China, politics, climate change. Views my own. Reposts are indeed endorsements. Why would I repost if I disagree? https://gabriel965.substack.com/
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Even Bali is seeing serious rioting, with 2 injured and 138 detained up to now. The whole of Indonesia is aflame, and Prabowo has had to cancel his attendance in China's parade. This is big stuff, but as usual Indonesia flies under the Western media's radar. www.cnnindonesia.com/nasional/202...
This probably deserves some attention: "The attack on the hydropower dam, which produces electricity, released 500 litres (132 gallons) of water a second for four hours until the incident was detected and stopped." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
I visited Laos and took that railway recently. My conclusions were... probably different from his. gabrielecorsetti.substack.com/p/laos-part-...
I didn't know he had documentaries on those places too. I guess they're all about the greatness of China's help to those countries.
Well he would say that Mandarin is also official, I guess, so no problem.... Anyway, if he wants to self-sabotage by stressing that his experience of Tibet is short and shallow, that's all to the good.
For some people, only Gaza should ever be spoken about. Single-minded fanaticism, which if anything takes attention away from comparable situations elsewhere.
The inventor and main representative of "MAGA communism" just can't contain his excitement at the thought of Chinese hegemony.
"Michael Pettis, a 66-year-old American who teaches finance at Peking University, seems an unlikely poster boy for “Trumponomics”." gabriel965.substack.com/p/michael-pe...
Here we go again. Thank goodness the woman survived.
Some news on the Chikungunya outbreak in Foshan. "If the nucleic acid test is positive, hospitalization and treatment are required". For those of us who were in China during 2020-22, these words bring ominous flashbacks. Let's hope for the best. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/gDW-c602RY...
There is a surprising amount of guns in people's possession in Thailand, apparently, partly due to Myanmar's proximity. It's perfectly safe to walk the streets at night though, so in that sense it's not like the US. But the incidence of "mass shootings" is unfortunately increasing.
Especially when they want to push the narrative of a huge surge in tourism to China. They count every Hong Konger entering the Mainland as an "outbound visitor entering China", which is misleading.
Sure, I'm not only talking about Chinese state media, but I've also seen them do it.
I love how, when it's convenient for the narrative of a great flow of tourism in/out of China, suddenly the "special autonomous regions" are counted as not being China, without even a note.
Damn, this doesn't look like it's ending!
I find it rather amazing that someone working at Cambridge would share such transparently simplistic and one-sided takes, on a par with your average Twitter tankie.
Also, the narrative of the West "leading the world towards climate disaster" while China provides the world with clean energy overlooks the fact that China's carbon emissions are the world's largest by quite a long shot, and that Western countries have been decreasing their emissions for years.
This assistant professor at Cambridge has been making waves on the other site with his apologia for China's political system. Apparently making China's GDP grow by any means necessary means they are "leading poverty reduction efforts" and we should all get down on our knees and thank them.
The Guardian's UK edition puts the tragic mass shooting in New York on its front page. Absolutely no mention anywhere of the equally tragic mass shooting in a market in Bangkok, in which five people were killed. And yet Bangkok is a cosmopolitan global hub and plenty of Brits live there.
There were always clear days, it depends a lit on the weather.
It's got much better since then, but too many people think the problem of air pollution has been solved in Beijing. It hasn't. It's still really bad.
I was thinking of Beijing though...
It's not even down to Bangkok levels...
I've had visitors from Hanoi and, yes, Rome ask me how they managed to build the skyscrapers in Guomao so high.
A me piace molto mangiare nelle case dei Cinesi. Con i ristoranti e' questione di fortuna, anche a Taiwan.
Haha rivelazione scioccante. Sono ben pochi i residenti stranieri ad ammetterlo.
Nah, I think just me. It means you can't see it either.
The guy blocked me, couldn't take the truth.
That's what the textbook may say. It's not how China works today in practice. The general secretary serves five-year terms, there used to be an understanding that they are limited to two terms, but Xi is already serving his third terms and looks set to stay in power for life.
Most party members are not politicians and have ordinary jobs. You could argue that becoming a party member is already "participating in politics" at some level, but it's not the same thing as being a professional politician.
If you seriously think that the Central Committee can remove the General Secretary at any time, you've been taking what your friends in the party say a bit too literally. Anyway, being "in the party" means very little in China, 5% of the population are party members and most are not in politics.
I lived in China 14 years, speak the language and worked in the public sector there. What exactly are your qualifications for thinking you know how Chinese politics works better than I do?
Haha you think this is like the secretary in an office or something?
Lolololol I see someone's been on Wikipedia. Maybe learn a bit about how China really works. Would be enlightening.
重庆 shouldn't really be considered one of the "superstar" cities, but there's been a global campaign to make it famous and turn it into a tourist destination.
The safety thing is also true in Bangkok where I live now. The episode you describe is typical of China. Especially as an obvious foreigner, you musn't take issue with what other people do, or they might suddenly become aggressive. It's safe if you keep your head down, basically.
My brother went around Beijing with me, and insisted it was cleaner than London. Then we went to the Great Wall and we stopped to eat in a small town nearby, in Beijing's rural interior, and he said "oh, this doesn't seem very nice at all". The town looked very run-down and poor.
While I totally get your point, the fact is people who have been on independent trips to China and seen a bit more than the hotel lobby and specific tourist spots will still tell you how clean Chinese cities are. Of course, visiting smaller cities or the countryside will give a different impression.
Out of sheer curiosity, which reply is supposed to be from an "obvious white supremacist dogwhistle themed account"? There are three replies to my post.
It's Xi Jinping who's made himself president for life, before him there was an (informal) system of term limits. Easy enough to Google this stuff.
Ok, but the guy says "as somebody who has visited many US and European cities", so he's not even just comparing China to America. I don't doubt that there are many ways in which Chinese cities are better run than American cities.
Fortunately, most of us in the West continue not wanting a one-party state with a president for life along the Chinese model.
Damn, I didn't know that. Explains a lot.
No, as a matter of fact.
Well, it's all relative. The throat-clearing and spitting happens less than it used to do, but it still happens. And while less Chinese smoke than before, some obviously do (but then people also smoke in other countries). I haven't noticed their cigarettes smell particularly foul, I must say.
Italians really don't hoot that much... People in China probably don't hoot as much as they used to, I never really noticed it to begin with. The drivers are also somewhat more rule-abiding.
The smoking has decreased, especially among the young. I don't know about coughing, but the spitting is less common than it used to be (although it's by no means disappeared). In big cities toddlers also no longer walk around with split pants.
Yeah, some stuff hasn't changed. You still get some Mainlanders talking very loudly in public places, for instance. But things like spitting on the ground have become far less common.
It has changed for the better since then. The facilities (including the toilets) are much nicer, and the hygienic standards of the people have improved too, although you can still witness some pretty galling behaviour at times.
What year was this in?
Oh, there are still plenty of tankies and people with the hammer and sickle in their handle on Twitter.
Some people are obvious apologists, some are completely ignorant and want to stay that way, some people just hate everything to a point that feels prejudiced. But there are also lots of reasonable people just trying to make sense of a very opaque and confusing country.
It is hard to find a balance as an expat in China. Praise China too much, and you're an apologist sycophant. Criticise too much, and you're a "Sinophobe" and don't understand the different context. Whatever you say you'll get plenty of criticism, some of it unfair.
I think by then they would have already cleaned up the moats before they were full of rubbish? You might have seen a few empty bottles.
I just looked her up. She seems to consider herself left-wing?
Yeah but do people really still expect Chinese cities to look "third world"? This is like all those Americans on Xiaohongshu going "wow, the Chinese have lots to eat!" What planet do people live on?
No, he seems to consider himself left-wing. There are leftists who will express admiration for "communist" regimes cleaning up the streets, even though they would balk at the same measures being used in their own country. Someone makes that point in the comments, and he evades it.
Did you read the whole thing? There are points where he tells on himself, like when he says "China is an apolitical society under a one-party system, just like the US". He's a tankie who went to China and saw what he wanted to see. But yes, much of it is banal and true.
Yes, exactly, it's a different kind of mess, and most people only notice the absence of the mess they're used to.
Yeah. I guess it's true you don't see actual piles of litter on the streets.
Even when my brother visited Beijing in 2015 (he lived in London), he told me how clean the city looks. This is obviously the impression you get if you've just arrived from "the West". I'm so used to China I can't tell.
I find it curious how visitors to China will wax lyrical about how clean Chinese cities are. They've improved a lot over the past 10-15 years, but if you live in Beijing the last thing you think is that you live in a city with immaculate streets.
Beijing slapped sanctions on @merics.bsky.social in the hope of undermining its influence with German & EU policymakers. It achieved precisely the opposite. Allowing @mikkohuotari.bsky.social to spend time in Beijing is an acknowledgment of the failure of this approach. www.scmp.com/news/china/d...
True, and I'm absolutely not defending his despicable position. On the other hand, I think trying to criminalise speech in favour or against either side in the ME conflict is, in all cases, a flawed and harmful idea.
Yes, his basic claim is that there is no genocide.
Really hope he isn't being made a scapegoat for being ethnically Tibetan.
Are you saying that the congressman speaking this way is a crime? It isn't, there's freedom of speech in the US.
I think what this kind of prediction ignores is that a Japan with 1.4 billion people would be the world's biggest superpower, by quite a margin.
This has become my most popular ever post on BlueSky, by quite a distance. Funny how these things go.
That actually makes a lot of sense!
Yes, I can only remember seeing foreigners doing it. I've never heard of Chinese state media making a big thing about it, although they've become very consistent about using CPC.
Oh damn! They're so similar I think I can be forgiven for making this mistake.
I take one class a week. I'm making progress, but very, very slowly.
The professional apologists are still banging on about whether to use CPC or CCP. The best part is that in China absolutely no one cares. But it's a great distraction from more important issues, as well as a loyalty test.
82 year-old Chilean who'd lived in the US for almost 40 years went to get his green card replaced and was deported to Guatemala. The family spent a week believing he was dead. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Yeah, I can relate. But gosh, Thai is hard!
I will not rest until this lie is undone @newsweek.com
Oh my god, we still haven't put this to rest? I first heard this myth in 2004!
Recently there are a lot of these fake quotes by Xi Jinping (or in this case just "China") circulating on social media, saying aggressively anti-Western things he's never actually said. Most of those who comment on these posts appear to believe they're genuine.
Not getting enough attention? In comparison to what? Does anyone talk about anything else?
Was in this beach bar in Ko Samet yesterday, and they displayed the Israeli and Palestinians flags right next to each other in between all the other national flags. It was nice to see, actually.
I visited Osh in 2016 and saw the huge statue of Lenin there, the tallest in Central Asia (pics below are my own). Now it's been taken down! www.bbc.com/news/article...
One thing I don't understand is why even Indonesians sometimes do this when they speak with foreigners in English. Maybe they're trying to adapt to the way foreigners speak?
Yeah, that food court's pretty good for an airport.
Saw two giant monitor lizards making love in the stream outside my compound in Bangkok this morning.
I guess reading names of places is harder, since you don't have context to help you guess the characters.
I find this odd. Mainlanders can usually understand the traditional characters quite well. I've never heard of them insisting someone has to use the simplified ones.
People like making comparisons to Hitler, but China today isn't Nazi Germany. We could try to stop trading with China altogether, but my point is that it would hurt our countries as much as China, and the majority of the world wouldn't follow us anyway. It would be futile as well as painful.
Unfortunately punishing them where it hurts basically hurts us too, as Trump's tariffs have shown. I think that if the entire Western world and other like-minded countries like Japan and South Korea acted in coordination, it might work. But that's out of the question with Trump in the White House.
I think it's unfair to accuse us of "colluding" in China's policies in Xinjiang because we have no way of stopping them. I'm sure harsher policies are possible, but I also doubt they would cause China to give in. On issues like this, China (the CCP) is simply not amenable to pressure. Sad but true.
You're right that those things aren't enough. On the other hand, a total boycott of a country China's size isn't practical; and completely destroying relations with China over this is a step that politicians are understandably reluctant to take. There are no good options, unfortunately.
I agree condemning them will make no difference. I'm not really sure what will, though. Sanctions on products from Xinjiang and on the officials involved have already been tried.
I would say the serious Western media has reported on all the stuff you mention. Some of the terms you use (zombie workers, genocide master plan) are polemical and unsuitable for serious reporting, but it's unfair to say that China's policies in Xinjiang weren't exposed and condemned.
The intention to create a new generation of Uyghurs who no longer practice Islam or read or write in their own language is clearly present. It's what a lot of powers have unfortunately tried to do to conquered peoples and minorities, and it should be broadly condemned.
When you say mass harvesting of children, you mean to say their placement in boarding schools and separation from detained parents?
I think the memory of the news about "re-education camps" will linger on amongst a lot of Westerners, and continue to affect how they see China. But we can't realistically expect the initial levels of outrage to last forever.
...drastically changes direction, the general trend towards enforced cultural assimilation in Xinjiang (including the boarding schools) will continue. No amount of protest or appeals to reason will change their minds. And we do need to maintain some level of cooperation with China in other fields.
Maybe it's also about the fact that it often feels like nothing anyone does or says will make a difference to China's policies. I think the global outcry over Xinjiang did register in Beijing, and may have moderated their actions somewhat (or not). But it's clear that, unless China as a whole...
