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You know, all these actions by the United States against China, and Against Russia remind me of this following meme…
Here is a reprint of a translated Russian article regarding the collapse of the United States, and the dragging of it’s client “Western nations” into the black hole with it.
And the USA is actually collapsing.
Actually.
In fact, it has collapsed quite a bit, but it still has a long way to go yet. It will not be over until a new nation rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the former.
It’s a good read, though I had to conduct some serious editing to make it readable for English native readers.
I do hope that you enjoy it.
Despite the running assumption in Washington for some time that democratic backslides are linked to perceived adversaries such as Russia and China, the data actually seems to point back to the United States itself.
Of all places, the news of this democratic decline was recently reported in the New York Times. According to data from V-Dem, the US and its allies (defined as countries with a formal or implied mutual defense commitment) have accounted for only 5% of worldwide increases in democracy in the 2010s while having 36% of the decreases.
In fact, it states, US-allied countries saw their democracies decline by nearly double the rate of non-allies.
This obviously raises the question: why?
Answering this is quite a tall order for even the most astute political scientists, but it’s obviously not as simple as blaming Trump. Let’s look at some of the possible reasons.
First of all, contrary to a long-running assumption, American influence does not actually lead to countries wanting to be like America. A Pew Research Center study from November 1 found that only 17% of people in their survey countries viewed US democracy as worth emulating, against 23% who said it was never a good example. Why is this?
Well, US democracy sucks.
If democracy means that public opinion is supposed to decide policies, then the US is an abject failure.
Public opinion actually means next to nothing, considering the US is a functioning plutocracy – a government of, by, and for the wealthy.
Rostislav Ishchenko develops his theme first posted here: Russian World as a global project into global multipolarity and covers why and how the West ran into a dead end, and where the multipolar situation may lead.
Please note it is a machine translation with some human assistance, and it is not a perfect document. It however makes his points clear enough, for the discussion on this massive global change.
Today we are in a unique situation – for the first time in the history of mankind, a global empire is breaking up.
Humanity is constantly living in an era of decay. At the same time, humanity is constantly living in an era of centralization.
The dialectic of history works simply: the centers of disintegration and centralization are constantly changing places both horizontally (some states are weakening, others are strengthening) and vertically (against the background of a weakening center, power in the shires is always strengthening, and the weakness of the regions leads to the strengthening of the center).
The art of leading a state is to correctly determine its internal and external state.
Accordingly, you need to move the control center of gravity from the regional level to the central level and back.
In the field of foreign policy, in an era of weakness, try not to be too active in order to suffer as few losses as possible (and it is better not to lose anything at all), while at the time of strength, try to carefully acquire additional resources.
Depending on the era, this resource can be nominated in terms of land, people, industrial power, market access, ideological leadership, information superiority, and other resources.
As a rule, several interrelated factors from among the above play an important role.
The Empire of the Collective West
Today we are in a unique situation. This has never happened before in the history of mankind.
For the first time, a global empire is breaking up.
We used to call it the American world, because after the collapse of the USSR, the United States remained the only superpower for twenty or twenty – five years (who thinks so) and became a symbol of Western dominance.
But in reality, it was the empire of the collective West.
The United States did not share the profits made by robbing the rest of humanity with Canada and Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, Japan and the EU out of a love of art or an innate desire for charity. It’s just that without the support of these vassal regimes, Washington was unable to manage the globalized world.
And, as has been known since classical feudalism, the vassal owes the master exactly the same amount as the master owes the vassal.
If a prince or duke does not dress his retinue luxuriously, does not provide it with expensive horses and weapons, does not feed it to the brim and does not drink it to the point of drunkenness, then the retinue has every right to abandon such a leader and look for a new master (the right to leave).
In politics, these relations are expressed in a change of allies.
For example, when the USSR could no longer provide Eastern Europe with an influx of additional resources (at the expense of its own population) The ATS and COMECON instantly disappeared in time and space, and their yesterday’s members lined up in NATO and the EU.
Next in line were the Union republics, which fled the Union in full confidence that they were feeding Russia and would live better on their own.
At the same time, the republics did not really think about any independence either. They took the queue “to the West” for Eastern Europeans, fully confident that they only need to join the EU and NATO and everything will be like in the USSR, only even more satisfying and better.
Some managed to join, some did not, but everyone was disappointed.
And not at all because, as some think, the West did not want to feed freeloaders.
The EU and the US were well aware of their responsibilities to their vassal countries, and they also understood that spending on their “weapons, horses, clothing, food and drink” would pay off by strengthening Western dominance around the world.
The annexation of Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet states (except for Russia and the Asian republics) was supposed to significantly improve the geopolitical position of the West, strengthen its military capabilities and make its political and economic dictates insurmountable.
When the West overestimated its strength
At first, it worked that way.
The costs of maintaining Poland and demonstrating the success of the Baltic Tigers were more than repaid by predatory exploitation of Russia.
(in the 1990s, the West established direct or indirect control over most of Russia’s resources through local oligarchs) and outright piracy in the rest of the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and after it Serbia).
Economically booming, China was unable to stand up to the collective West militarily. Russia seemed completely destroyed and only temporarily preserved the appearance of unity. At this point, the West overestimated its strength.
In any society, there are always different groups that see the purpose and meaning of existence and the direction of development of the corresponding society in different ways. And as long as there is an obvious external danger, these groups reject internal contradictions, rallying against the external enemy. If, for some reason, the authorities lose the ability to reconcile and balance internal contradictions, a catastrophe of the 1917 model occurs.
In the 1990s, the collective West believed in the “end of history”, that the world is forever Westernized, that the roles of governors and governed are assigned to different countries forever.
Being in a state of euphoria, the Western left liberals launched an ideological offensive not only on the external front, but also on the internal one, trying to make their “tolerant new world” mandatory for everyone, not only in the conquered countries, but also among those who, in their opinion, “won the Third world war (cold war).”
As long as the leftists did not dig in, the resistance to their expansion in Western society was provided by certain marginal groups of conservatives, who were branded fascists by the” new left”.
Broad strata of Western society were virtually untouched by the confrontation between these groups until the mid-noughties of the third millennium.
Moreover, the main ideological expansion of the West was aimed at the development of “conquered territories”.
It was there that the most “advanced” “public organizations” were created, spreading the propaganda of equality of norm and perversion to Western grants, even the advantages of perversion over the norm, because it “suffered for a long time”.
There, on the” new lands”, the” Soros funds ” and their many similarities worked. And left-liberal ideas, having fallen into the post-communist ideological void accustomed to the presence of a” leading and guiding ” people, were in the greatest demand. The additional appeal of these ideas was given by the fact that their local adherents, due to the support of Western funds, instantly became super-successful people against the background of the rapidly impoverished (in the 1990s) post-Soviet society.
It is difficult to say how all this would have ended if the West had had the wit and patience to wait, not to immediately cut the post-Soviet “chicken”, but to give the liberals the opportunity to demonstrate at least some success.
Then it was inexpensive.
But, having invested in a thin layer of people temporarily in power, the West decided that all the problems were solved.
The elites will cope with educating the masses.
And it was seriously mistaken.
Split in the Western family
I don’t know if Russia and China would have had a chance to stand up to the united West, which by the end of the 1990s was totally superior to them in all indicators, except for Chinese industrial growth (but it is not enough to grow quickly, you need to have time to grow), if the expansion of Western neolithic ideas would have remained exclusively external.
But the left-wing liberals, sensing that they had significantly strengthened their positions due to external expansion, launched an offensive against conservatives inside the West.
This was the beginning of the end, for” Every kingdom divided against itself will become desolate; and every city or house divided against itself will not stand ” (Matthew 12: 25).
The West faced several divisions at once. First, there were divisions between conservatives and liberals within each individual country. Second, there is a split between conservative Eastern Europe and liberal Western Europe within the EU. Third, a split has emerged between the European bureaucracy and national Governments.
Moreover, since the European bureaucracy came out from radical left-liberal positions, in the fight against it, even liberal national governments were forced to seek the support of conservatives, which weakened the position of liberals in each individual country.
An increasing amount of Western resources began to be directed not to maintain the hegemony of the West, but to the internal struggle of liberals for an ideological monopoly.
The West has lost the ability to control planetary processes, but, being in euphoria, on the wave of success, it did not immediately notice this.
When it noticed, it was too late.
The divided Western society could no longer unite and was increasingly slipping into a state of cold, and then almost hot, civil war.
The struggle between liberals and conservatives, like any struggle of roughly equal forces, began to devour almost all available resources, and the West began to feel resource hunger.
Since the opportunity to pay off the resource shortage at the expense of Russia and/or China was lost (the West thought it was temporary, but in fact it turned out to be forever), cannibalism had to be engaged: the stronger countries of the West began to redirect resources that had previously been used to support weaker and poorer countries in their favor.
Immediately, the internal split deepened.
In Europe, in addition to the division into West and East, there was a problem of “rich North” and “poor South”. These two parts of the EU had different views not only on the prospects of economic and financial policy of the European Union, but also set different foreign policy goals for themselves.
Divisions between the US and the EU, the US and Israel, the US and Turkey, Turkey and Israel, Israel and the EU, and the EU and Turkey have emerged and begun to deepen.
Washington’s position began to weaken even in the traditionally loyal monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula.
Political laws are inexorable
The West is still trying to present a united front.
In particular, the United States is forming an all-Western coalition against China and is trying to bind Russia’s forces in the European direction by forming a single pan-European anti-Russian front.
In the statements of government officials, on the paper of signed agreements and according to the estimates of expert offices funded from Western budgets, it seems to work, but not so much in terms of the self-perception of the population of Western countries, which the press is increasingly forced to reflect with minimal objectivity.
The collective West still retains a sense of civilizational unity, but in the face of growing resource scarcity, this cannot help it in any way.
Still, the strong, in order to survive, is forced to withdraw resources from the weak.
At the same time, even if the weak does not rebel, but allows themselves to be robbed to the end, the weakening of the West will progress at an increasing pace.
On the example of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, and the former “Baltic tigers”, we see that sooner or later there comes a time when the robbed statehood loses the ability to support itself.
Starting from this period, it is necessary either to pump additional resources into it just for the sake of preserving it, or to accept that it will de facto disappear, first as an economic unit, and then as a political one, which will reduce the amount of available resources, respectively aggravating the problem.
Today, the West is already clearly divided into three clusters: the American one (the main one, torn apart in the United States by the struggle of right-wing conservative Trumpists and left-wing radical Bidenites); the European one (whose economic interests require cooperation with Russia, but the ruling elites of most countries are afraid that they will not be able to retain power if they leave the American umbrella); and the Asia-Pacific one (which has already fallen into the sphere of Chinese economic influence, but does not want to admit it for the same reason that modern Europe does not want to break with America).
Historical experience shows that political laws are inexorable.
If you try to slow down the development of natural processes, then the longer you delay, the more terrible the final catastrophe will be.
In the 1990s, the West could still win, in the noughties conclude a compromise peace, being in a favorable position, in the tenth it was still possible to talk about a compromise, but the main bonuses were already received by Russia and China.
At this stage, the West can only count on a complete and unconditional surrender. Further delay will lead to the fact that there will be no one to capitulate. People, houses and cities will remain, but the western system will disappear.
Yet the United States is trying to continue playing the game of victory, and its allies have no strength to step out of the American shadow.
Further decisions should be made in the next three to five years. Either the United States will risk starting a war against China (then it should be started as early as possible, since it may be too late), or they will have to admit defeat in the global confrontation.
For the collective West, this will be a greater shock than the one that shook the Soviet sphere of influence during the collapse of the USSR.
The wreckage of the collective West in the form of junior partners of the United States will start looking for new patrons even more frantically than the post-socialist countries did in the 1990s.
At this point, the question will arise: where is the new assemblage point, around whom will the new centralization take place?
The square trinomial and its political roots
So far, we believe that such an assemblage point can be the Russian-Chinese Eurasia based on the SCO, the EAEU, the CSTO and other structures created and being created by Russia and China.
However, China, which is trying to protect itself against a sudden (but more than likely) collapse of Western markets, has recently taken several cautious steps to establish its own control over the Trans-Eurasian trade routes under Russian control.
A possible clash of interests is in Africa and Latin America, where both powers are actively increasing their economic expansion.
Finally, while not yet obvious, but in the long run, the most dangerous contradiction is that the fragments of the collective West that fall into the Chinese sphere of influence (the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand), along with the Southeast Asian states already located there, have interests diametrically opposed to the interests of Europe that potentially falls into the Russian sphere of influence.
Plus, India and Japan are too big a prize for Beijing and Moscow to allow each other’s sole influence there.
These contradictions are objective, and whether they can be overcome depends on the collective will of Russia and China.
Today, we cannot say unequivocally that this will be achieved, if only because we do not know in what geopolitical conditions we will have to move on to building a “beautiful new world”.
One thing is clear: Washington’s belated recognition of multipolarity in the form of a statement that there are three centers of power in today’s world (Russia, the United States, and China), although formally true, cannot satisfy anyone, because the dynamics of global processes are negative for the United States, and they will still try to change it, which means that the three-member structure will not be stable due to American opportunism.
In general, [1] today the crisis is developing, [2] the catastrophe of the collective West seems inevitable, but [3] the subsequent catharsis does not promise peace.
Conclusions
What may come, may come. But don’t lose sleep over it. If you can still enjoy a fine pizza, then do so. If you can still go out and watch a funny movie then go do so. If you can go outside and play with your critters, please do so. And remember… Always be the Rufus. video. 130MB
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this in my New Beginnings 2 index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Ah. I do love a good meal. I consider steak, done medium rare to be a fine delicious meal. Don’t you? Oh, and do not forget the dipping sauce or gravy. Don’t you know. It’s all around a taste treat.
A delicious steak. I like mine medium rare.
Especially with some alcohol. Most especially some fine tasty Shiraz. I like shiraz. It’s fruity, sweet, easy to drink and goes great with everything from peanuts to lasagna.
Wine. Nicely decanted. Served with fresh baked Italian or French bread.
You guys know that I have never ate so well as I am doing inside of China. This place is great. But judging from some of the comments when I post on LinkedIN, the rest of the world instead believe the hate-China fantasy.
Such as this guy…
China is short on energy, food supply and raw materials. It's fixed capital need overseas markets to break even. By geography, it is hemmed on all sides. It will suffer incredible loss of wealth and the regime will lose any credibility it may have left.
-London Desa
He’s clueless.
Just absolutely clueless.
One of the things that is going on with myself (MM for you readers) is that my meals have taken a decidedly up-tick swing in food quality.
A few “affirmation campaigns” ago, I had an affirmation that went like this…
I eat healthy, delicious and tasty foods daily.
Well, without my knowledge, my wife has this great idea to take 10,000 RMB and get a VIP account in a local high-class vegetarian restaurant. Her idea was to feed our two year old with a selection of healthy food, prepared with cleanliness, and with an eye of being tasty. This all was the direct result of a rash that broke out on my daughter after we ate some Sichuan food a few weeks ago. (All is well, by the way.)
So now, I am eating healthy, delicious and tasty food daily.
What do you know…
Ah, it’s funny how those affirmation campaigns work. Now, I long to eat some meat. You know, I am a guy. A steak lover. A carnivore. But anyways, I am fine, the kid is finally eating, and I am actually feeling much healthier than before. You would be amazed how you feel once you change your diet.
Ma Po Dou Fu
Like the one follower (Alice) who wanted youthful skin like when she was young, and ended up having zits and acne breakout. Ask her about it some time.
LOL.
Anyways, life is what you make it. If you are thinking one thing… “China is bad, people are starving, child labor”… so on and so forth it will start to manifest in your life. Well, goodness! Don’t allow that.
Think good stuff.
Here’s a cute kitten. She’s napping. Shucch!
Life is hard, then you nap.
Think good stuff.
Here’s a classic car. I always wanted one of these beasts once I watched the 1980’s comedy Adventures in Babysitting. I remember watching it while I was in training at China Lake. Did you know that it snowed that year? Yes. One inch of dusty snow on the evaporate cooler in the middle of the High Desert. Who would figure?
Think good stuff.
1950 Cadillac Series 62.
Think good stuff.
Here’s a craftsman home. It’s one of my favorite designs. I really love the nice interiors. It’s sort of a post-modern art-deco version of a “Hobbit hole”.
Laurelhurst 1912 Craftsman living room
Christmas is coming. Well, after Thanksgiving, that is. Are you ready for it? I am. MM has his tree up and little mm has her presents all wrapped up and hidden awaiting the “big day”. Though Ms. Mm can’t help herself and unwraps one every few days or so. Sigh.
Think good thoughts.
Goldie Hawn & Kurt RussellThe Christmas Chronicles 2.
Think good thoughts.
Oh, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I really think, and believe that what you think about affects the life that you live. And thus to that end, you all need to…
…think good thoughts.
Bread done right.
This post is all about China, and it is a situation report or “sitrep” for short. Since the entire Western “news” is simply the propaganda outlet for the Washington DC monied interests, we have to perform our own investigations and sleuthing.
Not that it matters though. Our non-compliance with the approved media narratives tend to get our works banned, shadow banned, or completely cut off. But not here in MM land.
The following comes from The Saker, and it was edited for the tender sensibilities of the MM readership. As well as my “superior” editing ability. LOL. All credit to the author, the source, and the venue. I hope you all like it and appreciate it.
Here Comes China: Xi Jinping’s speech, Major geo-political events, Joint naval patrol, Shangri-La was a novel
There has been a slight pause in these sitreps. This writing became overshadowed with current events, fully covered in the Saker Blog by other writers. Because of the length, we will upgrade this one today from sitrep to guest analysis.
A shortlisting of four major events since the Sitrep paused:
The failed visit (yes another failed diplomatic visit) which resulted in this comical and humorous tweet from Escobar
@RealPepeEscobar
US-CHINA IN 30 SECONDS
Jake Sullivan – “We wanna talk about Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights.” Yang Jiechi – “No.” Jake Sullivan – “Climate change.” Yang Jiechi – “No.” “Maybe. If you listen.” Jake Sullivan – “So we’re coming after you big time.” Yang Jiechi – “Bring it on.”
Uhm, how did that climate change maybe thing work out?
Well it turns out not so well. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are among several world leaders who will not be attending the big climate summit COP26 scheduled to begin this week in Britain. The two leaders will not even give it a pretense of legitimacy.
Now, that is how to give a perfect diplomatic snub! Or is it only a diplomatic snub?
I think both China and Russia are expressing that any attempt to do productive work with a naked insane emperor is now futile.
We will probably see light speed changes from now on into multipolarity to hopefully gain a world that is now insisting on decent human values and most of all, peaceful resolution of differences.
3
The other big event was the forming of Aukus, obviously in an attempt to create a mini-NATO against first China and Russia.
AUSTRALIAN SUBMARINES are indicative of the way our wonderful country is being governed.
CANBERRA is dysfunctional with the state governments nationally and that is just a start.
Department of Defence (DoD) is clearly not thinking with logic but rather with the influence of the government of the day.
DoD appears to be doing national defence planning with votes in mind and not our national security.
From the very beginning, our submarines are a dud resource.
We were going to spend $220,000,000,000.00--- YES $220 BILLION on 12 submarines that were designed to be nuclear and we insisted they be designed backwards to be diesel. That was bad enough.
Then we discover that of the 4 submarines we have now we only have CREW for 2 in 2021???
If we can only get crew for 2 now, why are we buying 12 and who will crew them in 20 years time when they are built?
NOW We have nuclear subs from the US and UK at an undisclosed price, no plans and no idea when we will see them.
FRANCE needs CHINA a lot more than FRANCE needs AUSTRALIA so I am not surprised by France sidling up to China.
France and China have a number of daily trains from stations in France to Stations in China.
Last year there were 11,000 trains between the EU and China. That is one every 45 minutes.
That daily business is a lot more important to a nation in a pandemic than some subs half-built in Australia and half-built in France in 20 years time.
Back to the DoD in Australia. They need an UPPERCUT for the pathetic way they are showing themselves to the world via CANBERRA.
They "appear" like they could not organise a sausage sizzle at Bunnings
What do you think of this mess?
How could it have been handled better?
Will submarines be relevant in 20 years time especially with NO CREWS?
-Peter Fennel
4
At the height of all of these were and are still the Taiwan issues and we will take a look at Xi Jinping’s speech a little later in this writing.
One soon finds that it becomes almost impossible to approach China from a generalist perspective. But, we have help.
On the economics side, we have Michael Hudson.
On the historical side, we have writers such as Godfree Roberts, Jeff J Browne and many others.
On the anti-China propaganda side, we have me and a number of reliable commentators on the Saker Blog and on the social, community.
On the humanity side, we have a host of excellent bloggers, documentary makers, and distributors of information as if one is walking in the streets and in the countryside with your own feet.
And of course, China is now taking its rightful place in the world as a leader and has improved markedly in information dissemination; they are taking their place on the world stage as wolf warriors, (Uhm, no, I did not mean to write that, of course, I meant to write ..) diplomats.
Sidebar:
China is a massive country and in landmass second only to Russia. But even in this simple measurement, the West tries its quibbling (and belittling) techniques.
This is from Jim Nelson that I found in my LinkedIN feed…
It was really a precious time in China in 1991. I taught English in Bengbu, Anhui for two years before deciding teaching English was not my career. Just the same, I treasure that time.
The picture below is for the first party that the students had. They invited me and my teaching partner. They were freshman who had just finished newly instituted military training.
Coming from America, I had some preconceived notions of what a college party could be like. The event I arrived at was beyond my imagination.
They had pushed desks to the side of the room to make space in the center. There were no decorations at all. They had no alcohol. If you look closely at the picture, we had one bottle of Huang Shan Cola each and a handful of pumpkin seeds. That is the whole story on the food and drink.
Who can remember Huang Shan Cola (translated that would be Yellow Mountain Cola.) It was a local Anhui Cola, and I do not know if it could ever be found outside of Anhui. Within 4 years, this cola could no longer be found as had been bought out by Coca Cola. It was a good soda. I would never have asked for Coca Cola.
The pumpkin seeds. Oh my, I was not even a sun flower seed eater in the US, so had no idea what to do with the pumpkin seeds. I saw the students open them and eat the seed inside. I awkwardly did the same. They were completely forgettable. I have never since tried to eat pumpkin seeds. The planned activity was 3-step ballroom dancing with old style Western classical 3-step dancing music.
The girls were glad to teach me how. Once I got the basic hang of it, one girl I danced with said I danced like a soldier, 1,2,3 1,2,3 by the numbers. She was completely right. It was a sweet and innocent event so different than the US that I can never forget it.
Man. China has really changed since that date.
100 Year Anniversary
In this year, the year of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, we experience an almost complete restatement and refinement of China’s goals in our world.
We see internal nomenclature such as…
“national rejuvenation”,
“a modern socialist country”, and
“continual reformation with comprehensive plans and strategy”,
and a “peaceful and united domestic environment”.
Toward the world, we see phrases such as…
“maintaining a revolutionary spirit”,
“the courage to carry out a great struggle with contemporary features”,
“courage, and skill”,
“safeguard sovereignty”, and
“protect security and development interests”.
We hear that China intends to assume a greater role in and for the world.
Aggression and hegemony are not in the blood of the Chinese people and they will strive for a human community with a shared future. There are specific goals set out.
China will:
endeavor to improve the global governance system
engender peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom
work to strengthen solidarity of people of all other countries
engage in all efforts to oppose hegemony and power politics
What is the difference between Putin’s Optimistic Reasonable Conservatism and Xi’s Human Community with a Shared Future and moderately prosperous society?
I cannot see too big of a difference. As the qualitative values expressed are similar although the civilizational socialization is different.
As Putin expressed his non-acceptance of woke ‘values’ in his Valdai speech, so China in the last few months took real action.
China threw the feminine men out of their television programs.
The feminine men is an inheritance from Japan to a lesser degree and Korea, to a larger degree.
China does not want girly men to become role models for their children.
They pulled the rug out from underneath expensive additional schools, acting as funnels to expensive university programs, and tutoring that basically burdened the Chinese children.
They have strengthened the Chinese schools to offer all additional education necessary, in order to have consistent educational standards.
They simply stopped computer games for younger children and limited this to no more than 3 hours per week.
They increased physical programs and education to get the kids out and about with healthy activities.
And in stark contrast to the western sphere who wants to control the kids, China just put the responsibility by law, properly and correctly in the parents’ hands.
“On Saturday, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee adopted a new law stating that China’s parents are responsible for family education.”
Taiwan
On Taiwan, we see Xi Jinping expressing the following:
“The Taiwan question arose from weakness and chaos and will be resolved with national reunification, the one-China principle, and 1992 resolution”.
Regarding military action; we see even Putin expressing that Xi Jinping does not need to take military action. The verbose threats come from the US and Australia.
There are three aspects that Putin and Xi Jinping express as in one voice.
We are in a time of momentous changes in the world.
Both Russia and China are prepared and can ride the waves of change in a manner that is helpful, peaceful, and supportive in and for the world.
The UN (and it has been said a number of times that it needs to be updated) is still the only venue where world problems can be discussed. From Russia, our Law is the UN Charter and this is expressed by China as well. The rules-based concept does not feature whatsoever.
These concepts are fully supported by Putin’s speech at Valdai, and Xi Jinping’s speech at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of China’s formal joining of the United Nations.
During the years since the cold war, another momentous alliance grew almost from a grassroots level.
This is the Russia / China treaty of Good Neighborliness.
Here, with subtitles is what the Chinese office of foreign affairs thinks of this treaty at its 20th anniversary.
China and Russia are not allies, but far, far closer than allies ever could be:
'China and Russia are not allies but closer than allies' – Spokesperson on Putin's remarks pic.twitter.com/uePzp2epIf
— Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil (@ivan_8848) October 22, 2021
50th Anniversary of China’s seat in the UN
In this atmosphere of global chaos, Xi Jinping delivered a speech this morning at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of restoration of People’s Republic of China’s lawful seat in the UN:
(Translation)
Speech by H.E. Xi Jinping
President of the People’s Republic of China
At the Conference Marking the 50th Anniversary of the Restoration Of the Lawful Seat of the People’s Republic of China
In the United Nations
25 October 2021
Your Excellency Secretary-General António Guterres,
Your Excellencies Diplomatic Envoys and Representatives of International Organizations,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
Comrades,
Fifty years ago today, the 26th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted, with an overwhelming majority, Resolution 2758, and the decision was made to restore all rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations and to recognize the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations. It was a victory for the Chinese people and a victory forpeople of the world.
Today, on this special date, we are here to review the past history and look to the future, and that makes our gathering all the more significant.
The restoration of New China’s lawful seat in the United Nations was a momentous event for the world and the United Nations. It came as the result of joint efforts of all peace-loving countries that stood up for justice in the world. It marked the return of the Chinese people, or one-fourth of the world’s population, back to the UN stage. The importance was significant and far-reaching for both China and the wider world.
On this occasion, I wish to express, on behalf of the Chinese government and the Chinese people, heartfelt gratitude to all countries that co-sponsored and supported UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, and to pay high tribute to all countries and people that stand on the side of justice.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
Comrades,
The past five decades since New China restored its lawful seat in the United Nations have witnessed China’s peaceful development and its commitment and dedication to the welfare of all humanity.
— For these 50 years, the Chinese people have demonstrated an untiring spirit and kept to the right direction of China’s developmentamidst changing circumstances, thus writing an epic chapter in the development of China and humanity. Building on achievements in national construction and development since the founding of New China, the Chinese people have started the new historical era of reform and opening-up, and successfully initiatedand developed socialism with Chinese characteristics. We have continued to unleash and develop productivity and raise living standards, and achieved a historic breakthrough of leaping from a country with relatively low productivity to the second largest economy in the world. Through much hard work, the Chinese people have attained the goal of fully building a moderately prosperous society on the vast land of China, and won the battle against poverty, thus securing a historic success in eradicating absolute poverty. We have now embarked on a new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country and opened up bright prospects for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
—For these 50 years, the Chinese people have stood in solidarity and cooperation withpeople around the world and upheld international equity and justice,contributing significantly to world peace and development. The Chinese people are peace-loving people and know well the value of peace and stability. We have unswervingly followed an independent foreign policy of peace, stood firm for fairness and justice, and resolutely opposed hegemony and power politics. The Chinese people are a strong supporter of other developing countries in their just struggle to safeguard sovereignty, security and development interests. The Chinese people are committed to achieving common development. From the Tazara Railway to the Belt and Road Initiative, we have done what we could to help other developing countries, and have offered the world new opportunities through ourown development. During the trying times of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has been active in sharing COVID response experience with the world, and has sent large quantities of supplies, vaccines and medicines to other countries, and deeply engaged in science-based cooperation on COVID-19 origins tracing, all in a sincere and proactive effort to contribute to humanity’s final victory over the pandemic.
—For these 50 years, the Chinese people have upheld the authority and sanctity of the United Nations and practiced multilateralism,and China’s cooperation with the United Nations hasdeepened steadily.China has faithfully fulfilled its responsibility and mission as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, stayed true to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and upheld the central role of the United Nations in international affairs. China has stood actively for political settlement of disputes through peaceful means. It has sent over 50,000 peacekeepers to UN peacekeeping operations, and is now the second largest financial contributor to both the United Nations and UN peacekeeping operations. China has been among the first of countries to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. It has taken the lead in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, accounting for over 70 percent of global poverty reduction. China has acted by the spirit of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and earnestly applied the universality of human rights in the Chinese context. It has blazed a path of human rights development that is consistent with the trend of the times and carries distinct Chinese features, thus making major contribution to human rights progress in China and the international human rights cause.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
Comrades,
The trend of the world,vast and mighty, prospers those who follow itand perishes those who go against it. Over the last 50 years, for all thevicissitudes in the international landscape, the world has remained stable as a whole, thanks to the concerted efforts of people of all countries. The world economy has grown rapidly, and innovation in science and technologyhas kept breaking new ground. A large number of developing countries have grown stronger,over a billion people have walked out of poverty, and a population of several billion are moving toward modernization.
In the world today,changes unseen in a century are accelerating, and the force for peace, development and progress has continued to grow. It falls upon us to follow the prevailing trend of history, and choose cooperation over confrontation,openness over seclusion, and mutual benefit over zero-sum games. We shall be firm in opposing all forms of hegemony and power politics, as well as all forms of unilateralism and protectionism.
— We should vigorously advocate peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, which are the common values of humanity, and work together to provide the right guiding philosophy for building a better world. Peace and development are our common cause, equity and justice our common aspiration, and democracy and freedom our common pursuit. The world we live in isdiverse and colorful. Diversity makes human civilization what it is, and provides a constant source of vitality and driving force for world development. As a Chinese saying goes, “Without achieving the good of one hundred various schools, the uniqueness of one individual cannot be achieved.” No civilization in the world is superior to others; every civilization is special and unique to its own region. Civilizations can achieve harmony only through communication, and can make progress only through harmonization. Whether a country’s path of development works is judged, first and foremost, by whether it fits the country’s conditions; whether it follows the development trend of the times; whether it brings about economic growth, social advancement, better livelihoods and social stability; whether it has the people’s endorsement and support; andwhether it contributes to the progressive cause of humanity.
— We should jointly promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, and work together to build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity. The human race is an integral community and Earth is our common homeland. No person or country can thrive in isolation. Humanity should overcome difficulties in solidarity and pursue common development in harmony. We should keep moving toward a community with a shared future for mankind, and jointly create a better future. Tobuilda community with a shared future for mankind is not to replace one system or civilization with another. Instead, it is about countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures and levels of developmentcoming together for shared interests, shared rights and shared responsibilities in global affairs, and creating the greatest synergy for building a better world.
— We should stay committed to mutual benefit and win-win results, and work together to promote economic and social development for the greater benefit of our people. As ancient Chinese observed, “The essence of governance is livelihood; and the essence of livelihood is adequacy. Development and happy lives are the common aspirations of people in all countries. Development is meaningful only when it is for the people’sinterest, and can sustain only when it is motivated by the people. Countries should put their people front and center, and strive to realize development with a higher level of quality, efficiency, equity, sustainability and security. It is important to resolve the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development, and make development more balanced, coordinated and inclusive. It is also important to strengthen the people’s capacity for development, foster a development environment where everyone takes part and has a share, and create a development paradigm where its outcomebenefits every person in every country more directly andfairly. Not long ago, at the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, I proposed a Global Development Initiative with the hope that countries will work together to overcome impacts of COVID-19on global development, accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and build a global community of development with a shared future.
—We should step up cooperation, and work together to address the various challenges and global issues facing humanity. The international community is confronted by regional disputes as well as global issues such as terrorism, climate change, cybersecurity and biosecurity. Only with more inclusive global governance, more effective multilateral mechanisms and more active regional cooperation, can these issues be addressedeffectively. Climate change is Nature’s alarm bellto humanity. Countries need to take concrete actions to protect Mother Nature. We need to encourage green recovery, green production and green consumption, promote a civilized and healthy lifestyle, foster harmony between man and Nature, and let a sound ecology and environment be the inexhaustible source of sustainable development.
—We should resolutely uphold the authority and standing of the United Nations, and work together to practice true multilateralism. Building a community with a shared future for mankind requires a strong United Nations and reform and development of the global governance system. Countries should uphold the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order underpinned by international law and the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. International rules can only be made by the 193 UN Member States together, and not decided by individual countries or blocs of countries. International rules should be observed by the 193 UN Member States, and there is and should be no exception. Countries should respect the United Nations, take good care of the UN family, refrain from exploiting the Organization, still less abandoning it at one’s will, and make sure that the United Nations plays an even more positive role in advancing humanity’s noble cause of peace and development. China will be happy to work with all countries under the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits to explore new ideas andnew models of cooperation and keep enriching the practice of multilateralism under new circumstances.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends,
Comrades,
A review of the past can light the way forward. Standing at a new historical starting point, China will stay committed to the path of peaceful development and always be a builder of world peace. China will stay committed to the path of reform and opening-up and always be a contributor to global development. China will stay committed to the path of multilateralism and always be a defender of the international order.
As an ancient Chinese poem reads, “Green hills immerse in the same cloud and rain. The same moon lights up towns however far away.” Let us join hands, stand on the right side of history and the side of human progress, and work tirelessly for the lasting and peaceful development of the world and for building a community with a shared future for mankind!
To my great surprise, Xi Jinping did not say one word about Taiwan, but sketched out the past as a harbinger of the future while cementing the legal status of China, which is not the legal status of Taiwan.
I guess he feels that the contretemps with Taiwan is not important enough.
On the speeches, we may say that those are lofty ideals. But we also see practical and real interaction between China and Russia.
The two countries just completed a first joint naval patrol in waters of the West Pacific, between October 17th to the 23rd, according to the Chinese Ministry of Defense. The patrol was held right after China and Russia wrapped up a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan from October 14th to 17th.
5 Chinese vessels and 5 Russian destroyers and frigates accompanied by six carrier-based helicopters made passage through the Tsugaru Strait (which caused Japan to run for the Prozac).
Yet this Strait is not territorial waters, and warships from any country have the right to transit, which means the transit of the Chinese and Russian vessels was in line with international law.
What is also very interesting is that it is said that the sea lane between these two islands is specifically maintained for quick access of US submarines to the Pacific Ocean.
A Chinese expert opined as follows:
Encircling Japan, particularly sailing to the east side of Japan, is of significance because many key military installations are located on that side, including the US Navy base in Yokosuka, a Chinese military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times.
Many US military provocations on China in places like the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea were launched from these bases, the expert said, noting that the joint patrol by Chinese and Russian vessels could be seen as a warning to the US and Japan, which have been rallying up to confront China and Russia, serves the goals of US hegemony, and undermines regional peace and stability.
“The joint maritime patrol is aimed at further developing the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era, elevating the joint action capabilities of both nations and jointly maintaining international and regional strategic stability. It’s a part of the annual cooperation plan between the two nations …”
In bold are the most important words, and this is not a lofty ideal, but a very hard challenge to the western powers and of course Japan.
Also, if one looks at that area with a strategic eye, it breaks up the supposed ‘ring of fire’ to keep China contained.
American war-mongering neocon “wet dream” plan on “containing” China.
In addition, it is also a warning for Japan, which has been dragging its feet to come to an agreement with Russia on islands further North in the island chain.
So, we have to ask, was this a threat?
No, not at all on the surface of it, but it was a stark reminder that the so-called freedom of navigation game that has been constant in the South China Sea and the Straight of Taiwan can be played by more than one player. Not just the United States. It’s a new world and everyone must play by the same rules.
It is also notable that from 2019, air forces from China and Russia have conducted annual joint strategic air patrols over the East China Sea and Sea of Japan.
We are now seeing very visibly one of the aspects of the development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era.
Did you see that coming?
Did you see the evolution of the Russia / China treaty of Good Neighborliness to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership?
As is usual, we look at a few of the China data points and I want to remind that you the Chinese governance is always refining, always testing, and prototyping new methods and systems across the spectrum of modern life, and always this is done on a grassroots level.
"China is in trouble, clapped-out economically, and is going to bring the west down with it."
This is the message that we see with monotonous regularity.
The reality is different.
Chinese GDP expanded a whopping 9.8% in the first three quarters of 2021, and major indicators are within a reasonable range.
Evergrande
Evergrande – caused by poor management and that is all and the Chinese government will both let them burn, and also make them take responsibility to Chinese people first.
There will be no monopolies or other behemoth-type business structures in China that can challenge the state.
(Evergrande has no option but to resume work and they did so today on 10 projects. There is no quick bankruptcy for them, and certainly no bail-out).
China’s Strong Economy
Chinese banks have foreign-currency deposits of $1 trillion for the first time, an opportunity for Beijing to liberalize the country’s capital account.
A resilient economy and strengthening currency have attracted record foreign purchases of bonds and stocks while surging demand for goods meant exporters brought back more dollars.
The pace of the influx has tested the authorities’ tolerance for a strengthening yuan, with the currency now near a five-year high against a basket of its peers.
China’s exports grew 20%!
Exports grew 20% in September, up from 15.7% in August. September’s gain was higher than the median estimate of 13.3% in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Growth in imports slowed to 11% in September from 23.1% in the previous month.
Korean IC Chip Manufacturers building factories in China
China-Korea semiconductor industrial complex starts construction amid Beijing’s push for tech self-reliance. The municipal government of Wuxi and memory chip giant SK Hynix have teamed up to develop the China-Korea Integrated Circuit Industrial Park.
The city is expected to become home to 19 new semiconductor-related projects with a combined investment of US$4.7 billion.
A Herbal solution for Coronavirus
A Chinese herbal formula for coronavirus patients is undergoing clinical trials in the US for possible approval for people with mild-to-moderate symptoms of the disease. Qingfei Paidu, most commonly called QFPD, is a 21-herb formula whose name literally means lung cleansing and detoxification.
Zero-tolerance to COVID remains in place
China, which pioneered controlling Covid-19 with lockdown orders and tight border rules, will “wait and see” about adjusting its zero-tolerance policy.
“We are discussing about the new strategy in China … everything is dynamic. We are ready for any possible reassessment”.
(Please do not consider this comment and the previous as an open sesame to start discussing Covid on the Saker Blog. You all know the blog policy).
Chinese getting taller
Between 1985 – 2019, the average height of a 19-year-old Chinese increased 3.5 inches, or 9 cm, supporting President Xi Jinping’s declaration in July that the country had achieved its goal of establishing a “moderately prosperous society” in time for the Party’s centenary. This is a result of a relentless project to bring the Chinese people out of abject poverty.
Vehicular KTV
An important question in auto showrooms: Can I sing karaoke in this car? The only acceptable answer is yes, as Nio and XPeng know well. Western rivals are scrambling, “We’ve identified this as a challenge,” said BMW’s Christoph Grote, “Chinese consumers are the most demanding when it comes to digital technology in the car.”
Social Credit System
The dreaded Social Credit System which is abhorred in the West by most that do not have an idea what it is about.
China’s social credit system is more of a bureaucratic interface for existing legal and regulatory systems.
It is not the widespread Western perception of a dystopian algorithm that uses “big-data collection and analysis to monitor, shape, and rate individual’s behavior”.
Social credit includes new enforcement mechanisms.
However, it is but an extension of the law rather than an independent rule-making authority, and all data collection and penalties require a legal basis.
USA Universities moving to China
This was mentioned before but as a reminder.
When the Chinese students started being hunted and haunted specifically in the US, all the major universities opened campuses in China (they could not afford to lose the Chinese money).
For Harvard, it did not take too long to become part of the propaganda war on China and they are moving their Chinese language program from Beijing to National Taiwan University, replacing a partnership with Beijing Language and Culture University.
Harvard’s Jennifer Liu said the decision was made because of a perceived lack of friendliness from the host institution, Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU).
Just a taste
This gives a taste of what is happening in China and now we need to give the regular shout-out to Godfree Roberts’ Here Comes China newsletter that supplies these data points. Subscribe here – it is worth it!: https://www.herecomeschina.com/#subscribe
In the next few China Sitreps, I will post a selection of documentaries and information on those aspects of China’s history that remain western talking points, whether correct or not.
This is Tibet, Tiananmen, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the border skirmishes with India as a shortlist. Today we start with Tibet.
Tibet
Tibet – if you have the romantic western mindset about Tibet, let’s revise that. Your knowledge most certainly comes from a book, movies, and a whole Shangri-La industry spawned in the wake.
.
Tibet was a dramatically brutal theocratic serfdom and never-ending debt peonage. Under the Dalai Lama in Tibet before China’s takeover:
98% of the population were serfs or slaves or kept in debt peonage.
Disobedient serfs endured torture
The 14th Dalai Lama’s family owned 6,000 serfs
95% of the population were illiterate
In 2015: 0.52% were illiterate
And in 2020: extreme poverty was eliminated in Tibet
From this documentary, you will learn that Tibetan Buddhism was not the sweet, and romantic Buddhist religion based on peace and high ideals and spinning colorful prayer wheels and praying in monasteries.
It was based on the Indian Caste System where an extreme minority controlled the vast majority and kept them in abject poverty.
You will also learn why, on the death of a Dalai Lama (meaning God on earth), the successor, the soul boy was always found and appointed from a very poor family, in order to avoid any power struggles between the very few rich families.
The connection with the Roman Catholic Pope will astound you.
And then you will see brutal sights of religious and shamanic powers whipped into inhumane forces.
You will learn that Dalai Lamas regularly fled Tibet, sometimes to flee British Forces.
Tibet was the first lever that was used by at that time British forces, and this lever was seamlessly taken over by the rest of the west, to break up China, even after some territory had to be given to Japan and some even to Korea.
You will learn how the Brits just simply carved out pieces of Chinese land from the Indian side.
This effort to break up China is still in full swing today, by the current hegemon in its frenzied dying attempts to own the whole world using weapons, war, lawfare, internal destabilization, the appointment of external presidents, propaganda, kidnapping of high officials, outright assassinations, drugs, biological substances, and poison.
Of course from the 1950s, CIA involvement around Tibet is well documented even to training ethnic Tibetans in Colorado for a planned Tibetan revolution.
You will also see one of the reasons why China will not let itself be hegemonized today, specifically with its history of never fighting a war of conquest in its 4,000 years of existence.
The population stands firm and resolute.
Never aired footage in the west will have you take part in the joy when religions serfdom and debt peonage was abolished in 1959 and the Tibetan Religious Serfs could burn their debt peonage documents.
If your stance in life is ‘Free Tibet’, which mine was, once upon a time before I did my homework, consider if you were romanticized by the CIA and a novel called Lost Horizon (1933) by English writer James Hilton.
Two movies followed (Frank Capra directing one), a Broadway play, and the world’s first mass-produced paperback, all called Lost Horizon, set in a fictional utopian lamasery called Shangri-La, high in the mountains of Tibet.
‘Free Tibet’ for you may just as wll be based on the fiction of Shangri-La.
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
When I first came to China back in the 1980’s, China was a poor land. The roads were dirt, and the cities looked very disorganized, dirty, and poor. it was very primitive. Public restrooms were horrible, the people were rural, even in the cities, and the police looked like some cross between Mad Max and a Mongolian mountain guide. And as I traveled back and forth from the USA to China and back, I saw first hand how it developed, changed and improved. It has been amazing.
Today China is simply amazing. It really is. This is true on oh, so many levels. And today we are going to talk about one of those things that no one ever addresses in a visceral way; the deep blue skies of China.
What? You might ask.
According to all the “experts”, China is a polluted wasteland of child workers, trash, poor unsanitary facilities, and gloom. Well it is not. It’s a merit-driven nation of hard workers, a harmonious culture, and society, and an enormous land with a deep and impressive culture and history.
But that doesn’t stop the Western media from continuing to bash it so relentlessly.
Do a Google search on China pollution, and you get millions of articles (all out of America and the UK) about how terrible and polluted China is. So, judging from the great magnitude of articles, it must be true. Right?
Image search “skies of China”.
CNN takes a picture of a dust storm in Beijing and claims that it’s pollution. FOX takes a picture of China in the early 1990’s and provides the impression that it is contemporaneous. Yahoo “news” bans any comments out of China to their China-hate articles. The BBC takes clips from an expat blog, uses photoshop to colorize it into greys and dark hues to give the illusion of a dirty, oily, filthy place.
And then they make all these graphs, and maps to show pollution quality. Giving the reader the perspective that the air must just be fucking awful.
China air pollution from the American company “Listverse”.
Western “news” is simply manipulated propaganda for the domestic audience. Those of us who know better shouldn’t read it. It provides zero benefit to us.
Today, we are going to compare apples with other apples. We are going to compare orange with other oranges. And we are going to compare pizza with other pizza. These days of deception, half truths and manipulation are OVER.
Well, here we are going to chat about something that had to be pointed out to me. I have grown so accustomed to the blue skies here, that I take them for granted, when I shouldn’t. And with that as an introductory lead in, I will [1] address the fact that Chinese skies tend to be pristine, and then [2] how this all came about.
China has tamed air pollution in all of it’s forms, and China today has absolutely stunning skies.
Background
It all began when I posted this article HEREabout a factory business trip that I took.I went to an industrial area, and visited some hard manufacturing factories.
People couldn’t get over how pristine blue the sky was, as that was not at all the impression that they had of China. They asked “where’s all the pollution”, “where’s the smog”, the “plumes of industrial clouds, and the forever white eye-burning skies? They asked where are the vapor plumes of the airline flights that create a network of white lines in the skies?
And that got me thinking.
As many times that I have mentioned over and over, and over that China has “cracked down” severely on pollution and enforces it with a very special of police known as the “corruption police”, people don’t get it. They don’t understand.
There are results as a consequence of these actions.
China does things, and then there are measurable and visceral results.
So when I take a drive up to visit a factory, I am used to the pristine blue skies, the brilliant and fresh green trees, the clear colors and razor sharp images. But others, who do not live inside of China aren’t.
In the following videos, please check out these embedded videos or their associated links to get the “full” experience. It’s almost as good as sitting in the car with MM getting there. video 46MB
All of rural China looks like this. It’s an entire nation of skyscrapers. This, believe it or not, is just a tiny, tiny village. video. 69 MB.
And this is what it is like. The factory sits on the edge of the tiny village, and so we just pulled in and went up to the front gate. Video. 32MB
But you know, it’s not just a trip to a factory. It’s not confined to the rural sections of China. It’s everywhere.
And I do live in Zhuhai
I know it is nice here. But I am not talking about only my city. I am talking about all of China. Video of Zhuhai. 1MB
But Zhuhai isn’t unusual. We are right outside of Hong Kong. Shenzhen is right across the bay. Combined, over 20 million people live within ten miles of my house. Which is a lot. New York City is only 6 million people! Yet, look at the skies here….
There’s rain, cloudy days, snow, squalls, fog, dust storms and other weather events that will turn the sky different than the pristine blue skies that I seem to encounter most of the time. video 16.7MB
Shanghai, and Hong Kong see a lot of fog. Overcast skies and fog seem to be the norm there. Shenzhen gets a lot of the overcast from the geographical wedging from the fog of Hong Kong and the mountains inland.
Beijing deals with dust storms.
And so on and so forth.
Some examples
Examples of blue skies, free of smog, pollution or aircraft vapor trails are everywhere. Just go onto the Chinese social media and watch the videos. Blue skies are everywhere. Seriously.
It’s like those High Speed Trains. They are common and everyday events. No one notices them.
It’s like those police drones in the sky, they are everywhere and no one notices them.
It’s like those thermal scans at all the entrance ways. No one cares or gives them any notice any longer.
It’s like paying using WeChat. It’s common and no one thinks about it at all.
But you know, we do need to take notice, and pay attention. The rest of the world do not have these kind of skies. Their cities have a dome of haze. Their suburbs are criss-crossed by airplane vapor trails. Their industrial areas have eye stinging smog and glare.
And I, for one, am going to point it out and celebrate it.
Here’s someone else driving in Hunan, China. video. 2MB
Here’s a cute BABY girl in the front of her house. Video 6MB
Here’s a ride taken yesterday from my house. I just filmed the ride as we pulled out of the building complex. video. 53MB
Here’s a nice girl being filmed at dusk video. 3MB
This looks like the mountains near Longgong, North of Shenzhen, China. video 4MB
Here’s a nice video showing the first graders getting their red scarves as part of the Pioneers. Everyone in China gets mandatory military trainings, and it all starts in first grade. video. 5MB
Here’s the Hong Kong, Macao and Zhuhai bridge. Video. 4MB
This girl is posing all over the city. I love these compilations with a pretty girl showing what China is like. Video. 10MB
Here’s another nice girl. Notice the sky and clarity of the air all around her. video. 4MB
Here’s a movie taken in front of my office. Video 14MB
The Chinese are so patriotic too. All of them trust their government, and the government really has earned their respect. Here’s a Pioneer. You can tell with the red scarve. video. 2MB
Yeah, it’s a non-stop hate fest against China, and while China changes, cleans up and moves forward the lies just keep a running. And the West, already ignorant, is really completely uneducated on the true and real state of things.
The crack down on pollution
China has made enormous strides in cracking down on pollution. Though you would NEVER read about that in the Western “news”. It’s all the continuing non-stop fantasy of China being the world’s polluter. If so, then why are Chinese skies so blue? Eh?
Here’s some articles about the Chinese efforts to stop, contain and eliminate pollution of all types.
Yeah, you probably saw these articles, but didn’t think too much about them. Maybe you should have read them, eh?
Yeah.
Pay some attention to the world around you and note who is doing all the complaining, and who is actually physically doing things; taking corrective measures, and actually making the world a better place. Eh?
When China says that it is going to do something, well you should take note. They actually do things. And when they say they are going to clean up China, and make it a healthy and clean place they do so.
China is very beautiful
YaoYao showing how beautiful Hunan, China is. Video 3MB
Video taken at a busy intersection waiting on our DD. Video. 12MB
Chinese first graders going through their military training exam. Everyone in China MUST take military training through their entire education system. It starts at first grade. Here’ is the first “final exam” where they are rate in their ability to compete an obstacle course. These kids are 6 years old. video. 9MB
Here’s a nice girl walking in one of the many, many parks here in China. She is wearing black. video. 3MB
Airplane vapor trails
AirPollutionControlAirpollution is arguably the most egregious environmental problem plaguing China.Thecentralgovernmenthasplaced improving air quality as a priority on itsagenda for the next several years, withChina’s Premier Xi Peng pledging in March 2017 to “bringback blue skies” and work faster to address air pollution.
But why no vapor trails in the sky above? Well it appears that the Chinese government has placed pollution controls on all the domestic airlines, and this has really caused a great deal of consternation on the international airlines that want to operate inside of China domestically.
It costs too much money, they say, and they can’t earn the kinds of profits that they need to please their shareholders. They argue that they MUST make a profit because they must answer to their owners who demand profits.
Meanwhile, China reports that the role of the government is to provide affordable, food, clothing, shelter transportation and a comfortable standard of living to it’s people. The government should not be a for-profit enterprise.
Because the foreign airlines cannot meet the tough environmental, and pricing requirements that China provides for it’s citizenry, the airlines had a fit. They then worked with the United States to “crowbar” and “strong arm” China to change it’s polices so that foreign companies can profit off the Chinese citizenry inside of China.
This girl is skateboarding near my house. The building in the background is the Zhuhai Opera House. Video. 10MB
You can actually see the Opera House from my living room. Here’s a video that I took not too long ago. Video. 26MB
Here’s one of our photoshoots. This one took place at around 5:00 in one of the parks down the street. Video. 21MB
Conclusions
96 percent of Chinese people owned their own residence. More than 50 percent of the Chinese people grow their own food and produce. They do not need to pay any property tax and any insurance.
They do not need a car in their lives. They do not pay homeowners' association fees, the fire department fees, the police protections and so on and on. Of the fifty percent of the Chinese rural population, they do not use cash that much.
Three of my sisters in China have been laid off workers of state owned enterprises for the last thirty years. Their income is only a couple thousand yuan from the state pensions every. But they all have their own houses, and have savings over one million Chinese yuan.
They eat better than I do in the USA as a professor struggling to pay for my mortgage. I have to pay out of my pocket medical care, dental insurance, home insurance, property taxes, home owners association fees, all of which the Chinese do not have.
My sisters all grow their own vegetables in their own yard. I have to buy everything from the supermarkets.
There are too much loose holes in the calculation of GDP, which is simply meaningless.
When I was growing up during the Mao era, we grew everything we ate organically, and everything was fresh. We did not have much cash income, but we had everything we needed. By comparison, how many people in the world could have organically grown fresh produce everyday in the world free of all kinds pollutants.
The Chinese people's per capita income was very low during the Mao era, about a hundred dolar a year. But Chinese people life expectancy grew from 32 years in 1949 to 69 years in 1976, more than doubled in less than thirty years.
GDP as a measurement of well being is simply a trick created by the capitalist west to cover up their management failure, with a high GDP but many homeless and hungry people.
-Dongpin
After all this, it should be clear that China is really doing things and making things happen. There’s so much bullshit and lies about China, but I will tell you what, if you come to China, you WILL SEE the blues skies. You will see the HIGH TECHNOLOGY. You will see the flower and the trees, and the relaxed pace of life. And you will see that it’s because it is a nation government by merit and people who care.
China treats those who want to change things for “democracy”, and “rule by the wealthy”, and the greedy as evil and dangerous people. They are locked up and kept away from the levers of power.
China is doing things RIGHT.
A billion Chinese have applied for membership in the Communist Party of China since 2001. 907 million of them were rejected, mostly on moral grounds. It seems that most Chinese adults would take the Party oath, to endure the people’s ordeals first and enjoy their fruits last, subject themselves to constant scrutiny, and be held to higher ethical and legal standards than non-members. Adultery is cause for dismissal. Rape is cause for execution. Nonetheless, ninety-four million members are honoring their oath pretty well.
And here’s a great image of a roadside rest area. Check it out.
A highway rest area. This one is in Inner Mongolia, Northern China. 41.5MB Video
Other possible reasons
There are a host of other possible contributors for the blue skies. May I suggest that other things can add to the overall effect experienced within China today…
A decline in domestic air flights because of the enormous network of high speed trains.
A decline in international air flights to and from China.
A severe curtailing of all factories that do not have, or plan to add, air scrubbing pollution control equipment.
A movement of the simple, labor intensive, and crude manufacturing out of China to South East Asia.
Intentional power rationing to selected geographical regions and specific targeted regions.
All in all, while China has indeed set forth impressive air pollution standards, and have implemented such, a number of other effects contributed synergistically to make the air of China noteworthy and pristine.
Oh, and a note to all the people who just stumble on MM and this article and want to shit on it…
Yes. And I do actually mean “to shit” on it.
Keep in mind that this information is going to go against your Western media brainwashing. It’s comfortable to believe the lies that face the TRUTH.
So don’t give me the normal bullshit, I delete those comments. If I wanted to read a regurgitation of FOX “news”, or the BBC, I’d read them directly myself. Though I do keep a few prize examples of stupidity for use in other articles.
Like these two comments (that I deleted from other articles that made China look better than the non-stop hate-China narrative spewing forth from the media megaphones)…
...the lies and propaganda concocted by CCP. For example, the title claims China has democracy at bottom, which is fabricated by CCP to fool people. In fact, CCP uses all of its power to crush any thing associated with democracy as it cruelly did in Hong Kong last year. CCP made it very clear that it will destroy any buds of democracy movement in China mercilessly as it did 32 year ago in Tiananmen massacre in which thousands of pro-democracy students and Beijing residents were killed by machine gun fires and crushed by army's main battle tanks.
And…
This is essentially a person staying up all night, and fantasizing about how China might be if all the consultative channels that China has erected were ACTUALLY HOW CHINA WAS GOVERNED. But they are not. Modest consultative measures might indeed help an authoritarian regime operate better, and that it probably part of China's success. But that doesn't mean, as the author seems to think, that a group of ordinary citizens makes the final decision about China's laws. It's laughable. Don't waste you time on this, and ask yourself why it is being heavily promoted.
I’m telling you what it is like.
You can absorb it in, or you can believe the nonsense being spewed at you by billions of dollars in manipulation and funding. Your choice.
But here, is the REAL deal. It’s what is going on right now. Soak it in.
And finally…
Be the Rufus
Are you making the place a little bit nicer when you leave it? Do you pick up after yourself? Do you make people smile when you are in public? Do free-ranging dogs and cats welcome you?
Are those around you comfortable that you are nearby in case anything goes wrong?
Do not be ashamed of who you are, or what you do. You are NOT your job. You are NOT what others say you are. You are unique and very, very special. Stand up for who you are and serve justice, and help those in your society. It’s your highest calling. video. 2MB
Please, be the Rufus. Not for personal profit. Not for fame, or glory. Just do it because you are a decent person and you want to make your tiny part of the world a better place to live in.
And after the explosion, the Rufus runs back into the flames to rescue others trapped inside. Video. 2MB
The world is not a bad terrible place. Spread the love around. Be a Rufus. Just be nice, give things away for free just to make people feel happy, wanted and included. It won’t cost you that much, and you will really help make the world a much better place. Be the Rufus. Like this guy does… video 5MB
Or this. Use your talents and make the world a better place. Video. 6MB
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this in my China index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
According to all the “experts”, China is a polluted wasteland of child workers, trash, poor unsanitary facilities, and gloom. Well it is not. I had to take a business trip into a heavily industrial zone in the Guangzhou industrial corridor, and here’s my story and pictures. So this is just going to be another quick article on MM life, banging around some factories on a day trip. I think you all might find it interesting.
About the “Nay Sayers”
About two weeks ago, we had a jerk-off place a comment here confirming / stating the nonsense that China is ugly, filthy and corrupt. He provided his “expert” status by prefacing his comment that he taught in medical universities for ten years, twenty years ago.
Ah, that standard boiler plate; “being an “expert” because he was teaching in China for ten years”.
He’s not the first, and won’t be the last. You can make good money having a small “cottage industry” churning out hate-China articles. They pay $1000 per article as of this year. Just follow the template. But you know, I saw through all that.It’s “easy pleasy, lemon squeezy”. So simple a child could do it.
Three reasons…
Six month changes. Anyone who has lived in China KNOWS that it changes every six months. I mean it. It changes so friggin’ fast here it is amazing. If you are gone for ten years, then you are clueless about what it is now today. Heck, ten years ago people still used paper money. There weren’t any drone police, robot scanning didn’t exist, no one knew what a QR access was, and no one conducted thermal scans!!!!!
If we compare China’s 31 provinces with the 214 sovereign states that compose the “international community”, every Chinese region has experienced the fastest economic growth rates in the world. -UNZ
Talking Points. Don’t give me all the hate-China talking points. The comment read like something from the “National Review”. Mix it up some. Don’t regurgitate talking points. After all I am HERE, inside of China reading you trying to convince me of things that I can verify by sticking my head out the window.
Lonely guy. Anyone who has lived in China for ten years and didn’t find a partner and get married is a truly miserable person indeed. It’s not impossible, just highly unlikely. Which says something about your personality, personal body care, hygiene, and social skills. If you cannot build a relationship in China, after one year, you have a problem. At ten years; you just have to be one Hell of a seriously disgusting person. Especially when you are SURROUNDED by attractive marriage age university women.
The trip overview
I had to visit the factory as it is a “new” factory that replaces our normal factory for a New Zealand customer. This factory needed to be instructed on what quality points and checks needed to take place to make the part.A day trip was in order. Drive up, visit the factory and have lunch, drive back. The distance was roughly comparable to driving from Boston to Albany, New York. Not close, but not too far either. The factory was near Shaoguan. You can see it at the top of the map below…
Factory location.
The ride up to the factory
"You must live on the coast, the inland is terribly polluted."
The trip itself was pretty uneventual. We traveled for about four hours. We rode up major highways, crossed massive bridges and went through long tunnels to reach our destination. In all cases, please check out these embedded videos or their associated links to get the “full” experience. It’s almost as good as sitting in the car with MM getting there. video 46MB
Arrival into the tiny village
All of rural China looks like this. It’s an entire nation of skyscrapers. This, believe it or not, is just a tiny, tiny village. video. 69 MB.
Arrival at the factory
And this is what it is like. The factory sits on the edge of the tiny village, and so we just pulled in and went up to the front gate. Video. 32MB
What the factory does
The factory is a casting and machining operation. They cast the part out of stainless steel, then they machine it, and finally check for quality and box and ship. Casting operations are typically dirty everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you are; the United States, China, Afghanistan… a casting factory is hot, dusty, dirty and greasy. Here’s an American casting factory in Cincinnati, Ohio…
American casting factory in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Machining operations are better, but not by much. Usually they include polishing operations and the like that typically result in dust and grime everywhere. These are hard core, basic operations, that made cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit famous. But we are not in America. We are in China. And, you know, things are different here.
Out of the car and into the factory
So we parked outside the gate, and met the factory boss at the gate who did the mandatory Coronavirus QR scans, the GPS positioning history, the temperature checks, and supplied us with fresh face masks and we went inside. video
Frenzied pace at the factory
" China employs slave labor, child labor, and indentured poverty stricken people who are yearning for freedom and democracy to unchain them from their shackles..."
Here’s a video that I took from outside the QC building. Sorry it’s kind of boring, but it illustrates the pace of life here. It shows that people are not upset, worried or working a frenzied pace. They are not afraid of losing their jobs on a layoff on Friday, or having to scramble to make ends meet. The factory, by law, must provide them with three free meals a day, free housing, free wifi and television access, and free transportation to and from town. Do they look like they are all yearning for American “freedom and democracy”? video. 14MB
This and that
While my engineer took care of the details, I hung out in the office, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. We had a nice lunch, and then continued on our work. We ended up inspecting all of the parts, and then then left satisfied for lunch.
Dimensional fit checks.
Of course, I would check in with him from time to time.
All parts must meet the specifications on the drawing, but not all the customer requirements are listed in the specifications.
Lunch
"...starvation and famine are rampant inside of China. It's just that the evil CCP regime won't allow people to see the truth."
We broke for lunch. As always, the factory hosted us and we ate in a private room (which is normal in China). I had a few beers. They wanted to give me a bottle of red wine or 52° white wine for myself, but I declined. Ugh! Then about half way though the meal, I remembered to take some pictures. Because, after all, I did want to record this visit for MM. So I took pictures of the food mid-meal. We ate well…
Shellfish.Local steamed fish in a nice peanut / ginger sauce. It’s eyes are covered by the garnish.Greens.Pigeon. Tasty little buggers, but hardly any meat.Shrimp and snow peas with sweet cashews and sesame. A real favorite of mine. The white leafy things are lotus, not onion.
Inspections
"Child and slave labor is rampant all over China."
We spent the rest of the day inspecting the product. As you can see the factory workers were inspecting and packaging the product for shipment.
Rework and inspection.Rejected parts.
Final packaging
"China only makes cheap Wal-mart junk. We don't need their bullshit."
The approved parts were recorded, marked and packaged by the ladies int he factory. Everything was 100% inspected to print from the customer. Here’s what that looked like…
Finishing up.Packing the parts.
Conclusions
After all this, we hopped into the car and drove home. I arrived home, and immediately found my home to be in the kind of chaotic shambles that only a two-year old can accomplish. So I helped feed her, clean up, bathe her and put her to bed, then I churned out a post on Affirmation Campaigns. And this was my day. When I woke up, I opened up my normal news feeds to discover that Yahoo! would not longer be accessible inside of China, but used my indexes to see what articles they were pushing. And low and behold it was non-stop hate-China fest. I guess they wanted a piece of that 300 million dollars from the United States federal budget to push that narrative. Whores for money. Sheech! But you know, there are better things in this world. Like this Rufus doggie that saves his master… video 4MB
Do you want more?
I have more posts like this in my China index here… China .
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
This post was long in coming. While everyone pretty much agrees that the United States is broken, from it’s “flawed democratic model“, to it’s culture of “lone wolf” money-oriented success, few write about the mess that American industry has become. Yet, when a movie points out these points, such as the movie “Office Space” it becomes a raging success. American work culture is just as messy as it’s economic culture, it’s political culture, and it’s social culture. And this article is going to discuss some elements of that aspect.
The last interview that I had in the United States was over a decade ago. It was typical, and it was brutal. After flying in to the city, and spending the night in a hotel, my day started at 9am. I met HR in the lobby, and after an hour going through papers, documents, manuals, and application procedures, I started my interview cycle.
I had six face to face one-on-one interviews in the morning. A brief lunch that consisted of a Subway sandwich (a foot long) and a large coke, followed by another three interviews, and a group interview by the “new hire committee”. I got a tour of the building and facilities, and I was then driven to the airport at 7pm to catch my plane home.
They didn’t hire me.
They said the “chemistry” wasn’t “right”.
This article / post is dedicated to every poor SOB that has to go through a gauntlet of interviews, hoops, and a paper trail to get a job. Because it’s not just the interview, don’t you know, it’s the application process on the internet as well.
And it sucks.
Getting hired in America today.
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The point of this…
I have matured and moved past this hiring part of my life. It is what happens when you get retired, get old, leave America or become a felon. You no longer need to participate in the “American race for gainful employment“. And because of that, I want to thumb my nose at all those companies that made me jump through hoops to get a job. Jeeze!
Here’s my movie take on the American job-interview procedure. Please enjoy.
What getting a job in America is like.
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What getting a job in America is like.
What getting a job in America is like.
Do you want more?
Yeah, this post was short. But I do hope that it made it’s point. If you want more, I have other posts in my Happiness Index here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
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I have written about Christmas before, don’t you know. I wrote about Christmas in China HERE. And you all might want to visit it and see what Christmas is like in China. And I have other Christmas themed posts as well. But this post will be about me offering you, the reader a very MERRY Christmas. And it won’t be much more than that.
When I grew up in the States, Christmas was a month-long event. It began after “black Friday” and continued to about one week past New Years. At that time the Christmas tree was taken down, and the decorations were removed, the food was all either eaten up or thrown out, and we all would settle in for the Winter months.
December was the month of long lunches with co-workers. Always involving alcohol. Also this was the time when frozen hams or turkeys were handed out. The company would buy them in bulk at bargain basement prices and hand them out to the employees as a token of “appreciation”.
This was also the time when the President would send out signed Christmas cards to every employee. But you know it really wasn’t his signature. My department was once told to sign a stack of 6000 cards for the President to mail out to all the workers. So we did, and over time our signatures got sloppier and sloppier. LOL.
December was quite the month for certain.
Typically, folk would leave for lunch around noon, and get back around four, pretty much sloshed. We would then try to pretend to work, while our bosses would close their office doors and take a nap. Obviously, work was only completed in the morning hours.
Office Workers would take time off to shop in the afternoon before coming home to work.
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All through the month of December, the “white collar” staff would take time off to go shopping during the normal working hours. It was pretty much a normal occurrence, and everyone did this. Just as long as you didn’t abuse this privilege, it was one of the “perks” of being an “office worker”.
So, if you all could imagine what it was like, imagine the afternoon with everyone sitting at their desks, sloshed. Smoking cigarettes in their company ashtrays and imbibing on some of the many, many home-make Christmas cookies donated (for the cause) and sampling the many kinds of dips and chips lying about. Heck! It was an often abused event, when people from one department would sneak into another department to grab some delicious dip and chips.
Fun times!
Christmas was the time when many people would bring in “home made” snacking masterpieces. Some of my favorites were peanut-butter and marshmallow dips, wrapped bacon mini-hotdogs, and those jello molds with tiny orange slices.
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The Christmas Bonus
One of the big conversation pieces revolved around the size of the Christmas bonus that we would get. People would tell stories about what they did with the last year’s bonus. And what they planned to do with this years bonus. Typically the bonuses would either be given out during the Christmas Party, or at the end of the day right before Christmas.
Most people tended to spend it on something big an lavish. It might be a down payment on a new car, an addition to their house, a planned swimming pool, or a vacation to interesting and sunny locations. By the time I started working, the idea of Christmas bonuses were begin phased out all over America. But, instead, we were promised generous sick days, and lenient extended vacation days to make up for the shortfall.
Christmas was always a “hoot” in the office.
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Bonuses tended to equal one months pay. Which is WHY most companies calculated salary based on a 13 month year. Bet that you didn’t know that, did you?
From the festive celebrations to the time away from the office, there’s plenty that your employees look forward to about the end of the calendar year.
But, the one thing that likely tops their lists? A year-end bonus.
Nearly 80% of employers hand out a bonus to employees at this time—making it something that most employees not only appreciate, but expect.
And, while your staff is sure to be all smiles when you present them with a year-end reward, making the effort to provide bonuses on top of the usual payroll has some benefits for you as well. Fifty-four percent of employees state that they prefer monetary bonuses, and they would be willing to change jobs in order to receive that benefit.
-Quickbooks
Anyways, everyone tended to chat about bonuses and television shows. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s the big shows pretty much dominated the conversation. MASH was always a favorite, as was “The Golden Girls”. And yes, we would talk about these things while at work. It’s what real humans do.
Office parties during Christmas was always fun.
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Most companies, back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, held two Christmas parties. There was one “big” party, that was usually held in a local banquet hall or hotel. And one was a local party for the staff in any given department. Those local department parties were the stuff of legends. I’ll tell you what.
Local Department Parties
These local department parties might be on a Friday evening, where the boss would bring in a case of hard alcohols, and the secretaries would bring in some snacks and munchies. All paid out of the department budget especially reserved for this occasion. Typically, a table would be set up for the foods, snacks, and booze. Sometimes people might wear some stupid party hats. But that seemed to disappear in the 1980’s.
Typically the primary function of the party was to start drinking early on, then have a meal buffet style, and rounded out with some stupid games or a “mystery Santa”, some puzzles or skits, and then closure with handing out the yearly Christmas bonuses. Everyone would be smoking and drinking. Chatting up a storm about sports, television or the work “war stories” and then everyone would pretty much break for home by 9 or 10 pm.
Company party – “in the day”.
In all my recollections, while the ladies might limit the numbers of mixed cocktails that they drank, everyone drank alcohol. If you refused to drink, you would label yourself as an outcast.
The idea was to really get everyone “shit faced drunk”, lower your inhibitions, and have fun. In those days, before the mainsteaming of busy-bodies and their ideas of a perfectionist utopia mandated by law, it was considered important for people to bond free of social inhibitions.
Oh my friends we're older but no wiser. For in our hearts the dreams are still the same. Those were the days my friend. We thought they'd never end. We'd sing and dance forever and a day. We'd live the life we choose. We'd fight and never lose. For we were young and sure to have our way. La la la la la la.
-The 5th Dimension - ThoseWereThe DaysLyrics | AZLyrics.com
The alcohol was all high quality, and expensive shit too. None of that “average” stuff. If you are going to a Company Christmas party, you can expect to drink the best, and the Department Managers would typically contribute to this from their own home stocks.
In those days we also had “free standing” ashtrays. They typically sat upon a metal stand and when you and your friends were smoking, you would move the piece next to you.
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Of course music would be provided. Often it was just Christmas music, and played loud enough to provide atmosphere, but not so loud that you all couldn’t carry on a conversation with. The boss might hand out cigars, and there was always the obligatory visit from the President or the Vice President (the manager’s manager) who would stop by, have a drink and congratulate everyone and hand the manager the Christmas bonuses for him to distribute right then and there.
This was to prevent bad bosses from surreptitiously stealing the cash out of the employees bonus envelopes.
Nope, the bonuses were not in the form of checks. It was in the form of cash.
Indeed, it was usually in the form of hard cold cash. And i think part of this reason was to show gratitude and "special-ness". After-all, how often does a person get a stack of one hundred dollar bills?
So yeah. It wasn't in the form of checks. It wasn't until the 1990's when everyone started to phase out hard cash bonuses.
Now, of course, once the bonuses were handed out, and all that, it pretty much signaled the time for everyone to leave. I would guess that about fifteen minutes to one hour afterwards, the staff would slowly leave in clumps and clusters. Everyone would help everyone else (being drunk and all) get into their cars. If someone was too drunk to drive, they would be driven home instead. And if, for some reason, someone or a couple of people needed to stay there, the company would provide them a hotel for the night.
Often, a co-worker would dress up like Santa Claus and have the secretaries sit on his lap and tell him their deepest desires. LOL.
Arriving Home
We would leave the office, drive home (drunk) and arrive safely. I only know of one accident that ever happened after a party. She wasn’t killed, but her car was smashed up, and she spent a week in the hospital. Obviously the fears of HR do have some weight. But not at the expense of creating a sterile no-fun environment.
But we would tend to drive home. And we would arrive and greet our families. Many of whom were past their normal meal times and who were off studying, watching television, or doing their own personal hobbies and activities. Since this is Christmas, the tree would be lit up (as well as all the house decorations), creating a nice warm and cozy atmosphere for us to arrive home to. And of course, the first thing that the wife would ask was “how big was the bonus this year?”
Often that man would come home from the Company Party and would be greeted by his adoring family and the warmth of their warm house and hearth.
Elsewhere…
Sometimes the men (or ladies) would break off and meet at another venue outside of work before going straight home. The argument of “the night is still young” probably comes from this kind of situation. Often they would leave the company parking lot, only to drive four or five blocks over to a favorite lounge or bar for a few “night toppers” don’t you know.
It’s difficult to find a decent lounge today. But back in the day it was more like an American version of a British pub. It would have an array of sofas, comfortable chairs, fine areas to converse, smoke cigarettes, play cards and just drink with your friends. And at this time, the lounge might be packed and filled with a low hanging cloud of cigarette smoke that would waft and hang there like a blue haze.
Cocktail Lounge.
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These were always fine establishments to head out to and hang out at. Most people might close out and head home around midnight, but others would linger until the “wee hours” of the morning.
Where are these lounges today?
Why aren’t there any more Christmas parties (in the United States) any longer?
What is going on with the HR telling you that you cannot smoke, you cannot drink, and you cannot have fun on your off-hours? I mean, people!, WTF?
Where did things go “off the rails”…
Money
The United States has become a place where everything has been co-opted by a military run money-making machine. The citizens, all are reduced, to what is nothing more than medieval serfs working on subsistence wages to service an enormous military-industrial machine that supports global “police actions”. To keep the citizenry in check, a local military is used which is called the DHS (The Department of Homeland Security). If it does not serve the military-industrial machine, then it is liable to prosecution… anything outside of the “normal” is to be avoided least one get entangled in legal battles.
It does not serve the “machine” for the serfs / working class to get out of control. The first thing that might happen is that they start to think for themselves, and then after that they might question their life, and their role in it.
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Too harsh?
Religion
Ok, then try this angle. Society has changed. Fun is now outlawed. This is because the Bible says that people have to be of a high quality to “witness” to others. That means no vices, a near saint-like presence, and an active effort to spread the word of God. Whether that is door to door with a bible, or obliterating the nations that do not follow the word of God; like Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, and China.
People (adults) drinking and smoking might be a bad influence on the children. Americans must be forever banned from smoking or drinking…for the children!
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Still to harsh?
SEX
Try this angle. When you are with others celebrating the holidays people tend to relax. they lower their inhibitions. When people of the opposite sex lower their inhibitions, they tend to want to have sexual intercourse. By limiting all aspects of social interaction, the government (in this case, via businesses) can curtail the fun and freedom aspects of gender interaction.
Christmas is a time to loosen up, have some fun, and spend time with those that you care about. Check out this Christmas surprise.
…
Remember boys and girls. The way for the 1%, the PTB, the oligarchy controls people is through “vices”. Vices are natural biological processes that are very popular. By limiting the access to these vices, governments control people. All you need to do is notice the government reactions to control popular pastimes, and systems in support of that.
Actually, it all boils down to sentience. Those with a service-to-self sentience end up collecting riches and with that comes power. They use that power to collect even more power, and as a result they lord over other sentience’s. Service-to-others sentience then is at a natural disadvantage. The two sentiences cannot co-exist.
What we are witnessing is the physical manifestation of the power projection between the two primary sentience’s on this earth and within this reality. And this story about the loss of freedom to have parties at work is one such manifestation.
Or…
To put it another way…
Your owners do not want you wasting your energies, thoughts, and creative abilities on anything that might “take away” from your labors from their interests.
And to that, I say…
Fooey!
Live life. You are in control of it. So live it and live it well. Do things you own way, with those that you care about, on your time schedule and in the way that matters to you. And if others don’t “get it” well, fuck them. That’s their problem.
It’s YOUR life. Live it well!
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And I know…
I know that many won’t understand. That hey might think… well, what would they think? And does it really matter? We are all living our own different realities and the ways that feel best for us personally. And so if someone doesn’t like what we are doing, or how we are doing it, I say FUCK them.
Life is far too short to care about others that lie outside your immediate circle of friends and family. Concentrate only on those that matter to you, and if you put your pets before say a cousin, that is your decision and it is ok. Why? It is because it is your life. Do what is important for you.
And start now.
Start at Christmas.
Spend time with those that you care about.
Yes, things have changed…
Yes. I know that things have changed. That you have to abide by all sorts of diversity quotas, behavioral shackles, rules and regulations from state and local requirements to insurance issues, to local law enforcement requirements. But even so…
WHO says that you need to obey them?
Really. Seriously. So what? What is the worst thing that is going to happen if you want to take your staff out to a bar after work hours for a few drinks? What if your department budget no longer allocates money for recreation or “team building”? What’s stopping you for doing it yourself, on your own time, with your own money?
What’s stopping you?
Fear?
Don’t be afraid to celebrate Christmas in your own way, and in your own manner. Life is too short waiting for group approval. You just go ahead and do things your way and at your speed.
.
Yes. I know everyone is different.
So what? Being different is good. No, I take that back. Being different is GREAT. It is what adds color to our lives, and passion to our experiences. It’s the wonderful aroma when bacon is cooking in the skillet, and the wonderful feeling when you take your first sip of icy cold beer after a really bad day at work.
So don’t hold back.
Be yourselves.
And embrace who you are and your own uniqueness. I mean that. I really, honestly do. And no matter what others might think of you, your lifestyle, your behaviors or your taste in music, in all events BE YOURSELF.
It’s an element of what Christmas is.
Celebrate Christmas in your own personal style.
.
Oh?
What?
You don’t think that I am serious. Oh Noooo! I am very, very serious. You MUST be who you are and you MUST share that reality with those that you care about. This remains true whether they accept that reality or not. And no it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get drunk at a work party. It might mean anything.
But it means the freedom to be ourselves surrounded by those that we love and who loves us for EXACTLY WHO WE ARE right now.
Be who you are.
.
Strange posting from Metallicman
Yes. I get that a lot.
Why aren’t I railing about the “issues of the day”? Why aren’t I all that concerned about the Fourth Turning, and the SHTF, and the post-election shit-storm and all the myriad of issues that seem to intrude in my daily news feed? Why not?
The train is moving full speed to the end of the line. There’s nothing that I can do about it.
The Oligarchy, the PTB, the 1%, the Jews, or what ever enemy du Jour you want to assign this current world-line to, well it’s also out of my hands. You just recognize what is going on and step out of the way.
Work rules and regulations come and go with the human condition. What we have now is but a fleeting moment in time. Embrace it.
And if this world line is going to opt for the MAD level fiasco, well, I’ll perform a deep slide and get the fuck out of here. Maybe you all should consider that as well.
And if you don’t understand, well then, pour yourself a nice cocktail and forget about it. You need to relax. American have become so fucking uptight over the last few decade. When they arrive here in China they look bewildered and out of sorts. Like they are trying to find some kinds of stability or familiarity that they can hold on to.
If you don’t take some friends, some co-workers, some family out to a meal, or a beer, or just a cup of coffee then you are a sorry, sorry excuse for a person. It’s the relationships with others that define our value. You have no relationships, then you have no value. Simple stuff. Easy to understand. Yet…
What the fuck is wrong with you all?
You don’t need to buy a lot of expensive presents. You don’t need to get shit faced drunk. You don’t need to ask permission. You don’t need to plan for a big event. You don’t need to order a cake.
You just need to be there.
Be unique.
.
Some ideas…
Stop over to your grandparents unexpectedly. Say hi. Tell them that you want to look over some old picture albums if they don’t mind. Or barring that, just have a cup of coffee, and maybe watch a television show with them.
Call your brother, or sister and tell them that you remembered about the time when XXXXXXX and you were thinking about that time and just wanted to say hi.
Call up a friend and say hi, and go out for a beer. You pay. It’s your treat.
It need not be extensive, expensive or exclusive. You just need to contribute your time. If you cannot. If you cannot give some of your time up for those that you care about, then what the fuck are you doing with your life? It’s those in our lives that make it worth while and who helps and stands by us when the times are low and we need to know that we are not alone, and that these people care about us.
Christmas is the time to go wild. Let it all hang out.
.
My friend Marcus didn’t know that. He thought that he was alone. He thought that people didn’t understand him. He thought that he was a failure. But that was all wrong-headed thinking. He wasn’t a loser. He wasn’t alone. And he wasn’t a failure.
He was just different.
And that difference made him special in our minds. And to this day, I greatly lament that he is no longer here. And yeah, even though I saw him rarely (being at the other end of the globe and all) I still wish that he could have said “MM I’m going through some shit right now, can I crash at your house for a month? I won’t be a bother. I just need some time”
And while my wife might have a fit, I would say “Yeah. I’d be happy to host you. We have an empty 2nd and third bedroom. Just come and we will sort out everything when you arrive.”
That’s what friends do.
That’s EXACTLY what friends do.
Don’t let the world pass you by. Start enjoying the moment. Stop having your head buried in an APP, a game or social media. Experience life.
.
It’s a shit load better than the alternative. No shit. It’s better than the alternative; the reality of what actually happened. Instead of lying nude in his bed and blowing his brains out.
So now, it’s Christmas. Are you all gonna follow the herd? Or are you going to spend time with friends and family? Are you going to bond with co-workers? Are you going to be a substantive person? Are you going to make a difference in this world? Or are you going to continue to be a passenger?
Do things your way.
Define your life by your actions now.
Use Christmas as your springboard.
You are in control of your life. Act like it.
Final words
Merry Christmas. Don’t be afraid about being called into HR for saying it either. Be who you are. Be proud, and define life on YOUR TERMS. start now.
Merry Christmas!
And if HR gives you some shit over it, tell them that Christmas is a Chinese holiday and you are just celebrating it because you are part Chinese.
…And if they look at you like you are fucked in the head, show them THIS post.
Remind them that Federal law prevents and prohibits discrimination against your religion and speech. It’s first amendment, baby!
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I have been quite clear that the United States has been conducting biological warfare with China for the last four years. But others refuse to believe the train of evidence. They cannot reconcile the idea that the USA would wage covert germ warfare on a nuclear armed nation. But things are changing. Here’s an article by a detractor to this belief that begrudgingly admits that just maybe the USA is that reckless in risking World War III.
And that maybe I am right.
That the USA has been conducting germ warfare against China, and does not care if there is some “leakage” of the virus out of China. The goal is to suppress China at whatever the cost.
This is a reprint of the article titled ” Who Made Coronavirus? Was It the U.S., Israel or China?”, it was published on March 6, 2020 by Enrique Suarez for the Strategic Culture Foundation. It has been edited to fit this venue. All credit to the author.
Who Made Coronavirus? Was It the U.S., Israel or China?
It might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches.
I’ve had to delete YouTube off my phone to avoid all the anti China stuff since the virus kicked off.
There is a massive offensive happening to try poison people’s minds against China.
Reality is I’ve actually never had a bad experience in China and I’m going in and out 10 years.
-Derek Kenny
The most commonly reported mainstream media account of the creation of the Coronavirus suggests that it was derived from an animal-borne microorganism found in a wild bat that was consumed by an ethnic Chinese resident of Wuhan. But there appears to be some evidence to dispute that in that adjacent provinces in China, where wild bats are more numerous, have not experienced major outbreaks of the disease. Because of that and other factors, there has also been considerable speculation that the Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.
Where did it originate?
I got the insight today that this global crisis makes one thing very clear.
To everyone's probable disbelief in the Western world, China and other Asian countries opted for drastic measures to save the people's lives, regardless of economic impact.
The West is so concerned about economic and consequent political fall out that they compromise lives .. ultimately it will shoot in their own feet...but meanwhile unnecessary lives will be lost. And who will take the responsibility?
-Peter Buytaert
Several
reports suggest that there are components of the virus that are related
to HIV that could not have occurred naturally. If it is correct that
the virus had either been developed or even produced to be weaponized it
would further suggest that its escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab and
into the animal and human population could have been accidental.
Technicians who work in such environments are aware that “leaks” from
laboratories occur frequently.
Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab .
There is, of course, and inevitably, another theory.
There has been some speculation that as the Trump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to American national security and economic dominance.
It might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches.
If there is a way to cripple a country without warfare, this is how it's done. I don't doubt there is a pandemic occurring, but the sheeple will buy into this more than what actually occurs from a health standpoint. Don't get me wrong, people will die from this, but it will absolutely cripple our economy. God help us and continue stocking up.
- Bill Krejci
It is, to be sure, hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior.
In 2005-9 the American and Israeli governments secretly developed a computer virus called Stuxnet, which was intended to damage the control and operating systems of Iranian computers being used in that country’s nuclear research program. Admittedly Stuxnet was intended to damage computers, not to infect or kill human beings, but concerns that it would propagate and move to infect computers outside Iran proved to be accurate as it spread to thousands of PCs outside Iran, in countries as far-flung as China, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Indonesia.
American and Israel designed Stuxnet was intended to take out the computers of Iran, but “leaked” and took down half of the global internet.
Inevitably there is an Israeli story that just might shed some light on what has been going on in China.
Israel has a vaccine!
Scientists at Israel’s Galilee Research Institute are now claiming that they will have a vaccine against coronavirus in a few weeks which will be ready for distribution and use within 90 days.
The institute is claiming that it has been engaged in four years of research on avian coronavirus funded by Israel’s Ministries of Science & Technology and Agriculture.
Israel’s Ministries of Science & Technology and Agriculture.
They are claiming that the virus is similar to the version that has infected humans, which has led to breakthroughs in development through genetic manipulation, but some scientists are skeptical that a new vaccine could be produced so quickly to prevent a virus that existed only recently.
They also have warned that even if a vaccine is developed it would normally have to be tested for side effects, a process that normally takes over a year and includes using it on infected humans.
If one even considers it possible that the United States had a hand in creating the coronavirus at what remains of its once extensive biological weapons research center in Ft Detrick Maryland, it is very likely that Israel was a partner in the project. Helping to develop the virus would also explain how Israeli scientists have been able to claim success at creating a vaccine so quickly, possibly because the virus and treatment for it was developed simultaneously.
The biological weapons research center in Ft Detrick Maryland.
In any event, there are definite political ramifications to the appearance of the coronavirus, and not only in China.
American Political Ramifications
In the United States, President Donald Trump is already being blamed for lying about the virus and there are various scenarios in mainstream publications speculating over the possible impact on the election in 2020.
If the economy sinks together with the stock market, it will reflect badly on Trump whether or not he is actually at fault. If containment and treatment of the disease itself in the United States do not go well, there could also be a considerable backlash, particularly as the Democrats have been promoting improving health care.
One pundit argues, however, that disease and a sinking economy will not matter as long as there is a turnaround before the election, but a lot can happen in the next eight months.
National Security and Iran.
And then there is the national security/foreign policy issue as seen from both Jerusalem and Washington.
It is difficult to explain why coronavirus has hit one country in particular other than China very severely. That country is Iran, the often-cited enemy of both the U.S. and Israel.
The number of Iran’s coronavirus cases continues to increase, with more positive tests confirmed among government officials last Saturday. There were 205 new coronavirus cases, bringing the government claimed total to 593 with 43 fatalities, though unofficial hospital reports suggest that the deaths are actually well over 100.
That’s the highest number of deaths from the virus outside of China.
No less
than five Iranian Members of Parliament have also tested positive amid a
growing number of officials that have contracted the disease. Iran’s
vice president Masoumeh Ebtekar and deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi
had also previously been confirmed with the virus.
The usual suspects in the United States are delighted to learn of the Iranian deaths.
Mark Dubowitz, a Washington DC neocon and his Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is active in pounding the drums of war against Iran.
Mark Dubowitz, Executive Director of the Washington-based but Israeli government-connected Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) boasted on twitter Tuesday that…
“Coronavirus has done what American economic sanctions could not: shut down non-oil exports.”
An Iranian government spokesman responded that…
“It’s shameful and downright inhuman to cheer for a deadly Virus to spread – and enjoy seeing people suffer for it…”
Dubowitz followed up with an additional taunt, that Tehran has “spread terrorism” in the Middle East and “now it’s spreading the coronavirus.”
The US сould be the prime culprit behind Covid-2019 outbreak that hit China and then Iran, head of its elite Revolutionary Guards claimed, threatening that the virus will eventually be turned against those who unleashed it.“It is possible that this virus is a product of a biological attack by America which initially spread to China and then to Iran and the rest of the world,” Hossein Salami said on Thursday.
He vowed that Iran would “fight” the virus and cautioned that the illness “will return” to the United States, if Washington was indeed responsible for the outbreak.
Though such conspiracy theories have been circulating for a while, there’s still no official proof it could be true.
The Head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, General Gholam Reza Jalali, said earlier on Tuesday that media fear-mongering over the new corornavirus in the country bolsters claims that the virus is a biological attack on China and Iran. He said that some reports indicate that it could be a hostile state, but added that his suspicion requires laboratorial investigation and a study of the virus genome.
Iran has been one of the countries hit hardest by Covid-19 outside of mainland China where it originated. As of Thursday, the Islamic Republic has reported 3,513 confirmed cases and 107 deaths attributed to the virus. Some 15 of those who have succumbed to the coronavirus died in the last 24 hours, according to Iran’s Health Minister Saeed Namaki.
The country has shuttered all schools and universities until the end of the country’s calendar year on March 20 in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.
On Tuesday, state media announced that the head of Iran’s emergency medical services was being treated for coronavirus. Numerous high-level Iranian officials have fallen ill to the virus. Recently, 23 lawmakers tested positive for the illness in the Islamic Republic.
Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a member of a council that advises the supreme leader, died after falling sick from the disease. His death follows those of two other high-profile Iranians who contracted the virus – a former ambassador and a newly-elected member of parliament.
- Сoronavirus May be a Product of US ‘Biological Attack’ Aimed at Iran and China, IRGC Chief Claims - RT News
Who made the COVID-19?
Even before the toll in China reached the current 3,045 dead and 80,711 infected, the Chinese Communist Party had called the pandemic a biological weapon of the USA following the revelations of Asian scientists on the anomalous “modeling” of the S protein.
As reported first by Veterans Today and then by Gospa News, the American journalist Jeff Brown, founder with other international journalists and authors of the Bioweapon Truth Commission, an independent research organization on the history and innovations of biological weapons, has supported this thesis, that with the passing of the hours finds more and more supporters.
-Veterans Today
So, you have your choice.
[1] Coronavirus occurred naturally, or [2] it came out of a lab in China itself or [3] even from Israel or [4] the United States.
If one suspects Israel and/or the United States, the intent clearly would have been to create a biological weapon that would damage two nations that have been designated as enemies.
But the coronavirus cannot be contained easily and it is clear that many thousands of people will die from it. Unfortunately, as with Stuxnet, once the genie is out of the bottled it is devilishly hard to induce it to go back in.
Back to America…
Nothing to see here ... carry on ... it's less to worry about then the common flu
- C D
Now it appears that it has boomeranged back to America.
The Post I’m stationed at told us today they’ve been briefed today and it’s just like the flu and to wash our hands and not worry. 75K is a huge number that would get out. I’m sure some have it but I have trouble buying that number. Anyone else on active duty please chime in if you’ve heard or seen otherwise.
- Jonathan Weaver
The United States government, being what it is, is actively lying to the people, covering up events and trying to tell everyone that the flu is much, much worse.
I work maintenance for an intercity apartments had the cops called and they were talking amongst them selves saying Kroger and several others are paying off duty cops for security. I mentioned corona virus they shut up after that. The stores know.
- Shawn May
And finally this, from a conservative blogger who bought into the Trump narrative hook-line-and-sinker…
Further perspective:
In the US-alone flu season, we saw at LEAST 220,690 new cases per day, on average. Over TWO-HUNDRED THOUSAND.
The peak day WORLDWIDE for COVID-19 was 15,100. Just 6.8% of the US AVERAGE for flu. (That day was an extreme outlier, because it represented China changing reporting standards from confirmed-by-testing to diagnosed-by-symptoms.)
As of 3/5/2020, new COVID-19 cases WORLDWIDE: 2,800. 1.3% of the average US flu cases.
If you truly believe you’re going to die from COVID-19, you either 1) have some extremely high risk factors like being an 80 year old man with diabetes and a bum ticker, who’s been french-kissing your girlfriend from Wuhan; or 2) you already died from the frickin’ flu.
Sure things could change. The virus could mutate again. We could import a bunch more infected people and turn them loose. But as things stand…
1. Eat decent food.
2. Wash your hands often.
3. Avoid sick people.
Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the same basic precautions you be be taking to avoid the flu and common cold (which I’ll remind you is often yet another coronavirus, too; and for most people COVID-19 is amounting to a common cold).
People need to stop losing their shit.
-Bear Buss
Yeah. It’s just like the flu. Right?
Just like the “common cold” right?
Nothing to worry about.
You don’t need to wear a mask.
Right…
Author
Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
I have other posts on this subject. You can view them in my Trump Trade War Index, here…
You’ll not find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you because I just don’t care to.
Please kindly help me out in this effort. There is a lot of effort that goes into this disclosure. I could use all the financial support that anyone could provide. Thank you very much.
America today does not resemble anything that is found on the original 1776 United States Constitution. In fact, in many ways, it is the exact opposite of what it was founded as. This is an open fact, and only the most ignorant disagree on this.
Today, the United States is a real mess. It really is. It is an enormous, out of control beast, and no one can tame it. It’s a snarling, nasty critter that is harmful to Americans, and a threat to the rest of the world.
Here, we talk about how America came to be what it is today.
For there are five distinct separate evolutionary periods of American governance. Each one is distinct for all the others before it. They are…
Founded as a Republic.
Changed to a Democracy with the 12th amendment.
Centralized Federal Democracy during the Civil War.
Progressive Social Democracy under President Wilson.
Military Oligarchy under President Lindon Johnson.
Corrupt Military Totalitarian Empire today.
Here we will discuss each time period in turn. What it was like, the benefits, or liabilities, and why it was changed into something different.
We will begin with the start….
Founded as a Republic. (1776)
There is no question that America was founded as a Republic. It is clearly specified as such within the Constitution itself. And the “Federalist Papers” which described (in depth) the reasoning used in the creation of the Constitution.
They abhorred a Democracy and they absolutely did not want America to ever become a Democracy. For they viewed it as “mob rule”, or rule by easily-manipulated rabble.
Their vision was one where the individual States would continue to operate as independent nations. They would have their own flags, their own military, their own laws, and the citizens would be in complete control of their state government.
The Federal Government was intended to be small. It was only intended [1] to be necessary in the case of an external military threat, and to [2] assist in the regulation of trade between the different States.
Nothing Else.
The Federal Government, through the Bill of Rights would establish the framework of “protections” that the various Federal and State governments were forbidden to touch.
The Bill of Rights listed the “untouchable” Rights, and the Ninth Amendment stated that Americans had many, many other Rights. And none of them can be legislated or rules made to curtail them. Thus, the Federal and State governments were limited to what they could do. They could only to what was IMPLICITLY STATED within the Constitution.
America was set up as a Republic. There the Individual was supreme. Second came the States Governments. The Federal Government was intentionally weak and small.
America was a Republic for only a mere 28 years.
Changed to a Democracy with the 12th amendment. (1804)
Well, that did not set well with ambitious and evil men. These people felt that they were better than other people.
Well, they did. (Read their writings.)
They felt that they were smarter, and more capable, and thus should be deserving of extra privileges. And so they strove to change the United States from a Republic into a Democracy.
This is because it is easy to manipulate mobs of people.
Through the manipulation of people, they would increase their power, through the systems inherent in the Constitution.
And this is exactly what happened.
During the first one hundred years, all of the amendments to the Constitution, and the rules and laws laid down in Congress was devoted to four main objectives…
Diluting the voting power of a citizen. (The more people allowed to vole, the less power the individual had.)
Control of the mass “mobs” of citizenry. (Control of the news media meant control of the people.)
Reduction of the influence of State Government.
Increasing Federal Control over the States.
America become a Democracy. And Controls over the manipulation of the citizenry grew, as did the size and scope of the Federal Government.
America was a Democracy for 57 years. The entire time the Federal government grew and grew and grew…
Centralized Federal Democracy during the Civil War. (1861)
This continued for many decades up until the push by the Federal Government became far too large. They kept pushing and pushing, and sooner or later someone was going to get hurt.
The States argued that they had their own sovereignty through the Tenth Amendment.
The Federal Government argued that that was no longer true. That the Bill of Rights was meaningless when you have a strong central federal Government.
They were wrong, of course.
But it did not matter. They were strong and powerful.
When the Southern States banded together to fight the Federal monster, a long Civil War broke out. It lasted four years. And while there were many cries to “free the slaves’, at the root of the matter was whether or not a State can make it’s own laws. (And the ownership of slaves is a State law issue.)
The Civil War settled that.
The individual States no longer were autonomous, and must follow the dictates of the Federal Government.
Thus, the American Government became a singular Federal Government over regional “territories” known as States.
America was a Central Federal Democracy for 52 years.
Progressive Social Democracy under President Wilson. (1913)
Now, For around sixty years or so, the Federal Government grew in size, scope and ambitions. The ideas and the systems laid out in the 1776 Constitution were not sufficient to implement any of the “new” and “progressive modern” ideas. Ideas that were being considered in the elite schools and halls of the “power brokers”. They wanted and felt that some serious structural changes needed to occur.
They longed for the power held by the Kings during the middle ages. They wanted a new and modern version; a Feudal Kingship under the guise of “democracy”. New, modern and progressive; to usher in a new utopia of man over nature.
That’s how they thought.
Enter President Wilson.
President Wilson was the President that extinguished the flame of liberty.
To make a long story short, he was the architect for what America is today. And under his leadership we now have the following realities that are permanently affixed in America today…
Government owns and controls all money.
Citizens are permitted to rent the money.
Ownership of all property belongs to the government.
Making laws and rules were handed over to “agencies”.
The Bill of Rights is just a list of “privileges”.
Americans must work to feed the government.
Yeah it sounds really bad, and it is. But if you distill all the flowery rhetoric and babble-speak, and get down to the raw meat of the issues, that is what it distills into to. And, yes, it’s horribly and very ugly.
But hey! Everyone else was doing it. From Russia, to France, to China. Every ruler wanted full control of their subjects.
America became a Feudal Kingship. People were taught to serve the Federal Government without question. And efforts to spread this type of government around the world began. For “democracy“.
America was a Feudal Kingship under the guise of “democracy” for 50 years. Then it got really bad…
Military Oligarchy under President Lindon Johnson. (1963)
We now know, through the release of the Kennedy Assassination Transcripts that a military coup occurred in 1962. President Lyndon B. Johnson, along with a hodge-podge of other Washington “interests” assassinated a “democratically elected” president.
Immediately after killing the President, America went full-on “HOT” war with Vietnam.
America became the foremost military power in the world and started to exert that power everywhere.
Then they immediately went to war fighting battles all over the world, and funneling money into an Military-industrial organization. An organization that became enormous and powerful.
America became a Military Oligarchy. Much like Hitler and his Nazi’s and Genghis Khan and his hoards of warriors.
America has been a Military Oligarchy for 38 years.
Its’ so out of control, that today we are currently fighting eight simultaneous far-flung wars.
Which brings me to today…
Corrupt Military Totalitarian Empire today. (2001)
It wouldn’t be too bad if it were “out of sight and out of mind”, but events came about that brought war, and military power and control home.
It’s been 19 years since the events of 9-11. We have been a military totalitarian empire ever since.
As America fought these various wars, simultaneous efforts were being made to "bring the Military-Industrial" complex control home domestically. We all can thank President George Bush for this.
Thus America rapidly became a full-on police / surveillance state.
America today is a wild rampaging out-of-control monster that if not contained, will plunge the world into global thermonuclear armageddon.
Domestically, the Bill of Rights no longer functionally exist. Alphabet agencies operate independently and run rough-shod over Americans with impunity. A military organization known as the DHS, operates with the NSA, and CIA / FBI to control the American citizenry. Congress has become outrageous media entertainment. Public works projects have ground to a halt, and the media (from alt-left to alt-right) are controlled by the government and manipulate with impunity.
International efforts are now all centered in [1] controlling strategic materials by proxy (Bolivia, Syria), [2] subduing other nations that might be economic threats (China, and Russia), and [3] fighting other nations wars (Yemen, Liberia) following a for-profit model.
America today is a corrupt Military Totalitarian Empire.
Conclusion
To really change the direction that America in involved in… and it needs to be changed, least the world collapse under the weight of World War III…
…we need to recognize what America is today.
We need to see what it was set up as, and how it was changed, and to put systems in place so that this will NEVER happen again.
And, America must change. This path that it is on is not sustainable.
And, tweaking things to undo the policies of Obama is not enough. We need to undo two centuries of policy changes. And this needs to be supervised by people that understand what “liberty” and “freedom” really are…
…and reporting what you did all year to a government agency is NOT freedom. Nor is asking permission to withdrawal your savings from a bank, wearing a seat-belt, or being forbidden from smoking or drinking large-size sodas. If you need to ask permission to do something or are fearful of government consequences, you are NOT living in freedom.
Any person who does not understand this MOST BASIC of understandings shouldn’t be permitted anywhere near the levers of power.
Real patriots need to take control of this situation, and it will not be organic. It’s not going to “just happen”. Like how each of the five stages of American Governance were well-planned in advance and executed, the same must occur by American patriots. This situation needs to change, and it needs to change soon.
Do not place all your hopes and beliefs on a Trump Presidency. While he is doing some good things Domestically, his International policy is driven by neocons and could actually result in World War III. This would be horrific for everyone.
Nor should you put your hopes in the other end of the spectrum. The Bernie Sanders crowd and all their ilk are dangerous idealists. They want to wind the clock back to feudal serfdom under a modern “enlightened” totalitarian social utopia. This would be horrific for many Americans.
The alternatives are far too frightening to contemplate.
Which is why we need to erase all the changes made since 1789 (The Bill of Rights) and start all over with a “clean slate”.
I hope you enjoyed this little narrative. You can find more, and better, discussions on other SHTF posts, Accessed here…
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
Nope, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill “doom porn”. Instead, most everyone realizes that the Untied States is in the process of some changes. Some predict that the changes are merely “adjustments” towards a better, more improved, society. While others stand outside holding a sign saying “The End of the World is Near!”. Here are my thoughts on the changes that America will go through during the decade of the 2020’s.
It could be anything from a whimper to a bang…
The Sky is Falling!
Not so very long ago, societal collapse was a big topic of conversation. Most critics of the current world order wrote in screeching big bold letters that the entire financial “house of cards” was going to fall apart. Usually they centered on economics, as the financial system has become so complex that no one can explain it, let alone predict it. It became a monster, a hydra, that was careening out of control.
Indeed, the run-up to the mortgage crisis had tons of people promoting economic collapse theories.
A decade earlier, the Y2K panic ushered in theories of technological collapse. Of course, the zombie apocalypse movies and TV shows are a regular part of the pop media rotation.
Scene from the ever-popular “Walking Dead” television show.
Societal collapse, however, is probably not in the cards.
Tainter comments.
The best known treatment of the issue is by Joseph Tainter.
In his Collapse of Complex Societies, Tainter makes the point that collapse in the modern age is unlikely. He states this belief under the assumption that all complex societies are dependent on one another.
Normalcy bias. The belief that things are never changing, that they have always been that way and will always continue to stay that way.
Therefore, when one society begins to fail, the rest will provide support to prevent the rapid disintegration of the failing society.
In other words, the modern age is a network of reciprocal relationships between complex societies.
In the case of America, the rest of the world needs America in order to remain intact. Some nations more than others. Thus, a crisis in America will be met with a response from Europe, Asia and even South America.
In 2018, Chinashipped 18% of its exports to the United States. That contributed to a $419 billion trade deficit. China's trade with Hong Kong, at 14%, wasalmostasmuch. Itstradewith Japan, whichwasat 6%, andSouthKorea, at 4.5%, wasmuchless.
- China Economy: Facts, Effect on US Economy
The internal response to crisis will include global support for repairing the internal problems of America.
Of course, this network of relationships may not arrest the decline, but it will prevent complete collapse. The rest of the complex societies will ease America into the autumn of its existence, thus buying themselves time to adjust.
They will “decouple” from the USA. They will no longer being so closely tied to the economic, financial, social, military and political networks established int he United States.
There is evidence that this is already in process.
U.S. Decoupling From China ForcesOthersTo Decouple From U.S. The U.S. is decoupling itselffrom China. Theeffectsofthatprocesshurtallglobaleconomies. Toavoiddamageothercountrieshavenochoicebutto decouple themselvesfromthe U.S..
-MoA
An alternative view.
An alternative to this analysis comes from John Michael Greer. He wrote a paper on what he termed catabolic collapse.
The general theory is that all human societies create complex institutions and social structures that require maintenance. Over time, the cost of maintaining them begins to exceed capacity. The solution is a deliberate downsizing where these complex systems are abandoned in order to focus resources on the core functions of society.
Complex societies don’t collapse. They downsize.
The Global Elites do not see what is coming. They believe that they can hide away in NZ or inside the bunkers far away from the areas of conflict and strife. Nope. That is not going to happen. Know your history, and recognize that now things are different and the game is going to be tortuously lethal.
Greer’s idea is a variation of the Tainter theory, in that it focuses on the material aspects of society.
In the Tainter view, collapse is like bankruptcy that ends in a liquidation of the society. Greer’s view is a bankruptcy that leads to a reorganization of society going through bankruptcy, so it can reemerge simpler and more viable.
In reality, both ideas are working from the same assumption. That is, human societies grow inefficient over time and that inefficiency eventually reaches a tipping point.
KaLa cycle lineup for a span of time since 2000 into the middle of the new century. The tipping point is the period from around 2010 to around 2027.
The Collapse Event
One issue that is a problem when discussing these theories of societal collapse is we tend to think of collapse as something that happens relatively quickly.
That is, it happens not just in our lifetime, but overnight.
One day things are going along just fine and the next day the wheels are coming off the cart. It is the image of Rome at its peak compared to the image of hairy barbarians scaling the walls. We naturally want to think of collapse as the sudden, unexpected death of society.
Collapse is most likely experienced in fits and starts, with those
fits and starts spanning lifetimes. For example, the men who founded the
American empire in the early 20th century passed out of this world
seeing their creation in the throes of the cultural revolution of the
60’s and 70’s. The so-called greatest generation that inherited the
empire from the founders, were re-engineering American society so their
rotten kids would stop rioting in the street and burning the college
campus.
The generation that founded the empire probably thought it was headed for collapse, but by that point they were too old to care. It did not collapse. American society stabilized, regained its footing and started to recover in the 1980’s and 1990’s, with the great economic and technological boom.
Scene from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”. The 1980’s and 1990’s were a period of time when money flew abundantly to the “power players”.
Ironically, the baby boomers are experiencing what their grandparents experienced as they head for the void. They are seeing what appears to be the collapse of American society in a spasm of multicultural rage.
A half century ago, California was the epicenter of the cultural revolution that threatened to collapse society. It is the test bed for the multicultural favela the rage heads in the ruling class have planned for the nation.
Today, they have rolling blackouts in a third world effort to keep from setting the state on fire. Their efforts to manage air pollution, a great crusade in the 1860’s and 1970’s, is beginning to fail. Their pension system is effectively bankrupt, just waiting to collapse in the next decade.
In other words, the spasm of decline and near collapse of a half century ago was part of a cycle of decline.
An interregnum
This crisis will probably be followed by some correction, where things settle for a while, but never return to the prior normal. Just as the 1980’s never reached the level of social accomplishment of the post-war years, the next period of tranquility will fall far short of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
It will simply be an interregnum between one period of crisis and the next, another step down the ladder of collapse.
At some point, the old social capital of the prior greatness is exhausted. The Romans were a spent people for over century before the collapse. In fact, they were arguably done in the third century.
The real question about the late Roman Empire is how it managed to stagger on for so long.
Fall of the Roman Empire.
That may be where we are now in present day America. The next step down the ladder of decline may be so unstable that the weight of past error crashed society through to the bottom.
The case for this theory of collapse is the rapidly shrinking white middle-class.
Shrinking of the White Class
It’s not just shrinking as an economic institution, but as a cultural one. The dominant culture today is one that celebrates degeneracy and barbarism. Bourgeois culture remains, but unlike the 1980’s, it is not front and center, offering a stabilizing point to arrest the cultural turmoil of the day.
The antidote to what’s happening today is not a man in a sundress demanding the rest of us pretend he is a girl.
Facing the fall…
In addition to the shrinking influence of bourgeois white culture, there is the growing sense that what’s left of America is not worth saving.
Everyday, more and more white people come to the conclusion that the people they see in politics, the media and popular culture are incompatible with the world they want for themselves and their decedents.
That old bourgeois white culture is looking at America like the family exhausted by an alcoholic relative. It’s time to cut our losses.
Conclusions
America is collapsing. It will collapse in a long, slow drawn out manner. It will not be fast, though there will be some very spectacular events that will stun the viewing audience. Many people who have the knowledge and ability to retard the collapse are quietly scurrying to protective safe havens and enclaves.
Perhaps, you the reader, should also take heed.
America is not afraid of the consequences of using Nuclear Weapons. They do not think that any nation would use nuclear weapons in retaliation. Nor do they believe that American cities might be affected. They are living in a dangerous and crazy illusion.
SHTF and Related Index
Some prepper humor…
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
There are many articles about the Trade War between the United States (Donald Trump) and China. Many are written from the perspective of an American consumer sitting in America, and desirous of a return to the “golden days” of industrial might. Others are written from the point of view of a progressive “enlightened” globalist who wants a one-singular world order. This article is different. It is written from the point of view of someone who has a vested interest in both “camps of thought”.
A fresh slap of reality.
In terms of the trade war, there are some facts that do not support any of the assumptions held and promoted by the “talking heads” in the mainstream media.
None of these facts agree with the promoted narratives. This is true whether you are politically liberal or conservative.
On the conservative side...
I’m seeing a type of artificial patriotic fervor. It's an organized attempt using memes and propaganda to convince conservatives that the trade war requires mindless fealty to the anti-China message.
Americans don’t like dictators, and many don’t like China. However, conservatives are being duped into thinking the trade war against China some type of an ideological crusade. It’s one that somehow will lead to a better America or a better world.
People! Wake up. This is not what the trade war is intended to do.
Let’s start with the assumptions surrounding the trade war and then look at the evidence that debunks them. Remember people…
The American government requires an alert and well-informed citizenry to function properly.
Fallacy #1: China needs America
The idea here is that the entire nation of China, all 1.4 billion of them, needs Americans (325 million) buying their products.
Seriously?
I’m not sure where this idea comes from specifically, but it’s not based on anything tangible. I sometimes wonder if the notion that the world depends on the American consumer (for its bread and butter) is perhaps a kind of appeal to American’s narcissism? Thus making the average American feel superior, or feel special. You know, by simply by telling them that their steady American way of life (one of debt-based consumption) keeps the engine of the global economy running.
Pretty outrageous.
In the case of China, here are the facts:
The US only comprises around 18% of Chinese exports. While this is a nice piece of the pie, it’s hardly enough leverage to bring down China’s economy. China would suffer profit losses in certain sectors as well as a possible recession, but not the kind of crisis that some in the alternative media are predicting.
There will not be riots in the streets, famine, or civil upheavals. Don’t be silly.
In 2018, China shipped 18% of its exports to the United States. That contributed to a $419 billion trade deficit. China's trade with Hong Kong, at 14%, was almost as much. Its trade with Japan, which was at 6%, and South Korea, at 4.5%, was much less.
-The Balance
You need to know that China is NOT structured like the United States and does not operate under rule by popular opinion. They are a serious, serious nation. Their leadership got where they are through merit. (Have you ever attended school with a Chinese / Asian student? They work hard, study hard, and make informed, calculated decisions.)
For the last decade or so, China has been busy changing its economic model. They have moved from an export-based system to a far more self-reliant domestic-based system.
I covered this subject in another post. You can click on the link below. It will open up in a separate tab so that your reading here will not be interrupted.
Maybe they knew something that the Bush and Obama administrations didn’t. It appears that they have been preparing for a possible economic war with the US.
For the last decade, indeed since 2010, China’s domestic market has grown dramatically. This should indicate to the more alert in the audience that China has no intention of relying on the US consumer as an economic pillar.
They are a self-sufficient nation.
Meanwhile, the US consumer is almost tapped out. It’s hard to see because retail sales in certain areas remain steady. Not to mention that the mainstream media (and the Fed) has been using this to promote the idea that the economy is still “going strong”. It’s not really the true and real situation.
The reality is that US consumption is driven by historic levels of debt. Household debt is now FAR above levels last seen after the last financial crisis, with total debt at $1.2 trillion higher today than its last peak in 2008.
The downturn in retail is more obvious in the steady closings of thousands of outlets in 2019 alone. This year has seen a 29% increase in store closings compared to 2018, even though 2018 saw a considerable spike in store shutdowns. Around 12,000 stores are slated to close this year.
OK, so the actual situation is quite different from the mainstream media narrative.
China is a self-sufficient nation.
America is completely engulfed in a debt hole.
So the question is, with the US consumer stretched thin by debt and US retail on the verge of a recessionary plunge, why would China feel threatened by the loss of the American consumer market?
They are losing it already by attrition.
The truth is they aren’t threatened. Which is whythe trade war continues unabated. This is the situation despite the fact that so many people have argued that China would “quickly fold” to Trump’s demands.
I realize this is not what many people want to hear, but it is foolish to get caught up in a farcical mob mentality and ignore the fundamentals in the trade war. If you think that the US is going to “win” based on leverage, you are sorely mistaken.
America has NO leverage. The US is in no better shape economically than China; in many ways, we are much worse off.
“Trump’s claim that an exodus of foreign firms will force China to capitulate to US demands to settle the trade war is wishful thinking at best,”
-Week In China
Fallacy #2: Manufacturing Will Return
This is perhaps the most persistent and fraudulent “carrot” that has been held out to the American people. It’s the idea that those “golden days” of American Manufacturing will return, and all will be back to “normal”.
It’s a lie.
It’s not going to happen.
I am sorry to break this new to you all, but factories, industrial might, scientific ability and skills are not “light switches” that you can turn on and off at will. You cannot just snap your fingers and start up a fully automated factory, producing high quality products with a skilled work force overnight.
It doesn’t work that way.
I covered this subject elsewhere. You can click on the link and it will open up in a separate tab.
First, as it stands now manufacturing in the US makes up only 11% of total economic output. I don’t think that many people understand the consequences of this.
We have a 70% retail and service-based economy.
This means that the majority of US citizens in the job market have no experience whatsoever in the manufacturing sector.
Thus, by extension, the average US company has no guidelines for how to establish a manufacturing base using the existing American labor pool.
Second, American labor expects a certain level of wage compensation. Not to mention an expectation of union organization. Combined, this makes manufacturing far more expensive here than in just about anywhere else in the world.
The average factory worker in China makes around $3.60 per hour. So tell me, just how exactly would the American market ever be able to compete with this?
Tariff’s alone are not enough to force corporations to spend the billions necessary to rebuild factories in the US and hire American workers at $15+ an hour (let alone the $45+ an hour at union wages). It’s just not going to happen.
There's a movie called "American Factory" that might be worth your time to watch. It's a documentary that was released in August 2019.
The documentary tells an increasingly American story. In 2015, seven years after a General Motors plant closed in Dayton, Ohio, a Chinese company that manufactures glass for trucks and automobiles reinvests in the factory.
The former GM workers are are ecstatic. Some went into foreclosure and were evicted from their homes after GM pulled out — one woman, a forklift operator named Jill Lamantia, is living in her sister’s basement. They’re happy to have another factory job. Never mind that the GM plant was fully unionized and paid more than $20 an hour, and Fuyao, a non-union shop, has a starting pay of $14 an hour, it’s a job.
Cao has a bold vision: Pair U.S. workers with Chinese workers, who are brought to Ohio to train and work alongside their American counterparts. The idea is that the Chinese and the Americans can learn from each other, taking the best working methods from each culture to increase production. Although Cao visits regularly from China, the onsite boss is an American, and management is from both cultures.
But the results don’t meet that utopian ideal. The culture divide seems insurmountable. To start with, the Chinese workers have no problem working long hours and overtime, while the Americans are used to eight-hour shifts...
Download the Movie Torrent HERE.
Read reviews about it HERE.
Third, there are many, many places besides China to build a manufacturing base. No company is going to bring its factories to the US when they can build in Vietnam, or Taiwan, etc. In many cases, it is cheaper to ship raw materials and products to these countries, have them finished by cheap and motivated workers in Asia, and then have the items shipped back, than it is to build the product from start to finish in the US.
Fourth, we can talk all day about patriotism, but in the end, the average American is not going to buy “Made in the USA” for most goods out of a sense of patriotic duty if the price is twice as much or much more. Walmart and Amazon dominate the retail market for a reason – they sell things cheaply.
$19.95 Toaster – Made in China.
$79.95 Toaster – Made in the USA.
Fifth, raising tariffs on foreign exporters would only work to encourage consumption of domestically manufactured goods. If the foreign made products cost too much, then you would buy American. Right?
Why buy an Mercedes, when you can buy fifteen (x15) Kia Rio Sedans for the same amount of money?
2019 Mercedes-Benz S-Class – $253,550
Kia Rio LX, 4-Door Sedan. – $16,195
This only holds true if the US already had a large manufacturing base and produced all the items other nations produce. But it doesn’t. Many of the things that are under the tariff schedule are wholly made overseas.
Televisions – 100% made in China.
iPhones – 100% made in China.
Sneakers – 100% made in China.
Clothes Washers – 100% made in China.
Automobile Tires – 100% made in China.
The American consumer doesn’t have a choice. He can only buy imported items. Thus, it is the American consumer that ends up paying the tariff.
Entering into a trade war without a resilient manufacturing sector is backward. You don’t fight a trade war to get manufacturing to come back, you fight a trade war to promote the goods you already manufacture.
Seriously, if Trump had really intended to bring factories back to the US, he should have done things differently. For instance, he could have given corporations tax break incentives in exchange for creating manufacturing jobs on US soil.
If you do “A”, I’ll give you “B”.
Instead, he didn’t do this. He just gave American corporations tax breaks for nothing.
Fallacy #3: China Will Starve Without American Food
Uh, no. China will not experience famines, riots, or starvation. It’s all pretty darn silly.
This is a very weird argument. It’s as if some people assume that the US is China’s only potential source for food. Where do Americans get such really “off the wall” ideas? Seriously!
China buys agricultural products from all over the world and has alternative sources for foods like soybeans and pork, including Brazil, Mexico, and Russia. Not to mention that they grow, and raise their own food. It’s part of the conservative belief in self-sufficiency. Don’t you know.
I covered this subject elsewhere. The link below will open up in a new tab. It’s pretty damming and will open up a few eyes. China is not a nation to be trifled with.
Prices will rise in China, sure, but nowhere near the point of
collapse. Again, the Chinese are not reliant on the US for anything, so,
the idea that the US has overt leverage in the trade war is simply not
true.
Fallacy #4: The World Will Side With The US Over China
This is a prime question – if they had to choose sides, would a given nation choose the USA, or choose China?
On one hand you have the debt-ridden oligarchy-ruled military state with a large consumer base or communist China’s cheap export market. What would they choose if they had to pick only one?
The US consumer is nearly tapped out.
China has the largest import/export market in the world.
The vast bulk of manufacturing is in China.
The US has little manufacturing to speak of.
I also question the validity of the idea that Europe or most other nations have loyalty to American markets. Think about it; do they really?
Do they see America as indispensable?
Or is the rest of the world being sent on a path towards globalism? Meanwhile the US is being made to look like a barbaric and archaic throwback. Like some kind of Neanderthal man that is desperately clinging to power. And one that is willing to drag everyone else down with him if he doesn’t get his way?
Why do people cling on to the power they hold, and you have to wait until they die before you can have some “new blood” and some changes done? Why won’t they just let go and accept change.
Many in the “liberty movement” understand that this is not the case.
We know that the globalists have sabotaged this country from within. We also know that they are using Trump as controlled opposition and a useful puppet in this task.
Ah yes, but the majority of the rest of the world does NOT understand this.
If there is an economic crash which sends shock-waves through multiple economies, the trade war will most likely be blamed along with Trump and his “populist” supporters.
The rest of the world will see us as the villains, because they do not understand the nature of 4th Generation Warfare, nor do they understand the globalists’ strategy of “order out of chaos”.
The narrative that has been pushed in the global mainstream media is quite different than what you would see on FOX.
China is the victim of US aggression.
The trade war and the economic crisis are purely a product of Trump’s madness.
Who do you honestly think the world will eventually side with?
We’ve been hearing this for almost three years now. Trade wars are “easy to win”, right?
Every couple of months the trade war deal hype is recycled and every couple of months the markets are hit with renewed disappointment. The latest trade talks are set for October and if they happen at all, it is unlikely they will result in anything of significance.
At most, they will be heralded as the “start of a great deal” and both sides will claim “progress was made”, and then, once again, nothing will happen and the conflict will accelerate.
You would think people would have figured it out by now, but the investment world learns very slowly and functions solely on blind hope. At the very least, economic analysts are starting to realize that no deal is coming and that the situation is only going to get tenser.
In fact, it is designed to get more tense.
Fallacy #6: The US Dollar Is Untouchable
This claim revolves mainly around the idea that because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, the US has the upper hand in all trade negotiations. Therefore, the rest of the world will follow the currency leader because there “is no other option”.
I disagree.
As Bank of England governor Mark Carney has openly admitted, the plan is to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency anyway. How? Well with a global cryptocurrency, of course.
They need a massive crash event, and they need the US dollar to go the way of the dodo.
It seems rather convenient to me that China has been preparing for just such an event. While many analysts point out that China has generated intense amounts of debt over the past decade, they seem to forget that this was a requirement in order for China to attach the Yuan to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights basket. This is, of course, the foundation for a global currency mechanism.
Chinese economic officials and the globalists both argue that the current monetary system, based on a single national currency (the dollar) as the world reserve is inherently unstable.
Their solution? A basket of currencies monitored by the IMF, followed by a single digital currency mechanism.
I would note that China and the globalists have consistently hinted that a major economic crisis event will act as a catalyst for this “reset” in the world monetary order and that the dollar must be replaced in the process.
China has also been stockpiling large amounts of gold for
the past decade. This would indicate they are expecting a monetary
devaluation event, most specifically in the dollar. It’s as if they
know something the rest of us only suspect.
The trade war is the perfect cover for the collapse of the US dollar that the globalists desire. While some people suggest that China’s dumping of US treasuries is the “nuclear option” in the trade war, this is not exactly true.
The REAL nuclear option is for China to dump the US dollar as the reserve trade mechanism and go to a basket of currencies, which the IMF will happily aid them with.
As the largest exporter/importer in the world, China can drop the dollar and most of their trading partners will follow their lead. The US economy would crumble in response, as the dollar is the only thread holding our system together.
This is a FACT, Jack.
This is the ugly truth behind the trade war. It is nothing more than a farce, a smoke and mirrors distraction leading up the dismantling of the US dollar and paving the way for the globalist one-world digital currency system.
Whether or not the plan succeeds relies on ample resistance from people who see the danger ahead. However, make no mistake, the globalists are not afraid of an economic crash or the decline of the dollar. In truth, they WANT these things to happen so they can establish even more centralized control.
Updates
Hot off the presses! We surveyed our members on how they are adapting to the US-China Trade War and have some surprising comparative data here from a previous survey in January 2019.
Long story short: European companies have resigned themselves to the long-term nature of the trade war, and many have made significant shifts in strategy to mitigate its effects. That means changing suppliers, rejigging product flows through corporate global operations, and avoiding the US-China trade 'border' like the plague.
Interestingly, roughly the same number of companies that are moving relevant production out of China (8%) are increasing investment in China (6%) as companies decide to move out affected production or further onshore supply chains respectively to avoid the tariff bite.
However, the effects of the uncertainty coming from the trade war are increasingly significant. In January, 6% of members said they were delaying investment/expansion decisions in reaction to the conflict. That number climbed to 15% in September.
-European Survey
Conclusion
The “Trump Trade War” is a natural progression of events that were bound to occur sooner or later. It will eventually precipitate numerous events. One of which will be a global currency. Another will be a strong ascendancy of China in the global stage. As well as some serious internal economic readjustments (collapse, maybe?) in America.
We will sit by and see what happens.
Personally, I hope that any changes that occur to be a painless as possible. To endure the changes, you might need to turn off the mainstream American media which will be shrieking, wailing, gnashing it’s teeth and flaying it’s arms all about in wild, crazed abandon.
12OCT19 Update
Trump said the U.S. and China have "agreed in principle" on a preliminary trade agreement. Trump acknowledged that differences remain on major issues on which the two countries are divided, but the White House still decided not to push ahead with a planned increased to tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods next week.
The move would have raised those tariffs to 30% from 25%.
"There's too many factors at play for him to just issue threats to governments, China's or anybody else's, to just follow along with what he says," said Wang, referring to the U.S. president's previous threats to slap additional penalties on Chinese goods.
-USA Today; Senior China adviser: Trump to blame for delays in securing final trade deal, says China has been 'accommodating'
Take a break
I know all this is very serious stuff, and a tad alarming. I would suggest that you might want to check out some of my lighter articles. Here’s four stories for starters. All open up in a separate tab for your viewing pleasure. Pick one and relax.
Links about China
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
The American civil war set the South on fire. There in the heart of the United States was endless desolation, death, crime, and violence on a very, very personal scale. It tore at the heart of America. In the midst of all this, was an exit of Americans who fled American for a life elsewhere. The confederates that fled the United States didn’t do so to set up a nation where slavery was legal. They went elsewhere to set up a state where they the people had more power than the local government there.
This is their story.
Lost but not defeated. The Confederacy left America and set up shop in Brazil.
History.
History is very interesting, and one of the most interesting things about it is that it is constantly changing. Our reality, our knowledge of history is under constant assault, and under constant revision.
I grew up being taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America, and that the native Indians entered via a Bering Sea “land bridge”. Today, it is pretty well established that there have been numerous explorations of North America by everyone from the Ancient Egyptians to the Vikings, and even the Chinese. And as time progresses we have a better understanding that ancient man, those who inhabited North America, had the ability to create boats and sail on the high seas in earnest without fear.
Surprise Discovery That Ancient Tin Ingots Found in Israel Came From England ... the British Isles had developed maritime trade routes with the rest of the world as early as the Bronze Age.
-Ancient Origins
But it’s not just that.
History is being rewritten to fit political narratives. Everything from “Islam is a nation of peace”, to “the Nazi Holocaust did not occur”. Everything is being rewritten. It’s a common theme, this reconstruction of history, and erasure of the past. We see it all the time, in every nation.
From the Taliban (and their friends the) ISIS destroying the statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq to the destruction of statues in America and the rewrite of the political narratives for political expediency. It is everywhere. Once the Internet made mass erasure of the past expedient (a re-writable “white board”, if you will), everything has become prone to being erased and a new narrative written over it.
Enter President Obama
"Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation."
-Michelle Obama
Up until 2013, under President Obama, every single textbook and history book in the United States stated that the primary cause of the American Civil War was related to abuses of the tenth amendment. (Don’t believe me? Go visit a used book store, why won’t ya?)
They all were in lock-step with this narrative.
In American political discourse, states' rights are political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment.
The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers, as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers—also called states' rights—that only the states possess.
-Wikipedia
For political reasons, and to reinforce his base, President Obama (around 2009 through 2014) rewrote history. Changing all internet references to the causes of the American Civil War from “States Rights” to “Slavery”. Today, if you visit any internet website on the causes of the American Civil War, you will discover that the causes are not listed as [1] Slavery, with a selection of [2] other causes that include “States Rights”.
Fun exercise;
Go to Wikipedia "The causes for the Civil War". Then go to the Revision History page. Check out the activity there, and the dates of the changes, as well as where the changes originated from.
This is interesting on numerous levels.
I find it interesting simply because all of the States that joined the Confederacy wrote up “Documents of Succession” that gave their reasons for leaving the United States union. And in those reasons, the top-most, A #1, most important reason was ‘States Rights”.
I mean, it’s RIGHT THERE.
There is no ambiguity there. The documents of succession list the reasons in great detail. (If a bit wordy.)
It’s in black and white.
It’s there, as plain as day. Not to mention that all of the discussions on succession that took place in the State capitals, and in the Federal Senate and Congress clearly state… unequivocally, that they left because the Federal government was interfering on the local and state level.
We won’t get too far into the rewriting discourse. That’s a subject for another time. Anyways, you can read about this rewriting of history and the reasons for it below. Don’t worry, the link opens up in a new tab.
The rights of the people
This is the “States Rights” issue. Where the United States Constitution plainly stated that the Rights of the people shall be held by them, or by their States. Not by the Federal Government.
After all, the PEOPLE created the government. And it must answer to them.
The American Constitution placed the power of the people over that of the government. This is a non-debatable issues, as all; every single document during the founding made this point quite clear and pronounced.
This did not go well in Washington D.C. for absolute power corrupts absolutely. They wanted more power. They wanted centralized power. They wanted it all.
They wanted it so much, that they fought a war over it.
And many, many people died.
Governments are created by citizens. They answer to the people. When they start to ignore them, it is the duty for the citizens to take back their government from the tyrants in power. This will often be very dangerous, bloody and nasty.
“We the people” lost the Civil War
Those who lost, lost everything. They ended up losing the independence of their States, as well as many of their freedoms. They also discovered that they now answered to a singular centralized government located in Washington D.C..
After the American civil war, for the most part, the Bill of Rights was proven to be a sham.
If you negate one enumerated Right, you negate them all. It's only a simple matter of time.
Confederate Soldier.
Then, in 2013 President Obama, in one of his many efforts to rewrite history, started the narrative that the Civil War was fought over slavery. And that most “white people” still wanted slavery and that “white people” should be punished for their “privilege”.
You can see this narrative being reinforced in the mainstream American media, in the universities, and by “diversity officers” in the corporate board rooms.
"I've never owned, or was a slave, and a large percentage of our forefathers weren't wealthy enough to own one either. Please stop blaming me because some prior white people were idiots -- and remember, tons of white, Indian, Chinese, and other races have been enslaved too -- it was wrong for every one of them. "
-Ted Nugent
An Obama follower (Cashing in on the “community organizer” scam.) instructing “white people” on their privilege…
Rewriting history to demonize a particular demographic is necessary to create “race wars” that lead to democide. This is a very important first step in all genocides. You select a group of people. You demonize them relentlessly. You disarm them. Then you kill them in mass. It is a historical norm, and well documented. In fact, it is almost one of the crowning achievements of the Marxism in the 20th century.
Abruptly and suddenly all historical narratives on the internet were rewritten to embrace this idea. And of course, news, media and academia marched lock-step to promote it.
"Mr. Obama never missed an opportunity to sew racial divide.
During his term in the Oval Office, racial relations literally went off the cliff. Mr. Obama and first lady Michelle promoted the false narrative that white America was literally guilty of hunting down blacks with glee.
They whipped up resentment in minority communities against the police, even though a Harvard study found that blacks are no more likely to be killed by police than whites."
-L. Todd Wood
Ah. But what of history?
Yes.
History.
Looking at history as a thinking person…
If the American confederates were so enraptured with slavery, wouldn’t they try to escape from the clutches of the Federal government when it appeared that the war was ending? Wouldn’t they flee with their favorite slaves? Wouldn’t they they relocate elsewhere to promote the core ideas slavery based Confederacy elsewhere?
Well, yes. You would think so.
Only, history tells us a different narrative.
The confederates that fled the United States didn’t do so to set up a nation where slavery was legal. They went elsewhere to set up a state where the people had more power than the government there.
Surprise! It just doesn't fit that "deplorable, Nazi, white privilege" narrative being shoved down our collective throats by the mainstream American media and their handlers the progressive Marxist Democrats.
As such, a study of these people who fled the Confederacy would be able to tell us all a lot about the causes of the American Civil War, and the things that were important to the membership of the Confederacy.
Let’s take a look at that.
The Confederados
Today... even though most of the Confederado descendants, being mainly of mixed race now, have fanned out to other parts of Brazil.
Many of the descendants from the original Confedrados, with the typical Brazilian flair, have an affinity for and carry on the traditions from their homeland; Such as Confederate uniforms and it's flag, southern food and their protestant Baptist religion.
Even though they identify with their past, they do consider themselves loyal Brazilian citizens. Maintaining a headquarters, as well as memorials and museums of their original descendant organization at the Campo center in Santa Bárbara D'Oeste.
-Historum
Brazil is well-known for being a cultural hub of South American life with its unmatched love for football, its fun and sexy dances like the samba, and its Latin people. It in so many ways, no way resembles anything like the Confederate States of America in the 19th-century South.
The Confederacy is alive and well within Brazil. There a man can be a gentleman, he can smoke a cigar and have a fine glass of XO while addressing young lasses as they stroll along the venue.
So what kind of fiction do we have to invent to combine the two and make them fit together?
The answer is none.
Because that’s exactly what happened in Americana, a municipality of Sao Paulo, Brazil. There, the residents call themselves the Confederados. As they are descendants of the 19th-century residents of the Confederate States of America.
The descendants of the Confederate States of America, living as expats in Brazil By studying the Confederatados one can better understand the motivations of people who decided to leave America for another nation.
The Confederados carry on all the cultural artifacts of the Confederacy. This includes the Confederate flag, Confederate army uniforms, and Confederate-style dancing with its own Brazilian flair.
It’s their heritage.
So how did this come to be?
By mid-1865 the American Civil War was over and the South had lost—everything.
It was over.
Her cities and farmland were destroyed, political rights denied, the finest of her husbands, fathers, and sons dead or disabled. With Lincoln dead and Radical Republican revenge on the horizon, the occupied territory of the southern United States did not appear to be a promising place for the foreseeable future.
The Confederados are a proud people with a proud and just heritage. They are thriving and they have embraced Brazilian culture while embracing their history.
Can you visualize what it must have been like?
Can you, really?
After the Civil War, many families from the old South were left landless and destitute. They probably hated living under a conquering army of Yankees.
Brazilian emperor Dom Pedro II realized this group of disenchanted Americans could be a solution to one of his problems: how to develop the sparsely-settled areas of his country. He was especially interested in developing the cultivation of cotton, a crop well-known to the former Confederates. He provided incentives to people who knew how to raise cotton, offering land at twenty-two cents an acre with four years credit and passage to Brazil for thirty Yankee dollars. Each family was encouraged to bring a tent, light-weight furniture, farming supplies and seeds, and provisions to last six months.
Dom Pedro II sent recruiters into Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas in search of experienced cotton farmers for his country. Many southerners saw this as their only option for happiness, to build a community with southern values in the jungle of Brazil. They would become known as the Confederados.
-EOGN
Imagine today, in today’s polarized society. When the members of the OTHER political party gains the upper-hand and are Hell-bent on running things their way. Would you be willing to stay?
Would YOU?
Out-of-touch and insane liberal Rep. Maxine Waters has been in the hot seat over her calls for violence. Has she learned? Nope! In a recent interview, she demanded more liberals go after conservatives. he continued, “And I’m hopeful that even Democrats having seen the kind of outpouring of protests over 700 incidences of protests this weekend, seeing that they will be more forceful, more confrontational and more prepared to push back on this administration. I think that the people are showing them, this-this is what they would have us do.” [Source: Breitbart]
Given this level of politicized violence, a life as a second-rate citizen, and all your livelihood destroyed, with a Federally sanctioned attack on your culture, many Southerners decided to leave.
And so they did.
They skedaddled.
See ya! Bye!
The descendants of the expats of the Confederacy have embraced heir history, their heritage and their cuture without shame of sadness. They never had to endure the century of having their culture and their society belittled and made fun of.
Some resettled out west, others even relocated in the North, and some went as far as friendly England. But the most popular destination for expatriate Confederates was a country further south: Brazil, where summer is perpetual and the harvest year-round.
The colonists were ecstatic about what they saw, and one wrote back to the Mobile Daily Register:
“I have sugar cane, cotton, pumpkins, squash, five kinds of sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, cornfield peas, snap beans, butter beans, ochre [probably okra], tomatoes and fine chance at tobacco. I have a great variety of fruits on my place. I have made enough to live well on and am better pleased than other.”
-EOGN
Time to leave.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, many Southerners felt that they no longer fit in the United States. As such, they decided to go to a place where they could find cheap land to build new lives.
The Confederados all dressed up to reenact their history, their heritage and their society. When the Confederacy lost, they did not bow down to a tyrannical Federal government. They left. Today they are thriving, while their families who stayed behind now lives a life that is dictated out of Washington D.C. instead of locally managed.
In 1865, the Civil War ended with a Confederate loss and the Union abolishing slavery. The bloody conflict caused more than 600,000 military casualties and nearly depleted the Southern economy.
The North disbanded the Confederate army and began a period known as the Reconstruction. It wasn’t exactly welcomed in the South, and some decided to leave the United States for somewhere else.
-The Vintage News
Though General Robert E. Lee discouraged them from leaving, around 20,000 Southerners set sail for Brazil, the only time in American history where people left the country in large numbers for another one.
Square dances, Southern hospitality and fine Southern cooking are all traditions that are maintained and embraced inside of Brazil.
Accounts vary on how many left.
They vary from 10,000 to 20,000 families. We know that at a minimum of 10,000 boarded ships and went by sea. Those that took trains, or wagons down through Mexico are much more difficult to track.
Nor, do we do not know what happened to many of them. Obviously some died due to illness and sickness in the harsh tropics. Some just moved on elsewhere, and ended up in Argentina, and other South American nations. We do know that some of those who went to Brazil eventually sailed back to the US eventually. Well, because building a new life is surprisingly hard.
Today, we know that 94 of the original American families remained as their “blood lines” and “family names” are all predominant in the Americanized communities. These families became rich from growing cotton and sugarcane.
They are also the people from whom the modern-day Confederados are descended.
At least one shipload of Southerners docked in the port of Belém, set sail down the Amazon River and survived on berries and monkey meat, but perished from malaria. The only community of Confederates that survived was the group that got to the place they called Americana, which they chose because it most closely paralleled their home in Georgia.”
-News Punch
The saying “The South will Rise Again!” isn’t a fiction. It really has risen again. It rose in a place where there was liberty and freedom. And where talented Americans could thrive – Brazil.
They balkanized Brazil.
Those that arrived refused to integrate.
This group refused to learn Portuguese, built Baptist churches and their own schools, and made their own traditional meals like biscuits and gravy, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas. They believed that their ways of the Confederacy and their Southern lifestyle was superior to anything found in Brazil at the time.
Over the last 100 years, the original Confederate bloodlines were slowly diluted, resulting in today’s part-Spanish, part-Confederate descendants who speak mostly Portuguese but also speak English with a Southern drawl.
Brazil Welcomes the Confederacy
When the Confederacy was defeated in the US Civil War, Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, a staunch ally of the Confederate cause, welcomed Confederate soldiers and sympathizers wishing to start a new life.
Thousands of Southerners, motivated by a hate of the wartime enemy and an instinctive urge to preserve Southern cultural values, flocked to Brazil.
They moved to a climate that in many ways resembled the American South. They moved to a place where they were permitted to keep their society, their culture and their heritage. They moved to a place where they were accepted as themselves.
Proud to be Confederate. Proud of their lifestyle. Proud of their heritage. Proud of their lifestyle.
“The Confederados, despite the usual problems of colonization, thrived in an environment that had defeated many settlers before them. Americana became an image of the antebellum period of the American south. Many of the first Baptist churches in Brazil were started there. They built public schools and provided education for their female children, something that was rare in Brazil. They flew the Confederate flag and enjoyed the traditional southern meals of biscuits and gravy, black-eyed peas and, of course, grits.The settlers had very European names like Stonewall and Butler. They would bake pecan pies, have debutante balls, and sing southern hymns. Only recently was the Confederate flag removed from the city’s crest. In 1906, US Secretary of State Elihu Root made a quick stop in Americana, but had little to say to the expatriates. Root later told his biographer that he left Americana weepy and had told the Confederados they’d never be welcome in the United States again.”
-News Punch
There was nothing random about the Southerners’ choice.
At the war’s end Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil, a Mason, began an extensive recruitment campaign. He did this primarily among his fellow Masonic brothers. He offered quite a bit. Indeed, he offered the world’s leading cotton-growing experts (American Southerners) some of the best cotton-growing land at twenty-two cents an acre, hoping to boost his own country’s developing economy.
Brazil Confederados showing the American stars and Bars with great pride.
The South’s most respected Robert E. Lee and other leaders throughout the South urged Southerners to resist the offers. They did not want to see a “brain drain” dilute the “strength of the South”. Indeed, the South had lost too many of her best men already.
Defeated and rejected in their own land, however, many Southerners responded to the warm welcome extended by the Brazilians, and Dom Pedro’s plan worked to the good of both parties.
Waves of Confederate immigrants
Over the next two decades as many as 20,000 Confederate refugees relocated to Brazil. We know that some of them eventually returned to the United States while others succumbed to deadly tropical disease. But several thousand brave pioneers remained permanently, not only forging a new life in a strange land but succeeding in it and making valuable contributions to their new country.
Proud Brazilian Confederados. They are the descendants of the expats who fled America over States Rights when the Federal government became far too large and trampled their lifestyle.
In 1866 an ex-senator from Alabama, Colonel William Norris, became the first American settler in Brazil. He purchased land near the Quilombo River in the state of São Paulo.
The William Hutchinson Norris from Alabama served in the Alabama Legislature as a member of the House of Representatives and later as a State Senator during the 1830's and 1840's...In 1861 he was the Grand Master of Masons in Alabama. No record has yet been found of him having served in the military during the Civil War period, or in any other period. During the 1820's he did serve in a Militia Unit in Wilcox County dealing with the Indians.
It should be noted that 6 of his sons served in the War and they were James Reece Norris, Robert Cicero, Francis Johnson, Henry Clay, Samuel Leonidas and Benjamin Harrison Norris. All except Francis Johnson Norris migrated to Brazil with the rest of the family. James Reece, Benjamin and Samuel returned to this country after several years in Brazil.
- The Alabama in the Civil War Message Board - Archive
A year later many more Americans followed. They came to settle in or near the “Norris colony” and in other areas throughout Brazil.
The Confederacy is alive and well in Brazil. Only they call it the Confederados.
When new arrivals saw 100% returns on their first two-year cotton plantings, the success stories brought new waves of Southerners fleeing worsening conditions (Please reference “Carpetbaggers & Scalawags“) back home.
In 1875 the Brazilian government built a railway station near Norris’s settlement—one hundred cars were needed to haul the popular watermelon crop alone in the late 1800’s—and the village that grew up around it soon became known popularly as Villa dos Americanos, “Town of the Americans.”
Confederados keeping their society and history alive. They are the only ones doing it. In America the South was lost and crumbled under the weight of the “new reformation” under the federal government.
Some of the families that settled
Many citizens of the Confederacy disappeared from public records at the end of the Civil War or soon thereafter. Of course, record keeping was spotty at best in the turmoil that followed the defeat of the Confederacy. If you can’t find your relatives during that time, you might be tempted to say, “Oh well, he (or she) probably died in the war.”
Don’t be so sure.
In 1868, a number of families from former Confederate states in the South fled the Reconstruction policies for Brazil. They settled in various regions of the country but, within a few years, concentrated near the current towns of Americana and Santa Barbara, Sao Paulo State.
These settlements were approximately 100 miles inland from the city of Sao Paulo. The family of Colonel William H. Norris was the first to arrive from Alabama. His son Robert C. Norris and daughter-in-law Martha Temperance [Patti] Steagall as well as his own daughter Angela Norris accompanied the Colonel, but son Saunders Norris remained at the family home of Mt. Pleasant, Alabama, 40 miles northeast of Mobile.
Robert Cicero Norris
Robert Cicero Norris was the son of Col. William Hutchison Norris. He was born in Perry County, Ala., March 7, 1837. His boyhood days were spent in Dallas County, Ala. From 1850 to 1856 he was a student at Fulton Academy, one of the best educational institutions of the State. Having finished the course there, he studied law under his father, though not intending to practice this profession; but he wished to inform himself concerning the laws of the country.
At the age of twenty he taught in a public school for a year, and then he went to Brundidge, Ala., where he studied medicine under Dr. J.H. Dewberry as preceptor. He matriculated in the Mobile Medical College (now University of Alabama). On January 28, 1861, his studies were interrupted when he went with other volunteers under Capt. Theodore O'Hara to Pensacola to seize the navy yards. He then returned to his studies.
On July 3, 1861, he enlisted in Company F, 15th Alabama Regiment, and went to Fort Mitchell for organization, and from there to Virginia, where his regiment served in Stonewall Jackson's brigade. In 1862 he was made sergeant major, serving in this capacity until 1864, and acted as adjutant much of the time. He was later assigned to Company A, 60th Alabama Regiment, and promoted to first lieutenant. In an engagement on Hatcher's Run he was captured and sent as a prisoner to Fort Delaware, where he was kept until June 17, 1865.
He arrived at his old home in Alabama on the 5th of July. During the four years' service he was wounded three times. He served in many battles and skirmishes, including Front Royal, Port Republic, Harper's Ferry, Cross Keys, Cold Harbor, Malvern Hill, Cedar Run, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Brown's Ferry, Wilderness, Spottsylvania Courthouse, Second Cold Harbor, Petersburg, Darbytown Road, and Williamsburg Road.
At the end of 1865 he traveled to Brazil and settled in Villa Americana, State of Sao Paulo, being the first American to settle in that section of the country. Afterwards a flourishing American colony was established there. He returned to the Mobile in 1890 to study medicine. After completing his studies, he rejoined his wife and their 10 children in Brazil, where he established a successful practice. He retired from active life in 1911.
He was made a Mason in 1858 in the Fulton Lodge, Dallas County. In Brazil he took an active part in organizing a lodge, A.Y.M., in Santa Barbara, of which he was Senior Warden for two years, afterwards being elected to the position of Grand Master, which he held until his death. Dr. Robert C. Norris departed this life on May 14, 1913.
- see CONFEDERATE VETERAN, November 1913, Vol. 21, No. 11
Martha Temperance Steagall
Martha Temperance Steagall was born on February 4, 1850 in Union City, Obion County, Tennessee. She was the daughter of Henry Farrar Steagall and Delia Elizabeth (Peck) Steagall. She relocated with the rest of her family and her husband Robert C. Norris to Brazil in 1867. She and her husband had two daughters, Kennie and Julia and a son Robert Clay Norris. She died on September 16, 1933 in Washington, D.C.
- Special Collections & Archives Department Homepage
Robert Clay Norris
Robert Clay Norris was born January 5, 1872 in Santa Barbara d'Oeste, Sao Paulo, Brazil. He studied dentistry in Sao Paulo and assisted in the practice of Dr. I. G. Baumgardner before his untimely death on December 10, 1906. He married Ana Candida Escobar 1895 in Santa Barbara d'Oeste, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
- Special Collections & Archives Department Homepage
John Ridley Bufird
Prior to relocating to the American Civil War, John Ridley Buford was a resident of Eufaula, Alabama. He enlisted in April 1862, at Eufaula, Alabama and was appointed Sergeant in Captain Reuben Koulb's Battery of the Barbour Alabama Light Artillery. He was transferred on November 6, 1864, with the rank of private to the Eufaula Battery of Alabama Light Artillery. He was in St. Mary's Hospital at Union Springs, Alabama from September 29,1864, until November 6, 1864. Buford took part in the battles of Kentucky Campaign, Hood's Tennessee Campaign, and Chickamauga, and was paroled at Meridian, Mississippi, on May 10, 1865. At his parole, he listed his residence as Eufaula. In late February of 1867, Buford
moved to Santa Barbara, Brazil where he farmed tobacco. He was alive in 1913 at age of 72.
- Special Collections & Archives Department Homepage
While the Confederates that moved to Brazil came from all over the South, it does seem like the most notable ones originated out of Alabama for some reason. Curious.
I wonder why.
Alabama in one picture.
At the opening of the twentieth century officials adopted the name Villa Americana, and today the city begun by Confederate Americans, with a population of over 200,000, is called simply “Americana.”
Americana
A small town soon formed, and a train station was built when the first railroad line was constructed through the area in 1875. The train station was officially named “Villa da Estação de Santa Bárbara” (Santa Bárbara Station Town), but the nearby town became popularly known as “Villa dos Americanos” (Town of the Americans). The town was later officially named Americana.
-EOGN
Americana is still home to about 20,000 direct descendants of these original Southern planters. Though, Italian immigrants quickly moved in and eventually outnumbered them. However, there may be as many as ten times that number distributed all over, and throughout, all of Brazil.
Southern manners, gestures, and society is maintained and living well within Brazil. The expats who left the United States Confederacy set up a life inside of Brazil to maintain their culture and way of life.
The colonies remained a cloistered community for years to come. The Confederate refugees married among themselves and spoke only English. They also invested in separate schools, churches, and cemeteries, importing priests and teachers from the United States.
The colonists founded the first Baptist Church in Brazil, together with the Campo Cemetery in which members of the Protestant religion were buried, according to their tradition.
Alison Jones, who was a third-generation descendant of the original settlers, described her experience growing up in such an environment to the Seattle Times in a 1995 interview: “I remember when I was 4 years old, I was lost in a textile factory and I couldn’t tell the people anything because I only spoke English. I didn’t learn Portuguese until I started school.”
-The Vintage News
They are in their fifth and sixth generations now.
On the whole, despite English-sounding names and lingering Southern accents for some, these down-stream Confederados think, look, and act like other Brazilians.
Young Confederados keeping their history, their society, and their traditions alive.
New waves of immigrants settled in and near Americana, notably large numbers of Italians and Germans in the 1880s. The families intermarried over the years, and today Americana’s population is described as a mixture of Luso-Afro-Brazilians (Luso meaning Portuguese) and immigrants, mainly Italian, Portuguese, German, and Arabic. The name of Americana still survives, and because of intermarriages, almost all of today’s citizens of the area can claim some Confederados ancestry. Indeed, English (with a southern accent) is the unofficial second language of the area and is still spoken by many in the area.
Today Americana is a city of 120,000 people. The ties to the old South live on. Festa Confederada is a celebration that takes place in the cemetery where the old Confederates are buried. The food served includes southern fried chicken, vinegar pie, chess pie, and biscuits. Banjos are played and Confederate songs are sung. The men wear Confederate uniforms, and the women dress in pink and blue and wear matching ribbons in their hair. The festival often looks like scenes from “Gone With the Wind.”
-EOGN
Though, you know, holding on to heritage and traditions is a good thing. Today in the Untied States we have forgotten many traditions and our heritage. Instead, we have replaced our history with pale versions.
Instead of eating fine home cooked meals, we eat progressive and modern fake-meat at McDonald’s. Instead of having a good home made baked pie, we get a mocha caramel latte smoothy from Starbucks. Instead of having home-made sweet-potato pie, we eat a Oreo cookie from the local 7-11.
I think we are missing out.
Pecan pie done right. We have lost things that used to matter to us, and what made our lives special and important.
Slavery
The conventional (Obama era) narrative is that the Confederacy was all about slavery. The idea was that the Civil War was all about “white people” desirous of having and owning slaves. That is the causes of the American Civil War they say. They argue that a war needed to be fought not only to “free the slaves” but to teach a lesson to all those “white people” who have the deplorable notion that slavery can be institutionalized.
If this narrative is what is being portrayed as the reason, history says otherwise.
Of the 20,000 confederate immigrant families, only four people owned slaves.
Four People.
This held true, even though slavery was legal in Brazil. As well as legal in almost all of South America at that time.Why didn’t the survivors of the Confederacy create an expat Confederacy with slavery?
Why didn’t they?
It’s strange, and doesn’t fit the progressive liberal Obama-era narrative.
This has been born out by the work of Alcides Gussi, an independent researcher of the State University of Campinas, Sao Paolo. Who claims that only four families actually owned slave labor, with a total number of 66 slaves, in the period between 1868 to 1875.
Some cases were recorded in which the freed slaves decided to accompany their former masters. Most notable was the story of Steve Watson. Watson went to Brazil, together with Judge Dyer of Texas, his former owner, who assigned him to be an administrator of a sawmill. At one point, Dyer decided to return to the U.S., due to a combination of homesickness and financial failure. He left all his property in Brazil to Watson.
Judith McKnight Jones, a great-granddaughter of one of the original American settlers, tried to explain the reasons for her family’s departure from Texas during the migration to the Seattle Times:
“They came here because they felt that their ‘country’ had been invaded and their land confiscated. To them, there was nothing left there. So, they came here to try to re-create what they had before the war. I grew up listening to the stories. They were angry and bitter. When they talked about it, moving here, the war, leaving their homes, it was always a very sore subject for them.”
-The Vintage News
Proud to be a Confederado. How many Americans can be so open and brazen about their history, their society and their heritage? Not many. That’s why the confederates fled the United States. They yearned for Freedom and Liberty.
The Festa Confederada
Once a year, however, at the Festa Confederada, the South rises in their blood to celebrate their heritage.
The correct name for the celebration is FEsta Confederada (FIEsta is Spanish, not Portuguese): http://festaconfederada.com.br/.
Proud descendants, most of mixed races, fly the Confederate flag—there is no racial stigma attached to it in Brazil.
Some pretty Confederate lasses doing and living well inside Brazil.
Women deck out as Southern belles, complete with hoop skirts, while the men don uniforms of Confederate gray, dance with the girls, and drink over the War.
On the menu are Southern fried chicken, chess pie, and mouth-watering biscuits; “Dixie” plays in the background. Were it not for the Portuguese being spoken by participants, an observer might imagine himself in Mississippi or Alabama of a hundred and fifty years ago.
Southern belles of the Confederacy living fine and well in Brazil.
The meeting ground is Campo Cemetery near neighboring Santa Barbara d’Oeste, where most of their ancestors are buried. Confederados built the cemetery, near the first Presbyterian church in Brazil, when Catholics would not permit space for Protestant burial in their own churchyards.
An imposing memorial, boasting the stars-and-bars of the Confederate battle flag, stands in the middle of the cemetery, bearing the names of the early Confederados, the great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers of those who sing and dance and remember the land their families used to call home.
Today
Indeed, to this day, throughout towns in Brazil, the Confederacy and Southern US culture is celebrated annually. It is done so by the many thousands of descendants of these Americans, known locally as Confedorados. Now, after six or seven generations, many of whom now have non-white and African heritage.
The expats of the descendants of the American Confederacy are living well and good in Brazil.
Square dances are held, and confederate flags are flown proudly. Any racial connotations are long lost and remain tied to American special-interest groups fighting for political supremacy. Meanwhile, the Confederados maintain their society, one of many, amid the sea of racial diversity in Brazil.
The Confederados pay tribute to their history and their culture, deep within the forests of Brazil. For in many ways, it well resembled their homeland in Georgia and Mississippi.
Some Links for further study…
You can learn more about this settlement and the families who lived there by starting online. Auburn University has a large Confederados Collection; a guide to the collection may be found at http://www.lib.auburn.edu/archive/find-aid/958.htm.
A web site of the history of the Confederados may be found at http://www.confederados.com.br/. This web site also contains a list of Confederados families.
Much more information may be found in The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil,
a book by by Cyrus B. Dawsey (Editor), James M. Dawsey (Editor),
Michael L. Conniff (Foreword), & 9 more, available on Amazon at http://goo.gl/8IOgcs.
And now for my opinion…
Finally, my take on Obama rewriting history so that myself and others like me can be erased for our “white privilege” and a new Marxist society can be built upon our salted graves…
My relatives were too busy struggling with a potato blight in Ireland , and having to get drawn into servitude to escape it, and enslavement by the Russians in Poland. Don’t know about that, do you? It doesn’t fit the desired political narrative. Yeah. Just like your pampered baby who cries when it tosses it’s food on the floor. Life is hard. Get over it.
Get. Over. It.
What I opine about is not about the things that I personally experienced regarding the American Civil War. As I have no experiences, have you? Nope. The American Civil War ended a long, long time ago. Everyone who participated in it is now DEAD. They are dead. Long, long dead. If you did dig them up, you will see rotting flesh and foul odors.
Posts Regarding Life and Contentment
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some other similar posts on this venue. If you enjoyed this post, you
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within communist China. As there are some really stark differences
between the two.
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broken apart some other posts. They can best be classified about ones
actions as they contribute to happiness and life. They are a little
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Be the Rufus – Tales of Everyday Heroism.
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"A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China shows that 41% of the respondents considered relocating or had relocated manufacturing facilities outside of China, but only 6% were considering moving back to the United States. Southeast Asia was the top destination. "
-Townhall
This is an overview of the complexities and issues that a company must deal with in order to relocate their factory out of China and place it back in the United States. It’s not as easy as it sounds, and we discuss the issues involved independently outside of the contentious American political scene.
We discuss the functional and practical issues with relocating a factory back to the United States from China. Not, the political issues, nor the need for America to reclaim it's manufacturing base. Those are other issues that will not be addressed here.
Though, let it be clearly understood, that I stand with Donald Trump in that there is a serious need to restart the American industrial machine and fire it up back to a level of productivity in order for the USA to maintain a global leadership role.
This entire issue came to a head when President Trump “ordered” American factories currently in China to “uproot” and Return back to the United States. It made all the headlines, don’t ya know?
However, the truth is that is it is extraordinarily difficult thing to do. And no, as much as I would like all of youse guys to hire me, you just can’t hire an “expert” to handle things and expect them to be done to your satisfaction. It doesn’t work that way.
Sorry.
While there are ways to accomplish this task, there will be a hit in quality, price, and delivery time. All of these issues will affect the market share of the companies that agree to relocate. This damage to the market share for the companies involved should not be discounted. For many, it will manifest as a dance with death.
Here we discuss the most important issues that a company CEO, or owner would need to consider when contemplating relocating his company out of China.
Full Disclosure
For starters, I must make the full disclosure. Please take note that I was one of those “evil” Americans who relocated factories out of America and placed them in China. It was my job and maintained this role for a solid fifteen years if not longer.
Call me an a$$hole if you like.
It’s difficult being the person that everyone hates.
It’s not like I wanted to do it, so much as starving in a food-stamp line really sucked. I followed the money. You take what work is available and you do not question the person cutting you a paycheck. Sure beats scrubbing toilets, hauling manure, or judging the sex of chickens. Truth this.
It was difficult scraping by in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. I was just happy to get a job any job when unemployment (actual) was in the double figures.
For decades, people like Trump’s trade director Peter Navarro have warned us that something like this would happen someday. But we were condescendingly told, This is capital seeking the most efficient market! And, anyway, if China screws with us, we’ll just make it ourselves.
Really? With broken-down buildings, a dispossessed workforce and no machinery? Unfashionable working-class people in the industrial Midwest were discarded long ago. They may as well have had “obsolete” stamped on their foreheads.
-Ann Coulter
Ah. Maybe you the reader are unaware of the existence of the “rust belt” and us sorry sacks that lived there.
Unemployment line. In this June 23, 2014 photo, people wait in line to meet with recruiters during a job fair in Philadelphia. The Labor Department reports on the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits last week on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2014. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
I was hired for that task and did it to the best of my ability for numerous companies throughout the late 1980’s into the new century. Once Bill Clinton came to office, it just seemed like the “flood gates” opened up and just about everyone wanted to uproot and move their operations to China.
So, I do know what I am talking about.
A map showing the location of United States manufacturing plants in China as of 2008. As today is 2019, you can well appreciate that all these plants are joint-ventures, and not organized as WOFE and thus the American ownership of these companies are at 49% or less, with the Chinese partner owning a 51% controlling stake in the factory.
And no, moving American factories back to America from China is not as simple as Donald Trump, Fox news, CNN, WaPo and the Drudge Report makes it out to be. It’s complicated. If handled poorly the entire American industry segment can be wiped out completely (rather than just simply outsourced).
Listen up!
Let it also be clearly understood that it was much easier to relocate a factory to China than it would be to reverse the effort, and relocate it to the United States. Yes. It’s like eating a delicious pizza. Once you eat it, you cannot regurgitate it up and present the vomit for resale. Now, can you? Nope you cannot.
We will cover some of these points in this article.
China makes everything
Most Americans are under the impression that the only things that China makes is cheap and useless junk. That is because of three things. [1] Ego, [2] Mainstream American media, and [3] Walmart.
The truth is that China is the manufacturer for the world.
Most computers are made in China.
Most clothes washers are made in China.
Most cell phones are made in China.
Most automobile engines are made in China.
Most transmissions are made in China.
Most tires are made in China.
So do not be under the erroneous assumption that it’s easy to relocate a factory back to the USA. These are, for the most part, not low-technology factories. (The low-technology factories have long since moved to even cheaper nations with less regulation, like Vietnam and Cambodia.)
Today, most American owned factories in China are much more advanced, than what is assumed. They are far more automated than the American mainstream news media lets on.
Take a look at what these factories make…
Trade between the USA and China.
ACME Widget Technology Inc.
To better help understand the issues involved, we will use a fictitious American company. This company is based on a number of actual companies that I worked at where I relocated the factories to China. It is an amalgamation of numerous actual companies that I am sorry that I'd rather not announce publicly. As I did sign NDA's at all the companies.
This fictitious company is called ACME Widget Technology Inc. This company was a very prosperous consumer appliance company that was established in the 1950’s and was a major player in the consumer market during the 1960’s into the 1970’s.
They manufactured a wide selection of consumer appliances ranging from “white goods” (washing machines, stoves, and other large appliances), to “kitchen appliances” (microwave ovens, toasters, coffee makers) to “Lawn and Garden” appliances (weed-wackers, lawn-mowers and chainsaws).
White goods and other large appliances on display in a well known appliance store.
At their peak they employed over 10,000 American workers.
They operated numerous individual specialized factories, each one customized for a specific product line. As such there was one factory for personal scales, a different factory for heated cooking appliances, a factory for outdoor grills, and another one for washing machines. For all the various product lines, there was, perhaps, 30 to 45 factories at the middle of the 1990’s.
Most of these factories were in the Southern states, with the bulk of the factories in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.
(They were initially in the North in the Great Lakes region, but relocated during the 1970's to the South East. They did so for lower wages (1/4 the rate) and the ability to skirt the onerous regulatory and union requirements.)
The ACME Catalog.
While the factories were in the Southern states to take advantage of the low labor rates, and “friendly” (at that time) business climate, the corporate offices were elsewhere. Marketing, Sales and the Commercial management offices were located in a suburb of Chicago. Perhaps you heard of it, Schaumburg Illinois?
While Engineering, Quality, Tooling and Test facilities were located within a days drive of any of the specialized factories in the deep South. Their offices were in the town center of one of the many numerous small Southern towns. Hattiesburg, Mississippi, perhaps you have heard of it?
Local engineering and related quality offices in small town America in the Deep South.
A 1980’s Hostile Takeover
In the 1980’s a group of investors seized control of the company. It was hostile, and thus the term “hostile takeover” become commonly used. (Remember the movies “The secret of my success”, and “Other people’s money”.) They laid off a significant percentage of the workers, shut down and sold off various factories and divisions (Remember the movie “Pretty Woman”?) and “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap?
It was a “bloodbath”.
Their goal was to strip-mine the company for personal profit. They felt that they could do with the company as they wished as they held controlling interest in it. And, since no one was doing anything to stop them from this (terribly unethical) activity, they were correct.
Without enforcement of the laws, or the selective application of laws... they functionally do not exist.
Given the crimes of the Washington oligarchy, this should be painfully obvious to everyone in America today.
After laying off thousands of people, Al Dunlap retired to a life of luxury and ease, playing golf and smoking cigars. Meanwhile the workers that he laid off ended up destitute, many lost their homes, and went into bankruptcy. Today, many live in mobile homes, and are employed in low-paying unskilled labor employment.
I was hired to move companies to China.
Within this contentious environment, where the wealthy and successful were guzzling XO and cavorting with high-paid hookers, (while us working “normals” were discarded as “useless riff raff”), they hired me to do three things;
Relocate specific factories to China
Create Joint Ventures with existing Chinese factories
“Farm out” specific product lines to existing Chinese factories and create a partnership whereas we would purchase complete products from them though our Purchasing organization.
They wanted to move the plants to China for the simple reason that the wages were far less, the rate of exchange USD to Yuan was in the favor of the United States ownership, and that regulations, laws, and controls were lax, or in many cases, not present at all.
The operational costs American facility vs Chinese facility + Logistics costs were like "night and day". It was absolutely mind blowing how much cheaper it was to manufacture products in China compared to the USA.
Not to mention, of course, that the Chinese were actively courting American businessmen to “sell their soul”, “sell out their countrymen”, for a life of ease, prostitutes and a never-ending supply of recreational drugs.
First, they hired slick American marketing firms and convinced giant U.S. companies to relocate manufacturing to China by providing $1 leases for comparable plants and abundant cheap labor. Wall Street fell for it.
Secondly, state-subsidized Chinese companies flooded U.S. markets with products at one-third the prevailing price. The result: In short order, most American manufacturers had to file for bankruptcy. Then, these same Chinese firms shamelessly swept in and bought up our manufacturers’ now-unused equipment for pennies on the dollar.We were asleep. Sure, it cost China some money in the early stages, but per their long-term plan, China became the world’s top manufacturer and resource for such fire-sale buy-outs at the same time. The plan was masterful, the U.S. and American stakeholders fell for it hook, line and sinker.
I personally observed this wholesale takeover up close from 1990 to 2010.
-Townhall
Note on the quote above: No American citizen can lease under the terms mentioned in the quote. Only the Chinese partner can take advantage of that lease arrangement. While the quote is a good one, it is very deceptive.
But moving into China was not as straight forward as it appeared. You just don’t hop on a plane with a suitcase full of cash, point to a factory and say “I want that one”. To operate in China (up until around 2008 or so) you needed to create a joint-venture partnership with an existing Chinese factory. So that is what ACME did. They partnered up with existing Chinese factories.
The primary advantages in having a joint venture in china was labor rates, regulations, and favorable trade terms. Anything else is speculative.
A comparison in hourly wages for manufacturing workers in the United States as compared to China.
The Dismantling of American Industry
These actions took place throughout the 1990’s and by the tail end of the decade, almost the entire product line for ACME was manufactured in China.
All in all, it took nearly a decade to move operations off shore without seriously affecting market share and the confidence of our customers. Our name brands remained intact. Commercial campaigns for the sales of ACME products were given top spots on television and through newspapers.
The Design, and Quality staff remained in the United States.
However, that too began to be outsourced as well. With Engineers from India, and China working alongside American Engineers. Eventually, the complete Engineering and Quality groups were wholly outsourced to China.
None remained in America.
Customer Service Staff at a CS operations room in India.
Customer Service activity was outsourced to India. None remained in America.
This remained true even after a flood of complaints about the quality of the customer service. They worked for a fraction of the cost of Americans, and with that pittance lived a upper-middle class lifestyle in India. The company savings went directly into the pockets of the owners of ACME.
Thus the resultant reorganization of the company resulted in very competitive prices that appealed to the major retailers. Walmart, Target, Sears, Home Depot, Walgreens and others all placed ACME Widget products in key SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) locations in their stores.
In other words, displayed predominantly, at eye-level on shelves, and in high visibility locations within stores.
A graph of the decline in American manufacturing employment (and conversely ability) in order to meet the profit targets of Wall Street, the globalist cabal that runs Washington, DC, and the progressive political leadership in America.
Product Placement in Stores
The complexity of product placement in stores is unknown to most Americans, but it shouldn’t be. The largest profits from the sale of ACME products went to the “Box Retailers”, not to the manufacturer. They made a profit margin of around 30% on each appliance, compared to the paltry 2-3% that the factory earned for making it.
Walmart
Sears
Target
JC Penny
Walgreens
K-Mart
Additionally, these stores placed pricing pressure on ACME to lower the price every year. Walmart had a policy of price reduction that equated to 1.5% off each model, each year.
Now this price reduction was not passed on to the consumers. Nope. The store kept the savings.
Though the price to the “Box Store” would decrease, the sales price would not. Thus resulting in a net gain in profits for the local stores of 1.5% each year for each existing product. This was important, as Walmart maintained a solid 30% mark-up over the factory cost. (The the factory cost mark-up was rarely more than 3%.)
That $100 vacuum cleaner cost $67 to make and ship. The store that you bought it from made $30, the factory made $3.
Globalism was fantastic for the wealthy. Their profits were never larger.
Though, not so good for the local, “Joe Blow” who had a family and needed to work to earn enough to meet the basics of a roof from the rain, cheap food to feed the family, and some beer to dull the senses.
Power Tool Isle in Home Depot in the United States. All of which are made in China and rebranded with American-friendly names.
As such, the profits were enormous for the company, and the owners (the ones that conducted the “hostile takeover”) rolled in the cash in mind-boggling amounts.
The amounts of profits were truly mind-boggling.
They used that money to “diversify” their company portfolio. They bought hotels, cruise liners, travel agencies, and were getting involved in Savings and Loan banking. Such was the high-flying life in the 1990’s. (Anyone remember the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street”.)
President Obama represented the Global Interests of a global socialistic community. He did not care for local Americans, as he viewed them as a part of an “old order” that must be discarded in favor of a new, more “enlightened” progressive way of doing things.
Unfortunately, many of these side ventures failed. Thus additional rounds of layoffs, and downsizing’s continued a pace.
This continued to be the story throughout the industry as the competition to ACME also implemented their modus operandi.
Then came the election of Donald Trump.
President Trump starts a “Trade War”
Donald Trump and Xi Peng.
In 2016 though 2019 he raised tariffs on Chinese made products. With the percentage of tariffs constantly increasing. This continued until late Summer of 2019 when he demanded that American companies working and trading with China return their operations back to America.
It most certainly shook the will of most nations around the world.
I know it shook Wall Street, and afterwards, globally all consumers and manufacturers started to slow down operations to take a slower more conservative bent on the matters at hand. They slowed everything way… way down.
It started in 2016, and over the next three years, the global economy started to slow down and cool off. Orders out of America limped forward hesitantly, while orders from Europe kept pace, but were more cautious than before.
Nothing “crashed” as predicted by the “screeching heads” on the “blue panel” debates on television. (All actors reading scripts, and playing roles, don’t ya know.) But things slowed down. Things cooled off. Investors became cautious.
I get a phone call.
Walking the dog on the beach.
In September 2019, I was walking my dog along the beach near my house when my cell phone rang.
I normally don't keep my cell phone with me. But, for reasons related to habit, I had it in my satchel with me.
An old boss of mine, from my ACME days, tracked me down (How he was able to do so, I do not know.) and wanted to know if I would be willing to help them sort out the issues related to relocating their factories back to the United States.
I should have said no.
After all, our history was contentious. For, as soon as I completed my tasks with ACME, they immediately fired me, and made me sign a NDA in order to guarantee that I could get food stamps. No back pay, no severance package nothing. I couldn’t even go back to my office to get my personal effects. Pretty harsh, especially when you consider my very own personal situation…
… I had a wife with a very serious mental illness. And I was splitting my time between dealing with insanity of work issues and visiting her at the hospital. The layoff, at a time when my wife was suicidal, was a severe hardship. Well, for me at least.
Maybe you can handle an hysterical deranged wife painting the bathroom mirror with fingernail polish, while you are trying to “hit the streets” looking for new employment. I could not.
But that’s life. No one gives a rat’s ass about you.
Dilbert comic. It’s so funny because it is (sort of) true. LOL
It’s (as they say in America) “just business”. It’s the “American Way”, don’t you know. And you, as an American, should know. This is the truth, and this is the way it is. This is the real deal.
In America… it’s “just” business.
Being laid off without notice, or severance really blows. But that’s the story of being an American worker during the last three decades. It’s the American way.
As was true through most of the 1990’s, treating employees as disposable paper cups often resulted in some bloody events.
But, in this case I said “yes” to my old boss. I asked a (relatively) enormous sum of money (expecting them to decline), and they agreed. Imagine that! I guess they were desperate.
After about two weeks of sorting out my personal affairs, we had a meeting in the conference room in one of their plush offices. It was on the 16th floor in this really nice (curtain wall) glass and steel structure that resided in Florida. What a life. They had really been doing well. Everything was new, and polished. It was a big change from the “hand me down” desks and cubicle walls that I dealt with back in the 1990’s.
Yeah. It looked something a little like this…
Corporate Headquarters
After the initial pleasantries and handshakes (You know, how was the flight, and did I like the hotel, etc.) , they asked me what was involved in moving the factories back to the United States, and so I put together some bullet points and made a PPT presentation to the upper management.
Making a PPT presentation.
Capital Expenditures
The first point raised, of course, was costs. If you are going to move operations from one physical location to another, you will incur costs. What would those costs be?
The costs incurred would fall under numerous general categories;
Relocating heavy machinery and equipment (or the purchase of the replacements thereof).
Rules, fees, taxes and the costs associated with agency regulations that one must pay in the United States to operate a factory there. Do not be under the impression that you can just cut down a tree, install a power line, pave a road, and start putting up a pole building without having American government regulation at all levels involved.
Fees, charges, and associated bribes that you must pay when you are dealing with local American government. Make no mistake this is a very real issue and one that is kept quite hidden. After all it is quite illegal, and you all don’t want the pristine agencies of the FBI and DOJ putting their retainers on your efforts.
Rent or construction of new facilities.
The hiring of new staff to replace the Chinese staff. This will include all benefits as well as the various associated taxes, fees and social security benefits.
Associated relocation costs.
Associated tariffs in moving product inventory, and equipment from China to the USA.
It’s not so simple.
If you want to do something, it will cost money. Imagine that you are moving your house from Illinois to Los Angles. There will be costs. There will be the costs for the movers, the gas, the rental of the vehicle and the employment of the moving crew. The same is true for a business. There will be costs.
Some Key Points
Now, I would like to make some relatively important key points regarding moving a factory to China as compared to moving it back to China.
Firstly, consider what ACME did when the relocated the factory from America to China.
In the mid 1990’s, ACME formed a joint partnership / joint-venture with a Chinese company. ACME would take 70% of the profits, and the Chinese partner would take 30% of the profits.
ACME then shipped all their heavy manufacturing equipment from America to China. They physically removed it from the American factories, and shipped it to China. Then at the factory, they utilized both American and Chinese labor to set the equipment up, debug it, and shim the mechanisms into working condition.
However, it was well understood that once you set up a factory within China, you MUST have partial Chinese ownership. You absolutely cannot operate any factory in China without significant Chinese ownership. At that, let it be well understood that the Chinese co-owners MUST have at least 51% ownership in the company. The American owners will NEVER have more than 49% ownership of anything that they own and bring to China. It is Chinese Law (at least back in the 1990’s it was).
Also, let it be well understood that the upper management at ACME knew full well that this was the case. But they did not care.
Their focus was on the short term profits, as was their charge. They fully expected that the company would eventually collapse long before there would ever be the need to relocate the factories back to the United States.
Semi-automated production line typically used in the appliance assembly. Picture is of a Bosch line prior to export to a Chinese assembly line.
Thus, any equipment brought into China will now require the co-owner’s (Chinese national) approval to remove from the Chinese factory and ship elsewhere.
In practice, this is often a big “NO!” There are some cases where the Chinese owner will permit the removal of old or antiquated equipment at a price. Often the price will be at market value or higher.
So, when ACME moved the equipment into China it was very simple. They moved it, and used their inherent labor to set it up and debug.
Yes, so when ACME relocated entire factories to China, it was a simple matter of firing all the American employees, boxing up the equipment, and handing it over to a Chinese partner. They, in turn, would own the equipment, train and staff the Chinese workers to use the equipment and ship the products back to America.
It was a model that worked well from the 1990’s up to around 2019. Everyone was doing it. American industry, as was Wall-Street, were all focused on quarterly profits. They could not see further than a few years in the future. The Chinese, on the other hand, think in terms of centuries.
However, to remove the equipment, they will NOW need the Chinese co-owner’s approval. This will often not be easy and it will come at a price. For they will be asking permission from their (now wealthy) Chinese partner to give up all of the capital equipment that resides in his factory. (And make no mistake, at 51% ownership, it is his factory.)
Please keep in mind that the cost of these manufacturing and assembly machinery are in the millions of dollars. As an example, an automated “brake” used to cut and bend aluminum sheet will equal the cost of a Lamborghini. Now, figure that each factory might have ten such machines at minimum. That is a lot of money.
Factories utilize so many different types of automation, that it is difficult to quantify exactly which ones are critical to the production end line goal, and which ones can be replaced by American manual labor. Photo is of an actual American joint-venture factory within China.
In short, what all this means is that American ownership of a Chinese factory is, at best, at 49%. As such removal of the equipment to America is problematic and will probably NOT occur. The Chinese business partner would keep the equipment, dissolve the partnership once the sales dissolve (easy enough under Chinese law) and end up owning the complete factory himself.
Thus the American partner is then forced to purchase all brand new assembly equipment from scratch and start off all over again. Only this time, due to the ravaging effects of inflation, the cost of the equipment is much more expensive than the initial purchase in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Thus capital equipment expenditures would seriously end up in the hundreds of millions of dollars alone.
Relocating a factory from China back to the United States is a prohibitively expensive exercise that costs an enormous amount of money. The only way around these costs are to employ Americans in an entirely manual assembly role and cut out all automation, quality checks and basic assembly standards.
Quick summary;
American manufacturing capital equipment is 100% American company owned when shipped to China.
American manufacturing capital equipment is only 49% American owned when shipping out of China.
The difference in ownership will result in serious costs regarding the purchase of new capital equipment equipment for use within a factory in the United States.
If the American management wants to go the legal route to resolve any issues with the Chinese partner, the Chinese legal system will rule in favor of the Chinese national. They ALWAYS rule in favor of the Chinese national. This is the way it works.
To put this in another way; to purchase new automation equipment for an American factory will entail enormous costs.
The only way that a business can purchase replacement capital equipment is with favorable banking and loan arrangements, but even with that, the amortization costs on most typical appliances will be on the order of an increase in 30% to 55% increase in the costs of the appliance.
Bill Clinton was quite satisfied with the trade arrangements with China, and supported it whole heartedly.
Is it fair? No. But that is the situation that President’s Clinton, Bush and Obama were all quite satisfied with.
Technically Skilled Leadership
Another issue is the technical staff.
This is something that is given quite a bit of “lip service” in the industry, but is actually just a big smoke screen. If talented technical staff were actually important they would never be laid off. Right?
Like I said. It’s a lot of words with no substance.
How to fire someone in America. Soften the blow so they don’t go postal on you.
Well, that is all just fine and day, except when you are talking about relocating a factory.
For you NEED these people, and you NEED their expertise. Otherwise, you will have all sorts of problems in production, resulting in quality disasters, and severe production delays.
Production Engineers are critical to the smooth operation of the production lines in a factory.
No we are not talking about line supervisors, and accounting clerks. We are talking about the engineers that maintain and operate the complex automated machinery. We are talking about the design, industrial, manufacturing, and mechanical engineers that make the production lines hum efficiently.
Oh, yeah.
They used to be plentiful in the United States, but over the last three decades they have become a dying breed. Most, once laid off, could not find other similar work and so they migrated into other occupations.
When our nation’s coal miners found themselves out of work, the left-media gleefully told them that they need to “learn to code.” After all, they were dinosaurs working, literally, with dinosaur fuels and needed to be reeducated for the global, technological economy.
The condescending chant that rained down from the privileged ivory towers of the leftist elite: Learn. To. Code.
-Legal Insurrection
Some became bakers, while other ended up delivering mail for the Post Office. Some became teachers, while others became Bus Drivers. Maybe some even “learned to code”, as the Mainstream News Media laughingly taunted the unemployed professionals.
Design, production, manufacturing, industrial, quality and maintenance engineers are key talents that all factories require. Though over the last three decades, most of them have been Chinese, not American.
They, like myself, were forced to migrate to where the work is. If you are lucky, you never need to change and swap jobs. But during the 1990’s this was a near impossibility.
There are very few active technical factory experts in the United States today that are able and willing to relocate to a new post-China startup. They exist, but are decidedly no longer as plentiful as they once were. As such, once you find them, you will need to pay them a premium salary for their knowledge and experience.
Manufacturing engineers make sure that the process is set in place and the the workers can best manufacture complex and high quality products. Without them, the factory will be plagued with all sort of quality problems, arguments, failures and delays.
Now, that does not mean that they cannot be found.
They exist and are available in America. However you will need to pay them American salaries, and American benefits. Often with a benefit package that is ten times that of what the companies have been accustomed to paying their Chinese technical staff.
Process Engineers have an important role in the successful operation of any factory, especially those involving chemical and treatment processes.
So ,yes there are technical staff that can be hired within America to work and maintain the factories. However, the cost to employ them will require a budget at lest ten times larger than the budget that is already allocated for the staff at a comparative Chinese factory. This cost will be added on to the cost of the product manufactured at the factory.
Training of staff
Compared to the two previous issues, this one is not as serious. It simply means that all those American workers that ACME must hire to work in the newly relocated factory must be trained. You would think that it wouldn’t be too much of an issue. We have been training workers to work in factories in America for many, many decades.
Only one problem though.
Factory manufacturing techniques have changed drastically since the mid 1990s. The Chinese staff will need to train unskilled American workers to operate the relocated equipment, and learn the process parameters.
The people who know how to make the specialized products that ACME makes no longer exist in the USA. The Americans that used to know are all gone. Either they found new work when they were fired back in the 1990’s, or are now retired.
The ones that know how to operate the (new and improved) machinery, check the quality of the product, and are knowledgeable to quickly debug the process when things go wrong are all Chinese.
Which means, of course, to train your new workers, you must use existing skilled Chinese workers to do so.
Chinese supervisory staff training an American worker on site in America.
You have two options;
Obtain a H1-B visa for the Chinese staff and use them to train and supervise the new American workers.
Ship all the new American workers to China for hands-on training at the Chinese factory prior to shipping the equipment back to the United States.
Both options have been used by various companies over the last few years. Each option has some pros and cons associated with it.
Chinese management training Americans on site in the factory inside China.
However, the reader should note that due to the availability of the H1-B visa in the United States, the ACME leadership discovered that they would have to wait a year to apply for new visas, as all the existing visas were taken by software engineers out of India. Thus forcing the more expensive route to ship Americans to China to train how to use the equipment.
Training of Americans to work in the returned factory from China will necessitate the training by Chinese nationals. This will be conducted either in China or in the United States depending on the availability of visa access.
Breakup of Global Relationships
Of course, in order to return an American factory out of China and back to the United States, there will have to be a period of contentious negotiation between the owners.
PPT on the key points in negotiating with the Chinese.
After all, and I hope that I made this clear, an “American” company residing in China is NOT 100% American owned. No. Instead it is a joint venture / partnership with the Chinese partner owning controlling interest of the entire factory, technical skills, intellectual property and capital equipment.
For any American company to do this will create a period of discomfort and strife, as most Chinese owners will not want to relinquish any controlling interest, nor deplete their internal resource pool. He would fight, aggressively, any attempts to dissolve the relationship, ship components back to the United States and have access to stock and supplier interests.
Trade negotiations between Xi Peng and Donald Trump. The Chinese are tough negotiators. Do not think for a minute that they will not take full advantage of any situation.
This entire matter would be contentious. As a result, most American corporate executives would refer the entire matter to their American legal branch to handle. But, and you all should know and realize this, American law has no jurisdiction in China. Chinese law is what is followed, and the courts will almost always rule in favor of the Chinese nationals.
The Chinese legal system will ALWAYS rule in favor of the Chinese national.
When ACME tried to dissolve their partnership with the joint venture, and went the Chinese legal route, the courts ruled that not only did the American firm not have any legal standing, but they then awarded the American 49% legal controlling interest to the Chinese factory owner as punitive punishment.
Thus as a result, the ACME American company ended up with 0% ownership of the company, with their Chinese partner ended up with 100% ownership.
China is a serious, serious nation. They do not fool around, and they have laws that protect Chinese nationals. Americans should realize this and consider alternative solutions to any legal issues instead of going through the “proper” legal avenues.
Loss of Market Share in China
How things have changed. I’ve since returned to China many times, and I’ve watched its economy grow to become the second-largest in the world.
Based on purchasing power parity (PPP), it’s the largest. And according to Credit Suisse, the size of China’s middle class has for the first time overtaken the U.S. to become the world’s most populous—109 million Chinese compared to 92 million Americans.
-Frank Talk
It might surprise many typical Americans, but China is a POTENTIALLY much larger consumer market than America is.
Presently the United States is the world leader in consumer product purchases, but that will change in the future. Most projections place China in the leadership role in the early to middle 2030’s.
China is growing, and the amount of growth just boggles the mind, and Americans are absolutely oblivious to this fact.
Thus, if you want to have a global “slice of the pie” for what ever products you make, you will need to sell them in China.
Now, in order to sell products in China, you will need a Chinese “presence”. This can be a regional headquarters, a partner factory, or some other kind of legal entity to “open the door” for your products to be sold in China.
China is a huge market that can be exploited by American factories and businesses. However, they must be free to be able to sell their products to Chinese consumers. Were China to implement Trump-style tariffs, this will not occur, and Germany, Japan and Korea will capture those markets.
Do not be under the erroneous assumption that you can just carry some of your products to China and then just sell them openly. Nope.
All products must meet Chinese regulatory requirements.
It is similar to that in the USA. (Remember the Billionaire Boys Club where they were having a difficult time importing Mercedes Benz automobiles into the USA because they would not meet the emissions requirements?)
Now, it is far, far easier to sell American made, or American sourced (out of a Chinese joint-venture, or a WOFE) than trying to exporting the product directly to China. There is already a legal presence within China.
An opportunity exists for American companies to sell to China. However, they must do so carefully and maintain their name recognition.
Corporate Identity
What ever you do, you must maintain your logo and trademark or else you would no longer have any kind of “product identity” associated with your products. However, if you have partnered with a Chinese factory to make your products, then THEY, not you, own the registration and trademarks within China.
By relocating the “American” factory to America out of China, ACME ran the risk of totally closing off the Chinese Market. This is because their Chinese partner OWNED all royalties, Logos, Copyright, and trademarks for the ACME brand. Under Chinese law, as practiced, the Chinese person who first manufactures a logo, or uses a symbol automatically owns the rights to it. Once ACME leaves, they can never return back to China and use their brand. If they did so they would be in violation of Chinese law.
Long Term Consequences
I long ago concluded that the world will eventually essentially divide into two spheres: China and the United States. But what I have not been able to figure out is what that will mean overall nor what that will mean for particular regions and countries. In particular, I get stuck when trying to figure out which countries will go to which side.
I have always believed some countries will essentially be required to choose between the United States and China, some countries will want to choose between the United States and China, and some countries will want to straddle between the United States and China.
-China Law Blog
China is growing and it appears that the United States does not appreciate competition. The USA wants to maintain it’s role as a global superpower, fighting and policing the globe by taxation of it’s citizenry. While China is looking for economic dominance through cooperation with national partnerships.
You know, you do not need to relocate the factory back to America. you can relocate it to another nation with similar conditions to China. Here, you can make a joint venture partnership between the Chinese factory and a local factory, say in Cambodia, Vietnam, or Laos.
There are work-arounds. Products made in China, can be shipped to a nation that does not have Trump-level tariffs against it. The shipping container would then go to this second “pass through” nation, the documents would then specify that it was made and originated out of the third nation. Then shipped to the United States.
Of course, it is possible that the economic pain China is feeling from the trade war has been mitigated by some businesses trying to “work around” the tariffs. This is typically done by exporting to an unsanctioned country where some “value added” is created before being shipped onto the final destination – thus avoiding the tariff.
This is a tried and tested formula with one of the more extreme examples being Russia. It takes time to find alternative suppliers from different countries or to develop domestic ones. When sanctions were first imposed on imports from the EU, Russia companies used business relationships to import EU products via 3rd party countries, including Belarus. This put up costs, but ensured supply chains could continue functioning until alternatives were found.
If that has indeed been happening as a result of the US-China stand-off, the most likely avenue is Vietnam. While US imports from Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan have certainly increased, it is from Vietnam that they have surged. ...
... It is difficult for an economy to build extra production capacity and related supply chains in a short period of time to substitute even part of the production from China. Vietnam’s manufacturing production growth was quite flat at around 10% year-on-year in 2019. It was even slower in 2018. It is hard to believe that the surge in Vietnam’s exports to the US (in US dollar terms, remember) has all come from production within Vietnam.
The obvious response is that it hasn't. Chinese exports to Vietnam have displayed a strong upward growth trend in 2019, which is in contrast to the slowdown in 2018, and also in contrast to the moderately flattish growth of Vietnam’s production.
-ING
This is a mature solution. Many of the products that American believe are made in Germany, Japan and Korea are actually made in China. They are made in China and then shipped and stored in the respective warehouses for later shipment to the United States.
Pass-through trade option.
This option might increase the price of the products from 1% to 5%. This is a viable solution as opposed to the 30% to 40% tariffs that Donald Trump is talking about.
"The Trump administration made a very serious miscalculation in launching the ‘trade war’ with China. It believed that either, or both, the leadership of China would submit to the Trump administrations threats or the Chinese population would not be prepared for a serious struggle with the US. Both calculations have proved entirely wrong. China’s leadership did not surrender to but hit back against the US attacks. Furthermore anyone who follows China’s domestic discussion, on what is now by far the world’s largest internet community, knows that this line was strongly supported by the Chinese population."
- China prepares for economic ‘prolonged war’ with Trump
There are many considerations that a company must take into account when faced with a Presidential decree that the company relocate from China to the United States. It’s a complex issue with many facets.
When discussing relocation of American factories back to America you must also include the contentious corporate history over the last four decades that led up to the situation that exists today. Nothing happens in isolation. It is all the result of society, and corporate behaviors that are nurtured by the political class in Washington D.C..
In any event, it is up to each individual company to determine what actions would be in their own corporate interests. I would advise obtaining knowledgeable legal representation, and employment of experienced “old hand” expats residing in China, rather than some “expert” out of an “ivory tower” in Los Angles.
Other great articles
Here’s some articles by others in the business. They pretty much say the same things as what I am presenting here. Only they are better written. LOL.
Here are
some links about my observations on China. I think that you, the reader,
might find them to be of interest. Please kindly enjoy.
China and America Comparisons
As an
American, I cannot help but compare what my life was in the United
States with what it is like living in China. Here we discuss that.
The Chinese Business KTV Experience
This is
the real deal. Forget about all that nonsense that you find in the
British tabloids and an occasional write up in the American liberal
press. This is the reality. Read or not.
Learning About China
Who
doesn’t like to look at pretty girls? Ugly girls? Here we discuss what
China is like by looking at videos of pretty girls doing things in
China.
Contemporaneous Chinese Music
This is a
series of posts that discuss contemporaneous popular music in China. It
is a wide ranging and broad spectrum of travel, and at that, all that I
am able to provide is the flimsiest of overviews. However, this series
of posts should serve as a great starting place for investigation and
enjoyment.
Parks in China
The parks
in China are very unique. They are enormous and tend to be very
mountainous. Here we take a look at this most interesting of subjects.
Really Strange China
Here are
some posts that discuss a number of things about China that might seem
odd, or strange to Westerners. Some of the things are everyday events,
while others are just representative of the differences in culture.
What is China like?
The
purpose of this post is to illustrate that the rest of the world,
outside of America, has moved on with their lives. That while they
might not be as great as America is, they are doing just fine thank
you.
And while
America has been squandering it’s money, decimating it’s resources,
and just being cavalier with it’s military, the rest of the world has
done the opposite. They have husbanded their day to day fortunes, and
you can see this in their day-to-day lives.
Summer in Asia
Let’s take a moment to explore Asia. That includes China, but also includes such places as Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and others…
Some Fun Videos
Here’s a collection of some fun videos taken all over Asia. While
there are many videos taken in China, we also have some taken in
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea and Japan as well. It’s all in fun.
Articles & Links
You’ll not
find any big banners or popups here talking about cookies and privacy
notices. There are no ads on this site (aside from the hosting ads – a
necessary evil). Functionally and fundamentally, I just don’t make money
off of this blog. It is NOT monetized. Finally, I don’t track you
because I just don’t care to.
You can start reading the articles sequentially by going HERE.
You can visit the Index Page HERE to explore by article subject.
You can also ask the author some questions. You can go HERE to find out how to go about this.
One of the mysteries of China, and there are many such mysteries, is what it is like living in the hinterlands of China. Rural China. People see pictures of the skyscrapers of Shanghai, and the high-tech modern world of ultra-futuristic Shenzhen, but what of the rest of the country? What is it like? Is the mainstream media narrative that it is a devoid and barren wasteland correct?
Well, in this post we try to show what China is like outside of the big mega-cities. It’s kind of difficult, as China is just rife with mega-cities. In fact, many a village in China would qualify as a city in the United States. Ah, but we will try… we will try…
Of course, the countryside in China is treated like the countryside in America.
It is considered “fly-over” country, and is ignored by the mainstream media. The people who live there are considered hicks, ignorant deplorables, and destitute simpletons that stream into the cities to look for work. The main-stream media never reports on the countryside, or if it does, it is always shown in a bad light. It is always along the lines of “the working poor flood into the cities for work“… etc.
That is truly sad, and what is even sadder is that the very people who live in America that live in the Heartland, the very ones that are known as deplorables (by their urban breathern), refer to the rural Chinese with the same horrible derogatory language. It’s sad, and it is sickening.
Rural China is no worse than rural Kentucky. It is no worse than “fly-over” Iowa. It is no worse than deplorable-ruled Charlotte. The only thing is that the American media calls them deplorable hicks, and the unwitting American citizen believes what the American mainstream media says.
Here we look at a series of scenes from China. The scenes are in the form of micro-videos. All videos were taken within the closing quarter of 2018 and represent a cross-section of typical China as observed by typical Chinese using their cellphones. The application used to record these videos is the TicToc app.
Important note; If you are having difficulty seeing the videos or if they are not easy to see, please reload your browser. This will more than likely fix 80% of the problems you may encounter.
Town on a River Bank
Here is a small town on a river bank. This is a pretty typical scene. Most Americans are unaware of just how mountainous rural China actually is, and this video goes a long way to illustrate it. Look at those hills! My goodness, can you imagine hunting white tail there?
The buildings, in style and design, are terribly typical. They form the same overall design template that is all over China. You can find these buildings everywhere in China. They are present everywhere from the Southern island of Hainan to the far North in Manchuria.
This little town reminds me of the town that I grew up in when I was a boy living in Western Pennsylvania. Like PA, the town is serviced by water, rail and road that hug the river. Also like Pennsylvania, the buildings tend to be older and shabbier. The road is a bit dustier. Though, if you pay attention, it is actually quite a bit cleaner than what you would find in Pennsylvania.
Why?
Firstly, because China (not only rural China) doesn’t have welfare like it is available in the United States. If you are unemployed, you are out of luck. You starve. There are no hand outs or freebies for any reason.
However, there is a workfare program. Anyone can get a job in the government cleaning the streets or planting trees and flowers. Which is why you’ll find most areas, not all (especially in the industrial areas), free of litter and trash. Unlike the USA, everyone who is willing to work, can work in China.
In America, trash and litter line the streets because no one is paid to pick it up. Those who are able to are paid to sit at home on welfare. In China, the roads are clean and litter free because work is provided to everyone. As long as you are willing to work, you will get food, housing and a small monetary stipend.
You will also note that the roads don’t have potholes. This is a far cry from what you will find in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania there is a symbolic government relationship of entwined corruption. This system guarantees road-repair for potholes every election season. Nothing ever gets done, but hey, that is how the Pennsylvanian government is run.
In China, you try to run this scam, and the corruption police will seize you. They specifically monitor for this kind of behavior, and the Western American media does not like it one bit. I wonder why?
The Chinese police will seize you and arrest you. They will prove your guilt, and you will be sentenced within three days from arrest. If your crime is really bad, you will get death plus three. (Three years of organ harvesting followed by death.) The Chinese do not mess around.
A Historical Town
The previous town was very typical. It has a mixture of old and new buildings and some minor industry. However, there are more than just one type of town in China. There are others. There are many others, and they are all different.
Unlike the USA where a town is a town and a city is a city, in China you have “communities”. Depending on the nature of the community, you will see monies and resources allocated differently.
Of course, everyone knows about the cities. There are first tier, second tier and third tier cities. Many people assume that this is due to population size, but that is terribly wrong. The classification is determined by a complex number of factors, of which population is but a small issue. It is actually a matter of historical, political, and commercial importance as well as being the hub for social and economic issues. Those cities that are most important, are classified as “first tier”, and others are classified appropriately from that.
The classification of a community determines the financial, economic, social and political resource allocation.
As such here are some other community classifications that can be found outside of the large urban areas…
A basic town with some minor industry.
A historical town.
A Service Area or Train Stop town.
An industrial town.
A town that is classified as resort or recreational in function.
Let’s talk about the “historical” town.
You see, about twenty years ago, just when China was hitting it’s stride numerous people started to lament that everything was being torn town to make way for new things. It’s the Chinese way, don’t ya know.
New buildings were displacing historical buildings. Roads were carving into hillsides, and many beautiful areas were being displaced by parking lots. It was a sign of progress. Yet, many people were upset with this.
So the government started to enact rules to preserve nature, preserve old and historical buildings, and made rules to protect the history of China. As such, many towns in China are now designated as historical landmarks and are protected against being raised or replaced by newer structures.
Here is one such town…
And here is another protected town. These towns serve as great tourist destinations. It turns out that many Chinese like to go visit these historical towns and cities. They like to take a week off from work and visit and have fun. You can’t blame them, really. Rural China is filled with beauty and adventure. Not to mention tasty (regional) food, ice cold beer, and pretty, pretty girls.
I mean, wouldn’t you just love to eat some tasty dumplings (pot suckers) and steamed meat-filled buns over icy cold beer with this view…? Me, I’d bring my dog and plop him right next to me to share the view (and for him) the smells.
You know, many of the world’s ills could be solved by drinking more beer and talking freer with each other. I think that if we shut off the artificial limits that we have surrounded ourselves with and reached out we would be a far happier people. Come on! Who doesn’t like good food, attractive companions (of the opposite sex) and their favorite pet (dog or cat) hanging out with them?
Life is meant to be lived. Share it with a friend, why don’t ya.
Most towns have a local government that invests in “livability considerations’
Unlike the United States, the people of China think in terms of nation first, family second, person last. This is the direct opposite of how Americans think. It is always “me and mine, first”, then the City. Then the State. Then the country. This is evident in how American write their addresses, and how the Chinese write their addresses. They are backwards from each other.
Name Street Address City, State, USA, Zip Code
And in China, it is like this…
Zip Code China, State, City Street Address Name
As such, the local town government place a great deal of importance towards livability concerns. This is true all over China. Yes, even in seemingly unlivable areas like industrial areas, and such. Yet it is very true. They view their responsibility as to make their country a fine place for the residents to live.
Here is small town.
It has a mixture of industrial and residential features, yet it is not a tourist town. Instead, it is more or less a typical Chinese village where the town elders have decided to create and incorporate livability areas.
This kind of investment in the town and living environment comes from ideas brought forth by people from the Scandinavian nations that seriously influenced Chinese thought on these matters. (I believe, but cannot substantiate.)
The Southern Coast
I live on the Southern coast of China. I live near Hong Kong. This is the South China Sea.
You know, the place where all the liberal neocons (oxymoron? Maybe they should be called “neo-libs”) want to start a war because they are all hot and bothered about China having naval bases around here. Sigh.
Of course, they conveniently forget to mention that piracy of the shipping lanes is a serious concern. After all, half of all shipping goes through the South China sea, and piracy is a serious issue. But, heck, since when did the American media ever really report news? They just make up narratives to manipulate.
Ah. Anyways…
Here’s where I live. When someone tells me that I don’t know what I am talking about… When they tell me that China is a “Hell hole” and a terrible nightmarish place to live… I just look outside my window and take in the glorious sunshine, the blue skies and listen to the birds singing their songs.
China is like any other place on the planet.
There are beautiful places, and ugly places. There are places full of impressive buildings, and places full of wonderful nature. I moved here. I like the climate, the fresh air, the beautiful blue skies and the nice friendly people. I love the food, and all the very pretty girls.
Ah, but that’s just me.
There are other areas up and down the coast that are also very nice. Many Chinese people have homes on the coast, just like many Americans have in California or New England. Or even Savannah, GA, or Florida.
Of course, as an American or someone from the West you would never be aware of that because reporting on it would not fit the news-worthy narrative. Businessmen traveling to China would either stay in the big international cities of Shanghai, Beijing, or Hong Kong or visit the dirty factories in the nasty industrial areas. No one ever goes outside of those two spheres of influence. Sad.
It’s actually kind of silly when you think about it. The Hainan island is what? This grey clouded, sooty, crumbling pile of debris with starving little waifs…? Is that what it is like?
It is if you listen to the American mainstream media. But, they are just terrible liars and manipulators. In fact, the news today is all about how Donald Trump gets two scoops of ice cream, while everyone else gets one scoop. Do you think that this kind of selective reporting, interspersed with lies and distortions, is limited to only Donald Trump? Don’t you think that this kind of lying and manipulation is rampant throughout ALL news reporting?
The coast of China is beautiful, with beaches, resorts, fishing, and industry.
Industrial Areas
When a person visits China is is usually for work reasons. As such, they would typically fly into a major Chinese city and then travel through the countryside to an industrial region and an industrial town. These towns and environments are, well… industrial.
It is just like what industrial areas in the United States used to be like. (Ah, what short memories we all collectively have.) Industrial areas tend to be functional, dirty and polluted.
This is what Pittsburgh, PA looked liked when I was in High School. It was dirty, smoggy, filthy, and full of trash and debris. Industrial areas, no matter where they are in the world look like this, more or less.
Typically a traveler to China would fit a rather simplistic profile. They would fly in to a big city, and then travel to a factory in an industrial area. Then after their trip, they would return home. Their impression of china would be about what they were exposed to. This would be the new big cities, and the ugly industrial areas.
The traveler to China would come back with the following impression about China…
China's cities are really impressive, and the infrastructure is new and modern. But, outside the cities it's all a Hell-hole. The people are poor, and live terribly. It is dirty, smoggy, filthy and terribly polluted.
That is the impression you get if your only experience is one or two trips to an industrial area in China.
Here are the concentration of industrial clusters within China. People who only come to China to visit factories would visit any one or more of these clusters, and would get the impression that all of China was representative of industry. This impression is false.
Anyways, many people who have gone to the industrial areas work like crazy there and then high-tail it back home during the month-long CNY vacation period.
But you know, the Chinese culture is such that the community comes before the individual. Therefore, it is up to both the local government, as well as the factories in the area to provide decent areas to live, and reasonable attempts at decorations and livability areas. Here is just such an example. This gal obviously lives in an industrial area, as you can tell by the background. Yet, there is minor efforts undertaken to make it more appealing to the senses. No, it’s not a multi-million dollar environmental reclamation project, but rather a low-budget effort to render some industrial areas more people friendly.
After all, how much does it cost for PVC piping, and some cans of paint? The entire budget, statues, and all is probably under $25,000 USD.
Poor Rural China
With all the distortions in the Western media it becomes difficult to see the truth in all the lies. So, let me be clear on this. There are very rural areas in China. These areas have paved roads, and electricity, Wifi and running water, but not much more than that. Here, in the remote rural sections of China you can see stark differences.
In the video below, we see a girl returning from the city to visit her relatives during CNY (Chinese New Year). This scene is common enough. It’s sort of like how people would leave Pittsburgh during the Christmas season to visit their families in rural Kentucky back in the 1970’s.
And here’s another video showing how nigh and day the contrasts can be from what a person’s life might be in the city compared to their home in the remote village. In this video, obviously the girl is a DJ, and has come home to help her parents at the farm.
Extreme Poverty
And here is the kind of thing that the American media would put forth.
Here, we have a rural family collecting and carrying wood to their house. Obviously these people are very rural. Truthfully, this has got to be either in the far Western China or the far North-Central region. As most of rural China have electricity, running water and heat.
In any event, it is curious to note that the video was made using their iphone. LOL.
And while we are at it, let’s show some more pictures of rural China. Now, the reader must recognize that extreme poverty, dirty kids carrying wood, and homes without running water are a RARITY in China. They do exist, but only in the most remote locations.
It’s sort of like how there are still Hillbillies in West Virginia.
Rural China is similar to rural USA
Most of rural China isn’t like this at all. Once you get off the main roads and get away from the towns it sort of looks a little like this…
I’ve got to tell ya, many places in rural China reminds me of my hometown back in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. Like this chick here. It could have well been filmed in Clarion or Butler counties. Gawd, it does make me a tad homesick.
Here’s what the rural Chinese countryside pretty much looks like…
And here is what a small hamlet or mini-village looks like. I can’t tell you where this is, or much about it, but what I can tell you is that it is pretty typical. Though, most buildings aren’t painted so gloriously. Obviously an artist or two, or three, maybe an entire family resides here…
Now, where do they shop? Where do they get their food, supplies and sundries? Well, they are just like Americans in that respect. They go to the big “box” stores, malls and outlets. Doesn’t this scene look like a Chinese version of rural highway America?
Again, pay attention to how clean the roads are. That’s what happens when you start making people work for welfare. If there isn’t any more trash to pick up, then the town will have them planting flowers. If they run out of flowers, then they will start painting buildings, or building new ones…
Which is why many Americans are perplexed about the “empty cities” where no one lives. In China, it is better to have the unemployed working doing something for their stipend, then to pay them to sit in front of a television watching Oprah all day.
People are people
I guess what I tend to say when people ask me about China, it is that people are people everywhere. While we might have cultural differences, we are humans. We form traditional family units with a mother and a father. We work, and we play. We have friends and enjoy community and social interaction.
When ever someone tries to paint others as evil, they do so using a cartoon paper cut-out. They portray them in ways that we cannot relate to. They dehumanize them. They turn the others into something else. Once people stop thinking about other people as people, and start thinking of them as things, then war can be waged, and people can die.
One of the many stereotypes that Americans have about the Chinese. It isn’t only visual and pictorial. It is an entire narrative. It’s all nonsense.
Stop this nonsense!
Here is a girl shooting some hoops in a rural village. Man, wouldn’t you just love to have a game of one on one with her, and toss the ball about. Life is about living it. We are all the same, and we all do the best that we can with what we have.
Basketball
Oh, and by the way, none of that socialist progressive nonsense (the stuff that has invaded America and is part of the Obama culture wars) crashed into China successfully. The Chinese won’t have none of that nonsense, and they make “no bones” about it either. Maybe it is fine and good to have a war on cheerleaders in the Untied States, but China will not have any of that.
When the SJW folk tried to get rid of the cheerleaders, the government arrested them, and (I think) killed them. What ever happened, they are no longer vocal about the need for “diversity” and “gender neutral” nonsense in China. China is a traditional nation and the government makes sure that it stays that way.
Here’s some pretty Cheerleaders at a basketball game…
And here’s some pretty pom-pom girls at a basketball game. You see, in China, it is considered normal for girls to look great so that guys look at them. And guys are allowed to look at pretty girls. It’s a time-honored tradition.
You should see the girls at the car shows. Wow oh wow.
Conclusion
Rural China is like other rural areas in other nations. Most of China has Wifi, electricity and running water. On the extreme limits and remote areas one can still find hillbillies that live like hermits without electricity and running water. Never the less, they do have the latest cell phone electricity and solar panels to charge the phones.
The Western Media, most notably the American media, tends to distort things by showing extreme images taken out of context. Like the child carrying wood above, and giving the reader the impression that that is what all of rural China looks like.
Compounding this are visitors to China who arrive in the large international cities and then travel to the dirty and polluted industrial regions. They often have nothing to compare it against as most heavy industry left the United States in the late 1970’s. Thus their impressions are tainted by their experiences and hampered with a lack of comparative resources.
China is many things. It has big and glorious ultra-modern cities, and historical villages tucked away in the wooded hills. It has large coastal areas, mountains, hills, deserts and farmland. We owe it to ourselves to look at everything with a new set of eyes. A set that is not colored by manipulation, distortion and lies. We need to realize that the world is a great and glorious place and we, all of us, have a role within it.
Posted On Free Republic
This article was posted on Free Republic on 6FEB19. I was expecting some trolling, but was taken aback by the large rolling negativity. To quote…
Interesting responses to this rather benign and informative article. -TexasKamaAina
