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davad ,

If anyone else is interested in details on the effect of active sonar on divers, I found this physics.stackexchange.com/q/93222

palal ,

Sonar is fucking terrifying. It’s lethal to marine life as well as humans, and the fact that we’re happy to spam it out into the ocean is an ecological tragedy.

palal ,

It’s either international waters or it isn’t.

If it’s international waters, then this isn’t a story. If it’s not, then China violated the sovereignty of a foreign state’s territorial waters.

davad ,

That’s not exactly how it works. There are “territorial waters” which are entirely under the control of the state. And there is the “exclusive economic zone” (EEZ) outside of that, where the state has rights to resources. But the surface is “international waters”. This incident happened in the EEZ.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone

palal ,

EEZ does not restrict the operations of other boats, as has been repeatedly established by the US in the Taiwan Strait, the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, and elsewhere in the South China Sea.

redcalcium ,

Was it deliberate or incompetence? 🤔

Num10ck ,

i think a lot of authoritarian dictator moves bring up this same question. is it for plausable deniability? easiest to cover up?

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Pricks. This may be my bias speaking but I’m convinced the Chinese navy would get worked in an actual conflict.

Either way, I don’t see how they find pissing off every single one of their regional neighbors to be a productive policy. Say what you want about US hegemony, but at least they offer carrots here and there. The CCP expects everyone to thank them for beating them with a stick.

Aurenkin ,

It seems like basically the opposite of big stick diplomacy. Bunch of dickheads.

mynameisigglepiggle ,

Like a yapping Chihuahua

HubertManne ,

small dick diplomacy

Blackout ,
@Blackout@kbin.social avatar

You know 20 years ago I lived there and everyone was so kind, hopeful, and excited for the future. They saw their lives improving and their freedoms growing. When Obama was elected people would stop me in the street, give me a thumbs up. They knew enough that it was a big deal for Americans. They felt a part of the world and hopeful for the future.

Then Xi comes to power, locks down everything, youth get fucked, 24/7 propaganda against the west. Last time I was there for work before the pandemic and people were stopping me in the street to tell me how much more powerful China was over America. Shout nasty things to me in Chinese randomly. He really is a dictator and fucked those people over. My friends are extremely cautious on what we discuss over the phone or by email now. We don't need our own Xi rising to power again here.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

That’s sad to hear. I hope it gets better but I can’t say I’m optimistic

Poem_for_your_sprog ,

It’s gonna get worse.

palal ,

That’s because dude’s making shit up

Xi Jinping hasn’t been much more radical than Hu Jintao, who, in case you forgot, gained popularity through his crackdown of Tibetan dissidents.

There’s always white people who claim to know how China works, but they don’t because at the end of the day it’s not their culture, it’s not their people, and it’s not their history.

Cinner Bot ,

How’s work going buddy?

graphika.com/reports/spamouflage-breakout

Eldritch ,

I think he came off as a bit of a jerk. And I think he isn’t giving Xi quite enough credit. But they aren’t wrong, and they aren’t defending Xi. Xi like trump is a culmination of a toxic culture of concentrated power and ignorance.

Tiananmen square happened in 89. Long before Xi came to power. China has practiced oppression on it’s own people for decades. Much like every country that took their cues from leninism. Many Chinese tolerated it because despite their leadership things were improving at large. Much like how Americans generally ignore the plight of the poor, minorities, and immigrants. As long as they have their bread and circuses.

Problem is China has been projecting their oppression for some time now under Xi and saber rattling like western powers often get a pass on. But decades of bad decisions are coming home to roost. And their growth is finally slowing. That’s more responsible for changes in attitude than anything Xi in particular has done.

palal ,

On the Chinese political scale, Xi would be seen as right-moderate. His rhetoric is in line with a good chunk of Chinese citizens, but ostracizes Shanghai and some of the southeastern coastal elite.

Famously, Xi Jinping said “houses should be for living, not for speculation.”

The notion that China’s growth is slowing is true, but I think it lacks context. For the past decade or so, Chinese economic growth has been buoyed by a burgeoning construction sector. With changes to economic policy a few years back, that sector is seeing contraction and regressing back to replacement rate. Real estate shrank from nearly 30% of GDP to less than 20%. Yet, China is still reporting GDP growth in excess of 5% this year. Eventually the real estate industry will plateau, but nobody really knows where or when.

Eldritch ,

Famously, Xi Jinping said “houses should be for living, not for speculation.”

And in that he’s 100% right. And you’re also correct about the context. Belt an road is a post rebranding of wasteful infrastructure spending to prop up the countries economics. Not that governments shouldn’t spend on infrastructure. But the way China has been doing it has been a method to prop up a very unstable house of cards. Literally just throwing around money all over the place with very little return. In the end, just making things worse really.

palal ,

IIRC China denominates their loans in USD because they have a massive USD surplus due to the US-China trade imbalance. It’s aligned with China’s policy today of rapidly shrinking US Treasury holdings.

Eldritch ,

Which is only going to cause them more problems long run. In a state capitalist society, or any other capitalist society for that matter. Worthless debt is worthless. Capitalism is unsustainable. But if it was sustainable it would require healthy trading partners. So they’re really shooting themselves in the foot on that front. And none of the giant fancy ghost stations or high speed rail lines built out to the rural parts of China. The party has largely ignored and failed to benefit for most it’s existence is going to change that. Especially with the population disparity.

If they were truly socialist/communist, at this point they’d be pretty secure. Instead of slowly heading for an inevitable crash. It isn’t just them though. The west is getting ready to crash again soon. And we can’t be bothered to mitigate it.

palal ,

I mean, isn’t there pretty substantial evidence that those “ghost cities” are just speculative development that, most of the time, is productive?

See: youtu.be/SR4EYQ6JFUI?si=brfvaXCezqVI0hiL

The party’s approach to dealing with the marginalized rural population is to just urbanize as many people as possible. That’s also why they speculatively build out housing. In 2023, at least, rural people are getting more disposable income growth than urban ones:

In the first half of the year, the nationwide per capita disposable income of residents was 19,672 yuan, a nominal growth of 6.5 percent over the same period last year, and a real growth of 5.8 percent after deducting price factors. In terms of urban and rural areas, the per capita disposable income of urban households was 26,357 yuan, a growth of 5.4 percent (unless otherwise specified below, it was a year-on-year nominal growth), and the real growth was 4.7 percent after deducting price factors; the per capita disposable income of rural households was 10,551 yuan, a growth of 7.8 percent. After deducting price factors, the real growth was 7.2 percent.

Eldritch ,

I wasn’t talking about the cities per se. But their overspending on high speed rail etc. In terms of housing. There is no one size fits all. And urbanization is not acceptable for everyone. There will always be people who reject it and they aren’t necessarily wrong for doing so. You have to build infrastructure where people are. And the infrastructure they need. Not just where you want them to be or think they need. So in that sense they may have housing for everyone. But they are still occupied by ghosts seeing it’s not the housing they need or want. But one size fits all thinking, along with social oppression and a healthy dash of torturing and murdering those that disagree. Have always been core problems of leninism and those inspired by it. So it was always going to be the sort of mistakes the party makes. Because they don’t, and have no need or incentive to actually serve the people.

palal ,

I mean, objectively Chinese HSR is cheaper per unit distance than California’s or London’s by… I think an order of magnitude? They can afford to build additional infrastructure at scale.

China connected basically all major Chinese cities for less than 10x the cost of California HSR or HS2.

Eldritch ,

I’m not decrying investment in infrastructure. But rather the types and ways China has done it, specifically with propping up their faltering economy in mind.

I’d also love to see nationwide build out of quality desirable public housing in the US. To put landlords out of business and bring housing costs back to reality. But it would be silly to build it all in Wyoming where most people don’t want to live. Or as Brutalist architecture which most people don’t enjoy.

High speed rail and public transportation too. But building high speed rail to villages that don’t need or want it. Just to prop up the economy. Is again wasteful, not actually serving their needs, and only going to make their problems bigger in the end. The party is serving the party and not the people.

palal ,

I mean, I think it’s just a completely different development model.

China develops for future demand, while the US develops for past demand.

Invariably, developing for future demand sometimes leads to poor development, but those cases are not the norm. What it does allow is taking advantage of economies of scale to improve net efficiency (again, in the HSR example, China incurred 10x the debt to build 50x the rail of California and 150x the rail of the UK). Even if half of your buildup is useless, it’s still more efficient than the American approach.

I’m sure there’s some optimal point in the middle and I don’t think China’s hit that, but I think you’re conflating different issues to justify the lack of infrastructure investment in the US. The thing is, with the massive rural-urban migration in China, it was always better to have excess capacity than insufficient capacity: the urban population is the key driver to economic growth.

For what it’s worth, you can ask people in SF if they’d prefer to live in brutalist buildings for $500/month or pay the exorbitant rents in the area…

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

HMAS Toowoomba had been operating in international waters off Japan in support of a United Nations mission to enforce sanctions when the incident occurred on Tuesday.

Naval divers were working to clear fishing nets from the Australian frigate’s propellers, when the Chinese warship began operating its hull-mounted sonar.

According to Defence Minister Richard Marles, the Australian frigate provided multiple warnings to vessels in the area that diving operations were underway.

The incident comes less than a fortnight after Anthony Albanese made the first official visit to Beijing by an Australian prime minister in seven years, meeting President Xi Jinping.

The discussion was described by the prime minister as one of ‘goodwill’, and President Xi credited Mr Albanese for working to stabilise the relationship between the two countries after years of rising tensions.

In May last year, tensions between Australia and China were heightened by the presence of a Chinese surveillance ship operating off the West Australian coast, close to a secretive naval communications base at Exmouth.

The original article contains 306 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 46%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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