I think defending the Black Sea is maybe quite low on their list of military priorities right now ;)
My reference for this, knowing very close to bupkis about conditions in Japan, is when the pandemic hit, I got really into Godzilla movies.
They’re awesome, it was totally worth my time, but it was especially interesting to see how everything evolved from the first movie to the last one.
In the first one from 1954, Godzilla is a cosmic horror visited upon Japan. There’s this idea of Godzilla being a punishment for something, and I think it’s pretty easy to understand what that’s about.
Once you get to Shin Godzilla from 2016, everything has changed. Godzilla is still a cosmic horror, but it’s more like this grotesque, biological thing that comes from the sea, like an alien from without. There’s these very drawn out sections of politicians and aides talking to each other about strategy, and I felt like it was a writer trying to justify Japanese nationalism as an awakening, and a response to new threats.
It’s like now, the reason why the Japanese deserve Godzilla is that they’ve allowed themselves to grow weak and complacent, and they didn’t truly appreciate what their military could do for them.
(It’s been a while since I’ve seen Shin Godzilla, so if I’m remembering it wrong, please correct me)
The way I remember it, is that it ends up celebrating the military hawks and the Japanese self-defense forces in a way that made me think “Huh, that’s different”.
Anyway, that’s how I’ve been keeping up with Japanese politics. Godzinology.
China allegedly knew, and was able to get the invasion postponed? Ok
Nah, Putin needed the men’s team to win Ice Hockey first, which by the way explains why Finland is now on the shortlist for invasion. I’ll see that goalie’s head on a pike, by Stalin.
A look from inside the Chinese Covid lockdown of Shanghai. He appears to be posting long twitter threads daily on his lockdown experience.
Also referenced in the Twitter thread:
Yeah. I was a bit shocked a few months ago to hear chinese left-communists explaining they were the ones making the policy work by organizing community delivery of stuff, but, well, it makes sense that the panda wouldn’t care.
I had heard something about the government delivering groceries, I’m pretty sure they were doing that at the start of the original Wuhan outbreak, and I thought I saw at least a mention of it in Shanghai. Perhaps the city is just too big and they don’t have the resources to actually do food deliveries on this scale? It certainly sounds like regardless of their original plan, the government is not delivering food and food supplies are getting somewhat sporadic.
I have a colleague who is in lockdown in his community. There aren’t enough delivery persons for groceries and there is like a one minute window each week to order before it shuts. Within the residential area that’s been locked down, residents engage in barter trade.
It’s nuts.
We are truly living in the (dystopian) future. Drone patrolling and monitoring buildings.
It seems like Shanghai is so poorly handled that everyone hates the local authorities now.
All other places of China is blaming them for not acting fast, not locking down sooner, so people are moving from Shanghai unrestricted to other locations causing each destination to shut down accordingly. And now Shanghai is forced by central government to lock down, but was not prepared to do so. It’s like they never considered Wuhan could happen ever again.
A lot of rumors floating around on Chinese internet are that some local community members organize to ensure foreigners’ supplies first, so they won’t badmouth the lockdown, and this is causing some bad sentiments to paint Shanghai people/local authorities as traitors who puts money/foreigners above anything else. The previous traitor was Hong Kong as they didn’t shut down and had several thousand deaths, which is high for Chinese standards.
Now, everyone knows this hardcore lock down strategy can’t stay forever. But there is no way the strategy stops now, as the investment in this has just been too high. It has benefited China to keep its productivity for the last year, maybe it could even contain the current wave with great costs. Maybe then the direction will change.
If China does give it up, it will be the mother of all outbreaks , as China is a very immune naive population in dense packing with substandard vaccines.
They’ll likely lose millions.
No, that’s not a carrier! It’s a, um, lemme see, oh yeah, a “multi-purpose operation destroyer.”
I always assume Chinese deaths from COVID are vastly under reported to frame it as a foreign virus from the US or some such CCP nonsense.
But I question why foreigners are still in China at this point. I would have left long before COVID started just based on how things have regressed.
Think about it. Since Covid China has been doing hardcore lockdown on the boarders, at least 2 weeks quarantine for anyone entering China. The majority of people wear masks in public in populated areas. Most of the people received at least 2 doses of (inferior) vaccines. Plus spread tracing with the current government surveillance. It adds up, the death numbers are reasonable. Once you are cleared and wear masks, China has operated almost as normal for the past year, until Omicron. Some of the business people had gone back because of this. During Trump, business only regressed but was still going. Regression in political climate and free speech, frankly, if you want, can just be a minor nuance to business or daily lives, an every-country-has-its-problems thing. Sometimes I can’t imagine how people in the most shittest places on earth live, well, I guess people get used to things and adapt.
I have been an expat for three years in Shanghai, but that was before COVID and the big brother social credit program. However, I think that the situation regarding foreigners has but changed much:
It is harder to have local friends than in closer countries. Expats lived in their own bubble, and were usually not bothered by the local authorities. We all used a VPN to access regular internet and no one seemed to care.
Most of us would not have been able to interact in the Chinese internet.
So basically, it really felt like the Chinese regime didn’t care about us at all.
I suppose they were more interested in whatever company documents were on our computers than what we posted on social networks.
My expat contacts who are still there told me they had lived normally since COVID, except for not being able to go home.
I really think that before Omicron, their strategy worked as advertised, with local disruptions only after the initial wave.
Tweeter is Hong Kong Bureau Chief for AFP News Agency