Status Updates From Der chinesische (Alb)Traum:...

Well, that ended grim. Understandable.

so the problems for foreign firms in China were known for such a long time..

what´? No examples of japanese atrocities over the ages? Only german, english and french? Plus, he should have stated that this identifying with victim status is very dangerous.

I had seen this comparison between china and japan as well, but like he said here, japan had a very different system and was no terrirtorial expansionist power after World War 2

He wrote about the many many buildings built but not how many of them stay empty or fall apart.

true, when it is convenient or allegedly for a good cause, many people will become very authoriterian.

So 1024 was the first paper money, then Kublai Khan enriched himself in 1273 on behalf of the citizens with it by forbidding private gold and silver ownership. And later the ming emperors used the same trick and so did the communists.

I never heard of Baotou but this text about high cancer rates does ring a bell. And all due to rare earth minerals, which are not rare just difficult to extract.

So the percentage of coal power in china lowered but the absolute number rose. And so does the number of nuclear power plants. And china does it for energy autonomy and producing steel for construction. And it looking eco-friendly is mostly due to damms producing electricity and they have a higher percentage than wind and solar but still dwarved by coal and nuclear.

China was the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2006 already? Economists calculated it would overtake the US in 2020 but it did it in 2006 already, in 2020 it was at 28 % and I know that now it is more like 30 %. And true, what good to ev-cars if factories produce most air pollution; factories that produce said electricity.

According to him Japan had worked through its World War 2 past? Is he sure about that? Because that was not the impression that I got. I agree with him that China uses World War 2 as a tool but not that somehow Japan had worked through it. Not to mention that his footnote only mentions japanese occupation and the massacre of nanjing and nothing else.

The Taiwan chapter was primarily just about chips after all, so why not more?

Of course he talks about the similarities between China and Taiwan in regard to food, language, culture and letters. What he doesn't tell you is that the KMT forced Mandarin on the people and culture and even if not by his logic it would be odd that Germans and Austrians consider each other different.

His writing about how Hong Kong had become more than a relict of colonialism but was also a haven for those leaving china due to hunger, poverty or political persecutions reminds me of how people talking about colonialism forget that.

I would have said that all these prior empires are not China and claiming they are is just nationalist myth. Especially since so much of it is nonsense. Especially the Qing were big conquerers and despite their internal imperial successes at first, faced lots of internal problems from the 18th century onwards.

At least he mentioned the Taiping civil war, if only briefly, but why does he claim Japan was the only Asian country to industrialize the economy and modernize the military according to european concepts? Shouldn't Thailand also count? Granted, maybe he views all of this from the CCP lens now, if not, I find it odd. I mean he has no problem defaming Mao here, so can this be the CCP lens?

His argument regarding Opium trade seems to go to "the british wanted the chinese to get addicted" but why was there a demand to begin with? He mentions problems in the empire but does not connect it to the demand for opium. plus, there must have been more trade before because he states that empire had a population increase due to new foods from the Americas (potatoes, chilli, paprica etc.)

So not only was Zheng He not originally called that but actually Ma Sanbao and his fleets were not financially feasable unlike the expiditions of the protuguese and spanish. With allegedly 250 ships at once that really sounds more like an imperial vanity project to project power outwards and so would be very difficult to get the money back.

oh great, now we get to the nonsense of past chinese dominance. Well, lets see what he will write.

Looks like nothing changed in China, the rich and powerful still send their children and money abroad and the allegedly so great EV cars, while the majority in some innercities, mostly get their electricity from coal power plants, so is that really any good for the air quality?

Yeah, the whole change by trade argument, really did not work out for "the West."