balajis on Warpcast

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This is a good post by Dalio, but doesn’t really contradict my view in any way. Xi’s view is essentially: what does he have to do to not end up like Saddam, Qaddafi, and everyone else who got regime changed? 1) First, he was starting with a much stronger country than Iraq, Libya, or even Russia. China can’t truly be sanctioned as it’s the world’s factory. 2) Second, Xi has doubled down on the Great Firewall and existing tools for internal control. From China’s perspective they successfully defeated the color revolution attempted in Hong Kong in 2019, where Julie Eadeh and the State Dept backed Joshua Wong. 3) Third, Xi has de facto nationalized many tech companies like Alibaba and ensured that the entrepreneurs aren’t too friendly or dependent on the West. This is one of China’s biggest weaknesses because those founders drove China’s high-tech rise. However, Xi’s bet is that a younger generation of ultranationalist founders will step up.

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4) Fourth, Communists are like Democrats in that they are waging international trade wars and proxy wars, as well as domestic political conflict. However, Communists have the upper hand in all these conflicts. a) The Communists have mostly crushed their domestic tech opposition, while Democrats have not yet succeeded in seizing the fortunes of Elon and the tech guys with “unrealized cap gains taxes”. And indeed Democrats may still lose to Technologists in the long run. b) As for the trade war, China builds things and you’re starting to see WSJ acknowledge that (for example) Huawei or chip sanctions aren’t going as planned. US sanctions are in fact like tariffs in that they subsidize domestic Chinese manufacturing and force all buyers to buy Chinese products only. c) As for the proxy war, China is backing Russia and they have fought all of NATO to a standstill. Germany is now cutting budget and the West is tiring of Ukraine. So China is winning there too.

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5) Fifth, China is building its own international community with BRICS, which is best conceptualized as a parallel UN where two of the Security Council members (China and Russia) have defected to set up their own organization. There are several big wins for BRICS recently, but the biggest could be the Saudi/Iran deal brokered by China. If that sticks, then both countries pump gas and send it to China. Other wins include underreported Chinese gains in places like Mali, Niger, and the like where US troops are pulling out and Russian/Chinese troops are moving in. These countries often have natural resources which China will just extract in return for hard cash. TLDR: we can go through more of the global theaters but overall, China appears to be winning. Not without cost, but winning nonetheless. I don’t like the implications for freedom — an unchecked China is a formidable thing — but we need to start with reality rather than wishful thinking. https://warpcast.com/themuyideen/0x27077765

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