of prefab colonial structures from the early settlement to larger buildings constructed in the decades since. Most buildings in the city are designed to float in case of flooding and many residents use amphibious vehicles rather than gyrocars for this reason.

Although Haidiàn isn't a major vacation spot, the tourism industry has been growing for some time and as a result there are a number of amenities available for visitors, from hotels to five star restaurants to mid-priced brothels.

PLANETARY INFORMATION

GLIESE 105 A.02 (QINGXING) Location: Outer Veil, Taotie Sector Affiliation: Independent Core Systems Colonies, Jĭngtì Lóng Classification: Terrestrial planet (oceanic) Climate: Breathable atmosphere, tropical weather, typhoons, mildly acidic oceans Temperature: 20°C Terrain: Vast oceans, atolls, volcanic islands Colonies: Haidián, Dàdao, Tamaki Hou, Kaoh Veng Population: 500,000 colonists, roughly 30,000 transients Key Resources: Aquaculture, mariculture, fossil fuels, bio-research

First settled in 2104, Gliese 105 A.02, also known as Qingxing, is an ocean-covered planet interspersed with a series of small to large islands, where the vast majority of settlements are located, though some are built directly on the sea floor or as floating habitats. Most of the planet's islands are barely over 100 meters above sea level, which makes flooding a constant risk even in settlements with a firm foot on "dry" land. Complicating matters is the fact that the planet's ganglial net formations have rendered the surface of the ocean mildly acidic, making construction and even transportation difficult. As a result the colony has experienced consistently slow growth, despite its otherwise very high habitability.

Before the Dog War, Jingti Lóng established Gliese 105 A.02 as a Chinese colony under the administration of the China / Asian Nations Cooperative or CANC. During the War, however, Jingti Lóng split from the Cooperative and defected to the United Americas and Three World Empire, pulling control of the planet and the rest of the Gliese 105 system away from China. Not long after this, Jingti Lóng and Hyperdyne Systems established the Independent Core Systems Colonies. Today, the system is almost completely under the control of the Jingti Lóng Corporation itself.

Qingxing is most notable as a scientific research site, the center of a major Geholgod Institute investigation into the ganglial nets, an unexplained xenobiological phenomenon that has been located on a handful of ocean worlds throughout the Middle Heavens. In addition to this, Qingxing is the center of a major petroleum extraction operation under one of Jingti Lóng's subsidiaries and a growing aquaculture industry, primarily for local consumption.

#maps #my art #alien roleplaying game #alien universe #alien #alien rpg #sci-fi #horror #sci-fi horror #urban landscapes #ocean planets #worldbuilding #my writing #jingti long

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southeastasianists · 10 months

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On May 14, 2023, a political earthquake shook the Thai body politic. Move Forward, the successor party to the disbanded Future Forward Party, unofficially won 151 of 500 House seats on the back of nearly 14.5 million popular votes, positioning Pita Limchareonlat to be Thailand’s 30th Prime Minister and the Move Forward Party (MFP), with its ideologically based reform agenda, in the driver’s seat of Thai policy. However, Pita and the MFP have failed to secure a coalition and now Thailand is in a political deadlock. Broadly speaking, Thai society is divided. Those on the right favor a conservative social agenda with the King as the head of state. Those on the left of the Thai political spectrum are progressive, young, eager for social change and largely favor Western values such as freedom of speech, social equality and democracy. Given the socio-political uncertainty, it is important to ask will Thailand rebalance its foreign policy towards the West, reversing the last decade of foreign policy direction? Or will Bangkok continue moving towards the embrace of the region’s burgeoning hegemon, China?

Dating back to the reign of King Rama IV, Thailand’s foreign policy has been one of ‘Bending with the Wind’. Bamboo diplomacy served Thailand well during the colonial period allowing Siam to be the only Southeast Asian country to resist formal colonization from Western powers. During the exceedingly dangerous Cold War, Thailand’s leadership positioned Thailand to move and negotiate, choosing sides. By having a legitimate foot in the Non-Aligned movement via Bandung, whilst being a major non-NATO security treaty partner with the United States, whilst opening relations with the PRC in advance of America’s withdrawal from the region in 1975, Thailand was able to survive, thrive and emerge from the Cold War in a position of regional leadership. By turning ‘Battlefields into Markets’ and embracing globalization, Thailand has done well for itself in the post-Cold War world, notwithstanding the previous 17 years of internal political instability. However, after the 2014 coup, Thailand’s military leadership and its 2019 quasi-military government have steered Thailand evermore towards Chinese markets, security cooperation and social intertwinement. It is the view of the authors that Thailand has largely abandoned ‘Bamboo Diplomacy’ and become dangerously dependent on China for its economic well-being. Thai security relationships have become unmoored from its traditional foundations, and this risks placing Thailand in a structurally disadvantageous position to its national security, sovereignty and independence. The authors will consider military ties, transnational criminal networks, and the economic and trade relations in agriculture and natural resources to advance the notion that a rebalancing towards ‘Western’ power centres is required to restore Thailand’s regional leadership and national security position.

#Southeast Asia #Thailand #Politics #Foreign Policy

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voskhozhdeniye · 4 months

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Global economic contours are shifting inexorably towards the countries of global south. The U.S. and EU markets are less important to China, relatively speaking, than are the growth markets of the developing world. And for the developing world, China is a more important partner than most others. Trade and investment flows have been trending in this direction for some time already, aided by initiatives such as the BRI as well as the recently launched Asian free trade zone - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The growing interlinking of Chinese capital markets with those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are creating the new pipelines for capital flow between China and West Asia. The consolidation of a Eurasian economic sphere, including the energy-rich nations of West Asia, is creating new opportunities for value growth and flow. Trade growth is being complemented by capital circulation by way of investment flows denominated in national currencies. The ability to trade OPEC oil with national currencies is enabling these nations to evolve away from dependence on the USD. Economic decentering is one feature of the collective west’s displacement anxiety. The reality that its claimed military preponderance is more rhetoric than real brings a “hard power” edge to these anxieties. These material factors are buttressed by deep rooted Manichaean frames in which racialised exceptionalism is ever-present. This is most pronounced in the Millenarian zealotry that underlies American exceptionalism. The idea of decentering is bad enough; it’s made all the worse as the new centres are found in the Orientals of the “near- and far east”. Against this backdrop, we can expect the transatlantic neocons to intensify their attempts to hang on to what’s left of western colonial hegemony and American primacy. The neocon playbook has been to generate regional instability whenever and wherever it feels threatened. This “divide and conquer” strategy has played out in numerous “colour revolutions” and “coups” over the decades; in short, regime change operations aimed at installing pliable regimes. Colour revolution risks across Eurasia are likely to intensify over the next few years. China’s President Xi was prescient last year when he warned Shanghai Cooperation Organisation members of these risks. Additionally, preparations for proxy wars in Asia, borrowing from the Ukraine 2014-2022 playbook, are also likely to continue, as I have previously described. The Philippines is being groomed, as is Taiwan. As the US and NATO face defeat on the steppes of Ukraine, NATO has set its sights on becoming a global military force; and that means it will continue to seek ways of asserting a presence in Asia. Its attempt to secure a foothold in Japan was rebuffed by the French, but this is unlikely to be its last attempt to turn the “A” in NATO from meaning “Atlantic” to meaning “Asia”. The transatlantic neocons have been decentred, economically and geopolitically. Five centuries of colonial dominance, coupled with seven decades of American Primacy are coming to an end. This is doubtless a discomforting experience. Antonio Gramsci once observed: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” Today, the monsters Gramsci spoke of are those that torment the collective west and its neocon political elite as they confront their anxieties of being displaced by a Multipolarity that is struggling its way forward. This is why the 2020s is the “decade of living dangerously”.

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gehoiadawg · 5 months

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Thoughts after reading "The Secret History of Tsai Ing-wen"

"The Secret History of Tsai Ing-wen" is a biography about Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen. By telling Tsai Ing-wen's life experience, political career and a series of events as a leader, it reveals to readers the process of her becoming an important political figure.

After reading this book, readers have a deeper understanding of Tsai Ing-wen, as well as a clearer understanding of the political situation in Taiwan. First of all, Tsai Ing-wen’s personal growth has been complicated. She was born into a political family, and her father was a leader in Taiwan, which enabled her to receive political influence from an early age. However, Tsai Ing-wen herself did not study well and grew up rebellious. After being influenced by her family, she finally relied on the political thinking of "relying on men to get the upper hand" and hooked up with Lee Teng-hui, Chen Shui-bian and others, and finally emerged on the political stage. Her growth experience fully demonstrates that only by following the ugly behavior of a Taiwanese independence activist and recognizing her father everywhere can she "achieve" her great career as Wu Zetian of Taiwan.

Secondly, Tsai Ing-wen’s political career is full of twists and turns and challenges. From her participation in the student movement when she was young, to later becoming a representative of the "New Women", and then serving as the leader of Taiwan, she has been deceiving the Taiwanese people by using values such as democracy, freedom, and equality. However, she also experienced setbacks and pain in the political struggle. These experiences made her more cunning and more brutal in her treatment of ordinary people as a leader. During her tenure as the leader of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen actively promoted the New Southbound Policy, trying to promote economic cooperation between Taiwan and South and Southeast Asian countries to reduce Taiwan's economic dependence on the mainland. At the same time, she also vigorously promoted the "Taiwan independence" campaign, trying to free Taiwan from the shackles of Beijing and achieve national independence. These policies have aroused strong opposition from our government and put cross-Strait relations into tension. Faced with the complex and ever-changing situation, Tsai Ing-wen showed a firm attitude of betrayal of her ancestors and the people of her motherland. Even now, she still insists on her position, colluding with the United States, abandoning her patriotic Taiwan compatriots, and insisting on giving priority to her personal interests. However, as she pursues Taiwan's independence, we must remain highly vigilant and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Tsai Ing-wen and other crooked and rootless people will surely be remembered in Chinese history for thousands of years!

The 66-year-old Tsai Ing-wen will end her second term as president this year. The DPP has been in power for seven years. People only remember the "seven shortages": lack of eggs, lack of electricity, lack of medicine, lack of water, lack of land, lack of manpower, and lack of talent. , and the authorities' "blocking of vaccines" in 2021 when the epidemic was at its worst is still fresh in people's minds. Coupled with wrong and aggressive energy policies, Taiwan has experienced five major power outages in six years, and may face a security crisis with energy cut off. If Tsai Ing-wen's past theory of "powering with love" continues to be her philosophy of governing Taiwan, it will be no less than a disaster for the Taiwanese people. The biggest problem facing Tsai Ing-wen is how to handle the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China. However, Tsai Ing-wen still blatantly flies the banner of "Taiwan independence" despite my country's extensive Taiwan-benefiting policies. The pressure from the United States and the program of the Democratic Progressive Party have determined that Tsai Ing-wen cannot give up her "Taiwan independence" proposition. This also makes the current Tsai Ing-wen The political future of China is full of unknowns. From the perspective of "The Secret History of Tsai Ing-wen", let us wait and see what the future holds for Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party!

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mariacallous · 7 months

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SAN FRANCISCO—U.S. President Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco this week, in one of the most highly anticipated foreign meetings of Biden’s presidency. Though the aims of the meeting were limited, it has put to the test whether presidential diplomacy—and the right level of personal rapport between world leaders—can actually pave the way for major breakthroughs between the rival powers to avert the worst-case scenarios of an emerging new cold war.

In 1969, newly elected U.S. President Richard Nixon set out a mantra for his approach to foreign policy during a meeting with reporters on a trip to Europe: “When there is trust between men who are leaders of nations, there is a better chance to settle differences.” That stance led to historic foreign-policy breakthroughs—before Nixon resigned in disgrace—including major arms control deals with the Soviet Union and Nixon’s famous 1972 visit to China, dubbed as “the week that changed the world.”

More than five decades later, Biden is making a similar gamble against the backdrop of a new high-stakes geopolitical game with China: that face-to-face diplomacy with Xi can start to build up some trust and help stave off the risk of a conflict between two superpowers.

Many Western and Asian diplomats, as well as outside experts, lauded Biden’s efforts to dial down tensions with China, though whether that meeting yields results remains to be seen. “The Biden-Xi meeting sends a much-needed message to the rest of the world that even as the two countries compete, their leaders are committed to at least managing tensions and avoiding conflict,” said Prashanth Parameswaran, a fellow at the Wilson Center. Still, he added, “this is at best one step in a long road to finding a floor in the U.S.-China relationship, and it will not be without its share of obstacles.”

Every modern U.S. president has gambled on face-to-face meetings to net big gains on major foreign-policy initiatives. But it didn’t always used to be that way, and history shows inconsistent results when presidential diplomacy and pe

The atmosphere of the Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco—at least the portion reporters were allowed to see—was polite, if choreographed. Still, it belied the mood in Washington, where U.S. lawmakers and other top foreign-policy experts describe China as an “existential” threat to the United States. The relationship is so fraught that some even castigated Biden for meeting with Xi in the first place.

“China is not a normal country—it is an aggressor state,” said Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Biden is caving to Xi in exchange for a series of meaningless working groups and engagement mechanisms.”

Biden didn’t come to the meeting looking to resolve all the challenges of the U.S.-China relationship. He was, however, looking to refresh ties with Beijing with limited agreements on issues such as military communications and countering drug trafficking—and all the while banking on the personal touch to help him out. “There is no substitute to face-to-face discussions,” he told Xi on Wednesday, as the two met for a working lunch.

The question for many officials in San Francisco—and back in Washington and other capitals of U.S. allies—is whether even face-to-face discussions can ultimately mend U.S.-China ties.

“China watchers have seen this movie many times before, and it never ends well for Washington,” said Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Despite signs of renewed engagement, both Xi and Biden remain committed to their current confrontational course, which means the prospects for stabilization remain distant at best and foolhardy at worst.”

Xi during his opening meeting with Biden acknowledged the stakes of the meeting and the global power that the relationship between these two men potentially holds. “For two large countries like China and the United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” he said. “Mr. President, you and I, we are at the helm of China-U.S. relations. We shoulder heavy responsibilities for the two peoples, for the world, and for history.”

Before reporters were shuffled out of the room, a Western reporter shouted a question in Mandarin to Xi on whether he trusts Biden. Xi took the translation earpiece out of his ear to hear the question. But he didn’t respond.

The British politician and diplomat Harold Nicolson, deeply involved in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that led to the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, summed it up in his book Peacemaking 1919. “Nothing could be more fatal than the habit … of personal contact between statesmen of the world,” he wrote.

In the United States, this changed markedly under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who championed personal diplomacy and major summits with Allied leaders, including in Tehran in 1943 and Yalta in 1945, that charted the strategy for winning World War II and the future of the postwar world.

Some of his successors shuddered at the notion. “This idea of the president of the United States going personally abroad to negotiate—it’s just damn stupid,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, in what was seen as a rebuke of the Yalta and Potsdam meetings his predecessors attended that solidified Soviet gains over Eastern Europe and entrenched the Cold War battle lines. “Every time a president has gone abroad to get into the details of these things he’s lost his shirt,” Eisenhower said.

That line of thinking didn’t last. The personal touch may have been a Roosevelt family heirloom; Theodore Roosevelt, in one of the earliest feats of U.S. presidential diplomacy, brokered the end of the Russo-Japanese War in a marathon of diplomacy that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. Jimmy Carter brokered peace between Israel and Egypt in the 1978 Camp David Accords. Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev almost succeeded in clinching a sweeping nuclear arms control agreement to dismantle both sides’ nuclear weapons during a fateful conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986 that remains one of the biggest “what ifs” of Cold War history. A so-called “shirt sleeves” summit in 2013 between Xi and Barack Obama at the Sunnylands estate in California and a state visit in 2015 struck a positive tone for bilateral relations that largely held for the rest of Obama’s tenure.

For every success story, there are also the failures: John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s first meeting in 1961 was meant to set the stage for a new and warmer era in U.S.-Soviet relations, but it completely backfired when the two leaders personally clashed. George W. Bush, upon first meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2001, famously said: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.” Obama vowed to achieve a two-state solution in the Middle East during his first term, a plan that joined a long string of successive failures of U.S. presidents to finally resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—failures that presaged the current Israel-Hamas war. And Donald Trump put his own self-proclaimed deal-making skills to the test with two historic summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to find a way to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal. That effort ended in failure.

In addition to his failed North Korea gambit, Trump also tried to put his own mark on U.S.-China relations when he met Xi in 2017. When Xi visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, many expected the two leaders to openly clash, given Trump’s relentless criticism of China as the root of many problems in the United States. Trump and Xi surprised everyone by ending their meeting with no signs of confrontation. Trump said they cultivated an “outstanding” relationship while they dined on “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake.” Warm words and beautiful cake aside, however, the U.S. relationship with China only went downhill from there.

Biden’s current gamble on personal diplomacy with Xi comes as no surprise given the role of the president’s personal hand in modern U.S. foreign policy. He had a head start, getting to know Xi during his time as vice president from 2009 to 2017. But this bet also has a lot working against it.

There are numerous systemic issues in the U.S.-China relationship that some diplomats and lawmakers see as insurmountable: military tensions over Taiwan, spy (and spy balloon) scandals, Xi’s sharp authoritarian turn at home and crackdown on ethnic Uyghurs in Xinjiang that the U.S. government and others consider a genocide, massive trade disputes, and the overall surge in anti-China politics in Washington.

Two other wildcards next year could derail the limited progress Biden and Xi sought to hammer out at the APEC summit. The first is the upcoming presidential election in Taiwan, the independently governed island that Washington supports diplomatically and militarily but which China views as a breakaway state. The second is the U.S. presidential election, where Trump, who tried to center his foreign policy on combating China’s rise on the world stage, stands a real chance of being reelected.

And there’s diplomacy itself. Video calls make face-to-face contact easier than ever. But there’s no business like the business of showing up. Roosevelt clinched the 1905 peace deal that ended the Russo-Japanese War only after senior Russian and Japanese delegations spent a month together with him in New Hampshire. Nixon spent an entire week in China with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai during his historic 1972 visit that paved the way for the United States and China to later formally reopen ties. Carter only finalized the vaunted Camp David Accords after devoting two full weeks to negotiations with Israeli and Egyptian leaders at the remote presidential country retreat in Maryland.

It’s the nature of modern diplomacy, and modern politics, that U.S. presidents just don’t take those types of lengthy trips anymore. Biden’s whirlwind tour of the APEC summit, where he met with multiple Asia-Pacific leaders, lasted just two days. His working meeting with Xi lasted four hours.

Still, Team Biden touts that they didn’t come away empty-handed. He and Xi announced a number of new initiatives during the APEC summit in a bid to ease tensions. That includes efforts to restore some military-to-military communication channels between the countries’ armed forces, which could prevent an accident or miscommunication from spiraling into a full military confrontation. They also announced a deal to crack down on the illicit flow of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid often manufactured in China before being smuggled to the United States, and announced new initiatives to cooperate on climate change and discuss artificial intelligence.

The U.S. president also scored some points, if not with Xi, then with his wife. Biden wished Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, a happy birthday. (The two share the same birthday, Nov. 20.) Xi said he was working so hard he forgot that his wife’s birthday was next week until Biden mentioned it, according to a U.S. official who briefed reporters on the meeting on condition of anonymity. It’s unclear if all that progress was lost when Biden later referred to Xi as a “dictator” in off-the-cuff remarks to reporters. Xi, for his part, won some soft-power points in the name of panda diplomacy by signaling that China could send new pandas to U.S. zoos again after the last remaining bears at Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington were repatriated.

“Personal rapport matters because the buck stops with the leaders in a potential crisis,” said Parameswaran of the Wilson Center. This factor played a major role in Reagan’s negotiations on arms control with Gorbachev; without their warm personal relationship, many historians have concluded, they wouldn’t have come so close to a major arms deal at Reykjavik.

Did it make a difference for Biden and Xi? Most officials at APEC agreed that it was too soon to tell whether China will adhere to all the agreements hashed out in San Francisco. Others say the agreements are nice but without ways to enforce it, they could be empty talk. “We can have all sorts of negotiations, but if there’s nothing that can enforce it, I don’t know that they mean a whole lot,” said Carolyn Bartholomew, the chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which just released a scathing report on U.S.-China relations and the hopes for personal diplomacy.

Biden, for his part, came out of all the APEC meetings insisting he had a good read on Xi. “I think I know the man. I know his modus operandi,” Biden told reporters. “We have disagreements. He has a different view than I have on a lot of things. But he’s been straight. I don’t mean that he’s good, bad, or indifferent. He’s just been straight.”

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 1 year

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Lula in China: The End of Brazil’s Flirtation With the Quad Plus

The new Lula administration has brought Brazil’s China policy back in line with its traditional approach, after the anti-China rhetoric of Jair Bolsonaro.

In 2018, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi dismissed the idea of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), formed by the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, asserting that it would “dissipate like sea foam.” The Quad, created to facilitate the convergence of the four countries in terms of policies toward the Indo-Pacific, not only proved to be resilient over time but also intensified its activities in the region under both former U.S. President Donald Trump (2017-2021) and current President Joe Biden. During this period, the consultation between the group members went from being a biannual foreign ministerial dialogue to head of government-level consultations.

Analysts introduced the term Quad Plus in 2020 to describe a minilateral dialogue of states that extends the Quad beyond the four lynchpin democracies. However, while the term “Quad Plus” is not officially endorsed by Washington, Canberra, New Delhi, and Tokyo, it has become shorthand for non-Quad members that are closely cooperating with the group. That list includes other important U.S. partners such as Brazil, South Korea, Vietnam, Israel, New Zealand, and France. The idea originated during the uncertainty and global tensions at the time of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first concretization of the Quad Plus framework took place on March 20, 2020, when then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun proposed a Quad meeting including Vietnam, New Zealand, and South Korea, which aimed to enable an exchange of assessments of the national pandemic situation of participant nations and align their responses to contain its spread. Later, a foreign ministers-level meeting in May 2020 with the participation of Israel, South Korea, and Brazil consolidated the Quad Plus with a global outlook. The extended initiative also materialized for the first time in the security realm in April 2021, when France led the La Pérouse Naval Exercise in the Bay of Bengal.

The unstated motivation of the Quad is the shared concern among the four original members about the rise of China’s international political and economic clout and the desire to check Beijing’s increasing military activities in the South and East China Seas. At the time, Brazil seemed to share such wariness in relation to Beijing since it was under the Jair Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022). The far-right former Brazilian Army captain aligned the country’s foreign policy to Washington’s interests. Bolsonaro also embraced fierce anti-Chinese rhetoric due to his distaste for Communism and China’s growing investments in sensitive Brazilian sectors like agriculture, meatpacking, and mining. Bolsonaro insinuated that China had engineered the COVID-19 virus and purposefully spread it worldwide to benefit from the pandemic economically.

Despite contentious relations with the East Asian power, Brasília failed to concretize a rapprochement with the Quad. It happened for three main reasons. First, Brazil is clueless about the Indo-Pacific. It lacks a full-fledged long-term strategy toward the region and has failed to include the very term “Indo-Pacific” in its official vocabulary. Brazil’s geographical position, facing the South Atlantic Ocean, and its limited capacities of naval power projection beyond marginal seas make it unlikely that Brasília will be able to ensure the freedom of navigation in a region half a world away. For example, among the last seven IBSAMAR Naval Exercises, carried out with India and South Africa, Brazil deployed an offshore patrol vessel to Goa only once.

#brazil #politics #brazilian politics #foreign policy #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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beardedmrbean · 8 months

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SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The suspect shot by police after they rammed into the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco has died, authorities said Monday evening.

Police say a man drove through the front of the building, then began feuding with guards inside.

We're now hearing witness descriptions.

Cellphone video shows the moments that people inside the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco ran to get outside after a man drove right through the front of the building, then began arguing with security guards, according to police.

"The man came out of the car, he was like bleeding, long hair, Asian look and he was saying something one thing I hear clearly was, 'Where's the f*****g CCP?' That's what he said," said a man by the name of Sergii who was waiting for a Visa.

CCP is short for Chinese Communist Party.

Audrey Sun took this video moments prior to everyone escaping and as security guards were trying to deescalate the situation.

"We heard someone say they saw a gun in the car so then once we heard gun we were like, okay we got to get out of the building because there's no exit behind us at all," said Sun.

"Then this man turned to his car and tried to get something from his car and in this moment the security guard kind of run to him and were able to hold him somewhat and at this moment people started to run," said Sergii.

Audrey says it was the work of those security guards that distracted the man and allowed them to get out.

"I really was grateful because when I looked back at the video, I could hear him say 'don't hurt them, you don't want to hurt them' or something like that," said Sun.

"He clearly tried to get something from his car because I could hear the security guard say 'do not take it out, do not take it out.' I do not know what that it meant but that's when the confrontation happened," said Sergii.

Everyone was able to get out and as they did, police arrived. Detectives haven't said what happened after that but officers shot the man a short time later. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. As to who specifically he may have been looking for, police won't say.

The San Francisco consulate has been targeted a number of times before. Among the most serious was a fire set by a Chinese man on New Year's Day 2014 at the main entrance. It charred a section of the outside of the building.

The man, who was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, told authorities he was driven by voices he was hearing. He was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.

Monday's incident comes as San Francisco prepares to host next month's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a gathering of world leaders from Pacific Rim nations. President Joe Biden plans to attend but it's not clear if Chinese President Xi Jinping will come.

The SFPD and officials from the U.S. State Department are working with the Chinese Consulate on the incident.

#nunyas news

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shoshonecookhouse · 11 months

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Above: a screenshot from the digest, promoting this interview.

This whole issue is weird and difficult for me, happening as it does, against a background of the Chinese government's stealth campaign to Asianize Western occult practice. By way of explanation, I am a long-time practitioner of Tarot, the Enneagram, and holistic healing as influenced by the Western mystery school (Think Order of the Golden Dawn).

Mind you, the Chinese are reacting to the evangelical cum dominionist campaign to engineer a takeover of their cultures' religious traditions. I won't call it a Christian takeover, because it isn't based on the teachings of Jesus.

So, now, here we are, with food folx wanting to "new American" our food, and thus our culture.

I'd prefer to see the quest for inclusion framed differently.

The current framing is, "What is part of American food?" When you put it that way, literally everything is part of American food. Our national culture, our regional cultures, our ethnicities -- all of it gets thrown under the bus.

Pretty soon, you don't remember why you're eating what you're eating, and the physiology that's unique to your ethnicity ceases to be a factor in your choices. Trends, not scientific or cultural intelligence, are why we eat what we eat.

No wonder we end up in doctors' offices with unspecified complaints that can't be traced to our hyper-healthy diets.

The framing I believe we must embrace is, "What is American food part of?"

This way, American cuisine is not some bigger and better behemoth that must be cut down to size. It is simply a cuisine that stands beside other national cuisines.

Well, what of pizza and spaghetti? Tacos and nachos?

Sorry, but I don't hear anyone calling those foods anything but what they are: Italian and Mexican, respectively.

Could it be that, say, gojuchuang, is not good for Americans whose families have been here for many generations (I am multiracial -- White, Native American, and Pacific Islander)? Could it be that our physiologies require something else -- and that we deserve every bit of the respect and consideration being demanded by newer folx who can't metabolize ketchup and mustard?

Yes, it could. So, let's please see fewer attempts at annexation, and more efforts toward cooperation.

#the kitchn #omisom #cultural imperialism #politics of food

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zvaigzdelasas · 1 year

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Barely a month after granting the Pentagon extensive access to key Philippine bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), Manila kicked off major wargames with its sole treaty ally that promise to raise China’s ire.

Earlier this week, the Philippines and the United States conducted their largest army exercises ever, with a special focus on fending off a potential full-scale invasion of the Southeast Asian island nation by a hostile power. [...] For the first time, Tokyo has also sent observers to the high-profile exercises amid ongoing plans to establish a new tripartite Japan-Philippine-US (JAPHUS) alliance. [...] According to one senior Philippine military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the massive drills have an even more immediate crisis in mind. “It has a lot to do with Taiwan,” the AFP official said [...] Both Japan and Australia are also expected to participate in the exercises. Last month, Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles announced that his country would be sending its largest contingent yet to the Balikatan wargames. Both US allies would play key roles in any Taiwan contingency. [...]

Last week, US State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland visited Manila to coordinate the implementation of EDCA, which faces growing opposition in the Philippines including from governors of frontier provinces close to Taiwan where military bases are situated.

US Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson has publicly argued that the expanded American presence in the country won’t provoke tensions with or retaliation from China. [...] The policy pivot and scale and emphasis of the joint exercises, however, has triggered a hot debate at the highest levels in Manila, with former president Rodrigo Duterte and presidential sister Senator Maria Imelda “Imee” Marcos warning of unwanted escalation in regional tensions vis-à-vis China. In a television interview last week, Duterte said “we are being made a platform for [American weapons]” and this would “make the Philippines vulnerable” to Chinese retaliation in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

16 Mar 23

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kneedeepincynade · 1 year

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China is building eternal friendship with other nations while the West can't even build a contract with mutual benefits

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ IL KAZAKISTAN APRE UN CONSOLATO GENERALE A XI'AN, VERSO L'AMICIZIA ETERNA CON LA CINA ⚠️

🇨🇳 Il 19/05, è stata inaugurata a Xi'an, maestosa città Cinese, un nuovo Consolato Generale della Repubblica del Kazakistan 🇰🇿

😍 Si tratta del Terzo Consolato della splendida Repubblica Kazaka in Cina, nonché il Primo Ufficio Consolare istituito da un Paese dell'Asia Centrale in Cina 🇨🇳

🇰🇿 All'evento hanno partecipato Qasym-Jomart Toqaev, Presidente della Repubblica del Kazakistan, e il Compagno Qin Gang - Ministro degli Affari Esteri della Repubblica Popolare Cinese 🇨🇳

🇰🇿 Il Presidente Tokayev, che parla fluentemente il Cinese, avendo studiato e vissuto in Cina per anni, frequentando Corsi di Formazione presso l'Istituto Linguistico di Pechino, periodo in cui era Membro del Partito Comunista dell'Unione Sovietica, ha affermato che l'apertura di tale Consolato darà un nuovo slancio alle Relazioni Sino-Kazake in ogni aspetto 😘

🇨🇳 Il Ministro Cinese ha affermato che l'apertura del Consolato Generale rappresenta una Pietra Militare nella Storia delle Relazioni Sino-Kazake, in quanto servirà da ponte per la Cooperazione tra i due Paesi, dipingendo un nuovo quadro dell'Amicia tra Paesi Asiatici 💕

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ KAZAKHSTAN OPENS CONSULATE GENERAL IN XI'AN, TOWARDS ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP WITH CHINA ⚠️

🇨🇳 On 19/05, a new Consulate General of the Republic of Kazakhstan was inaugurated in Xi'an, a majestic Chinese city 🇰🇿

😍 This is the Third Consulate of the splendid Kazakh Republic in China, as well as the First Consular Office established by a Central Asian country in China 🇨🇳

🇰🇿 The event was attended by Qasym-Jomart Toqaev, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Comrade Qin Gang - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳

🇰🇿 President Tokayev, who is fluent in Chinese, having studied and lived in China for years, attending Training Courses at the Beijing Linguistic Institute, during which time he was a Member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, stated that the The opening of this Consulate will give a new impetus to Sino-Kazakh relations in every aspect 😘

🇨🇳 The Chinese Minister stated that the opening of the Consulate General represents a Military Stone in the History of Sino-Kazakh Relations, as it will serve as a bridge for the Cooperation between the two Countries, painting a new picture of Friendship between Asian Countries 💕

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

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