China. China China. ChinaChinaChina for the China

The way CCP does zero covid is simply ineffective and anti-science. You see officials with PPE all over when all the science says transmission is mainly through air, so using PPE is a waste of resources. And mass PCR testing is also a waste of resources when RAT test is sufficient: when you test positive for RAT, it means the person is infectious and should be isolating, PCR potentially catch people already infected and recovered. And because covid is an airborne disease, you using N95 mask to break transmission, not surgical mask we all see people there are still wearing.

And then the zero covid policy as implemented simply becomes (more) repression. Like not letting people out when there is a fire (better let people burn alive than letting the disease out), or preferring people to starve than risk transmitting covid during lockdown.

One thing for sure is that Gen Y and Gen Z in China who has only enjoyed the times of economic growth would most likely break easier during economic hardships. As the backbone of the economy their voices are definitely going to be heard. Some of these are already conveyed through the unwillingness to have more babies, which have already stirred the national policies. As the officials are already afraid to show economic data this year, we can probably expect this winter to be the last of zero covid.

I thought this was pretty interesting article on what some of the protesters in China experienced and what they were/are thinking. But I suppose you could argue that it’s the equivalent of an “I went to a rural diner and interviewed some country voters” story, since it’s just based on a relatively small number of interviews.

NY Times Gift Link:

Washington Post reporter

Sounds like a nice place.

I found this video and I think it is a pretty good primer on Taiwan. Of course: Say yes to me. Say no to me.

Piece on the BBC doing advertising for PRC:

So I live in Macau, which pretty much mirrors the COVID policy in mainland China. The sudden change in policy over the last week has been absolute chaos, with a large part of the population suddenly sick. Im currently sitting in a large office which is usually packed with people but I can count the number of people today on one hand. The hospital emergency rooms here are packed (a friend of mine shared a photo of a hospital queue of over 150 people) and medicine is sold out in many pharmacies. Many businesses are understaffed and are forced to close. The streets are practically empty. I went to a local supermarket yesterday and they were completely sold out of most fresh meat and produce. It’s really surreal and feels like some kind of natural disaster. I’ve heard that it is like this in other parts of China as well

Most of my family has been sick (though only one tested positive for COVID) so I have been on full-time nurse duty the last couple days. Luckily, I haven’t caught it yet but I’m already preparing for a “Christmas surprise”.

Yikes. Sorry to hear that. Stay safe, as much as you can anyway.

Sounds terrible. I hope you make it though unscathed.

That does not sound good @cpugeek13. Stay safe.

That’s terrible. I hope you can stop going to the office until the worst is over, and reduce your exposure.

Catching COVID is bad enough but compounding it with lack of access to care and medicine makes it far more dangerous if the symptoms are more than just a fever and cough.

As usual, the real problems are human generated. Societies that act rationally and with foresight (that is, pretty much none of them, as, well, humans be humans) can weather a lot of hardship more or less successfully. Reason and foresight though are very much in short supply on this planet. It’s not just the Chinese, certainly, though there are degrees of success and failure across the globe.

Taiwan changing compulsory military service from current 4 months to a full year

Meanwhile:

Four months seems like a token thing, though I suppose you can make certain most men have boot camp at least or something.

Four months is more training than the Ukrainians are getting in the UK before heading in to the fight (apparently that program started out as only 3 weeks, but is now 5 weeks long). But definitely a full year is much, much better. Although I did see some concerns with how the time has been spent in the past, back when it was previously a full year, there were complaints of a fair amount of make-work not related to actual soldiering.

Hopefully there will be a new sense of purpose and the training will be taken more seriously by all concerned. Having all adult males in Taiwan well trained will hopefully make China think twice about invading, particularly after watching Russia and Ukraine.

I gotta think China isn’t half as incompetent as Russia though. Japan, SK, and India are probably much more of a deterrent than Taiwan itself, barring the US committing. A lot more countries have really good reasons for China not dominating the South China Sea.

China would be an infinitely more terrifying opponent (other than the trading nukes scenario). It’s far more competent, far better trained, far better motivated, and has the world’s largest industrial base and population.

The only way China can lose - it basically can’t “lose” a land war - is a destruction of its naval forces and make it subject to missile attacks on its critical infrastructure, and then it conceded out of annoyance. There’s no way to land forces in China and succeed without world war level total war, city by city street fighting horror shows. It might be possible to defeat China by land if literally everybody (US, Russia, India and everyone else) send everything at it from every direction. But that would almost never happen.

Taiwan is also stronger than Ukraine.
They have a much better defensive position (Ukraine’s defensive position geographically has been terrible), and they have better toys.

Morale would likely be similar as well, and the US would be more willing/able to help out directly.

Why would anyone need to land forces in China? China is the assumed aggressor in this scenario. To further the analogy, no one is expecting Ukraine to invade Russia in any meaningful way (or at all?).