Decouple? How?

In terms of absolute volume, China does way more trade than the US. Just TEUs alone, China is a good 5-6x the US, 300–330m vs. 40-50m, including transshipment.

Economists will be forgiven for thinking China is the number 1 economy AND the world’s factory, given the colossal difference.

What keeps America on top is the value of assets and wages stateside. It is not well known that the size of the Chinese workforce is 5-6x America’s. It is also strange that the same century old brownstone in a hardly changed Manhattan neighborhood continue to command rising prices that outstrip people’s ability to pay.

America can generate flat or less electricity, sell fewer new cars, price an entire generation out of homes, run massive deficits and still report a booming economy year in and out.

America in 2025 has way fewer options to fix china than it did in 2012, when the pivot to Asia was announced.

If decoupling was impossible then, it is impossible now.

Just look how desperate Scott was to meet the Chinese contingent in Geneva, and completely walk back April’s tariff escalation with a 90-day pause.

We will know if Donald is serious come august, when the pause ends and he will have to escalate or end the tantrum.

If it is the latter, the result will speak for itself, with the disrupted trade flow demonstrating the fallout of strategic overreach.

If it is the former, it reinforces the tacit admission by Scott that China is vital to American economic wellbeing.

We shall see.

 

Ernest Borgnine: “I went to work the first day and as luck would have it, my first scene was with Frank Sinatra and I’m dying inside, because here was the man who sang ‘Nancy’ (I named my daughter because of that song).

My idol, my everything.

I loved him in everything he ever did.

And I said, ‘How can I, a mere nothing, come on here?’… but I knew I had to play this part as the meanest s.o.b. that ever existed, otherwise the part won’t play.

So I was out there pounding the piano and everything else, and we started this scene. I’m looking around and I see Frank Sinatra dancing with this girl.

And I see Montgomery Clift over with somebody else.

And over standing on the side were Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster talking to Fred Zinnemans.

I was just engulfed with stars.

And I’m just shaking, you know. And Fred suddenly looked up and said, ‘Okay, begin the scene!’

So we started. I’m playing the piano and it came to the point where Frank says, ‘Come on, why don’t you stop this banging on the piano, will ya? Give us a chance with our music.’

And I stood up to say my first line.

I said, ‘Listen, you little wop.’ He looked up at me, and as he looked up at me, he broke out into a smile and he said, ‘My God, he’s ten feet tall!’ Do you know, the whole thing just collapsed.

His laughter broke the tension. It was so marvelous. I’ve never forgotten Frank for that.

He was the most wonderful guy to work with that you ever saw in your life. He knew how I must have felt, you know. And because of it, he took the time to break that tension.

That’s something that I have done with everybody that I’ve ever worked with since. I break the ice for the other people.

And I think it’s nice, because it reverberated all down the line.”

Photo: Ernest Borgnine and Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity, 1953.

According to what an Indian netizen said above, “China’s air-to-air missiles do have strong data on paper, but they have not been tested in actual combat.” I am Chinese and I want to share my opinion. First of all, China is much more pragmatic than the United States. This means that the direct data released by China is often lower than the actual performance of the weapon. For example, the PL15E missile, China’s paper data is 145km, but the actual test results in the Pakistan-India war exceeded 200km.

The PL15 used by China itself has a longer range than the foreign trade version of the PL15E. It is said to be 300km. So I say that when Indian netizens doubt that China’s paper data is too bright and there is no actual data to support it, they should be soberly aware that the PL-15 missile has been used in actual combat in India, and the data is better than their paper data.

China currently has about 300,000 military engineers, which is 5-10 times that of the United States. I currently believe that China’s actual military strength is 5-10 times that of the United States. China’s military strength has always been underestimated by the West and underestimated by the paper data directly released by China. China is a low-key empire and does not like to brag like India and the United States. But this does not mean that the actual performance of Chinese weapons is lower than the paper data. In fact, on the contrary, the actual data of Chinese weapons is often better than the paper data.

Does anything MAGA stands for qualify as politics? If I despise my neighbour because he’s black, is that a political viewpoint, or just a sad human failing?

Politics, at its core, is (or at least should be) about improving a society’s lot. It’s supposed to make things better for as many people as possible. If we all already lived in a God-made Utopia, there would be no need whatsoever for politics or politicians.

For that reason, MAGA could never qualify as a political party. Hatred is not a policy for improvement; it’s an emotion.

Imagine sending ALL of MAGA to their own uninhabited colony, far away from the rest of us. How long would they last? They thrive purely on hatred, so with no more trans people or gays or immigrants or libs to pick on, where would they direct their hatred, sadism, and greed, if not at one another? They’d destroy each other in no time.

They’re not a political party; they’re a virus. Left to their own devices, and with no libs to blame for everything, they’d eventually munch each other up like Pac-Man balls.

Quite an interesting question, but it’s too vast to answer comprehensively. I’ll just jot down some random memories, which might be very scattered.

China in 1990…

I had just left my small mountain village to attend university in Beijing.

The most significant event in China that year was hosting the Asian Games.

The entire nation mobilized for it, eager to leave a good impression on international guests.

Back then, China was like a genteel lady from a distinguished family fallen on hard times.

To welcome guests, she pawned her last piece of jewelry, washed her shabby clothes until they couldn’t be cleaner, and tidied her impoverished home until it was spotless.

On both sides of Beijing’s streets, all the dilapidated houses were hidden behind short, newly built walls. The houses were coated with silver-gray paint to look better, but to save resources, only the upper halves were painted.

This was because foreigners were unlikely to take buses, only taxis, so their line of sight would align with the walls, missing the unpainted, unsightly lower halves.

At that time, the average income in Japan was 90 times that of China.

The best missile engineers in China earned far less than any dishwasher in New York. As a result, “dishwashing” became a cultural symbol, meaning to emigrate to the United States.

China was very poor back then, and out of pride mixed with inferiority, it cared deeply about foreigners’ opinions.

One of my relatives, a senior engineer, often interacted with German and Japanese counterparts and was frequently invited to banquets.

The state trained them in Western dining etiquette, and before each banquet, they were gathered to eat heaps of carbs until they were stuffed.

This was to prevent them from gobbling food out of hunger or greed at the banquet, which would be too humiliating for China’s dignity.

(I am honored to tell you all that he is about to turn 100 years old. He is still in good health and lives a life of wealth and dignity.

Before attending banquets hosted by foreigners, he used to fight against his physiological instincts by desperately stuffing himself with rice in advance to ward off hunger — it felt like a nightmare.

I will never forget the moment when he held me, still a child, in his arms and burst into tears:
“China will become strong again and regain its place among the great nations of the world. But I won’t live to see it. For China’s GDP to surpass Japan’s, we’ll have to wait until at least 2085. The hope lies with your generation — and your children’s!”

And guess what? In 2010, China’s GDP surpassed Japan’s — 75 years ahead of schedule.
As for becoming strong… he lived to see it.)

My family was relatively well-off, and my parents loved me dearly, so I had 100 yuan a month for living expenses.

A decent meal at the university cafeteria cost about 2 yuan.

If I was frugal, 100 yuan was enough.

But I was a big spender, picked up bad habits like smoking and drinking, and bought books, so 100 yuan wasn’t enough.

Luckily, China was entering a golden age of magazines and periodicals.

Magazines with monthly circulations exceeding a million were common, some even reaching five or six million, totaling billions of copies.

With China’s population at just 1 billion, that meant each person was buying several magazines a month on average.

I was an engineering student with no writing training, but I heard you could make money writing novels. Having read a lot since childhood, I bought manuscript paper and stamps and started “creating!”

Those nonsensical, haphazard “bizarre stories” somehow got published.

It was a strange era. People’s demand for reading exploded, but there weren’t many writers, so a 10,000-word story could earn 1,000 yuan in royalties, while a worker’s monthly salary was only 100–200 yuan.

A 10,000-word story I cobbled together earned me 1,000 yuan—almost half a year’s salary for a well-paid worker!

Back then, the best-selling publications weren’t even well-known magazines but rather some bizarre small ones, with story titles like Confessions of a Prostitute or Thirteen Years in a Brothel. Poor me, a virgin who’d never even held a girl’s hand, couldn’t write that stuff.

I could only churn out tales like Laser Hero vs. Aliens or The Most Bizarre Murder Case. Surprisingly, they had a pretty wide audience. (People my age might still remember a so-called Hong Kong beauty writer named Xue Mili, who wrote nearly 80+ popular thriller-romance stories set in Western countries, 007-style “fists and pillows” tales. I was a loyal reader. I’ve forgotten most of the content, but one scene still sticks with me: the male and female leads enter a train’s soft-sleeper compartment, start making love, and the rhythmic swaying of the train means they barely need to exert themselves…)

Years later, I learned she（？） was actually a bald Sichuanese man who never left Sichuan his entire life. All his knowledge of Western countries came from reading other magazines. But his writing and imagination? Truly remarkable. The guy was a genius!

So, during university, I submitted stories often and earned more than my father’s salary.

Taiwan had a similar era. A high school senior wrote similar haphazard novels. His father was a high-ranking Nationalist official, but his earnings paled in comparison to his son’s.

One day, the student told his father he’d bought a villa with his royalties.

But amazingly, the royalty rates for Chinese story magazines, even 30 years later, are still about 100 yuan per thousand words, barely rising.

Memories are like monkeys in a fruit tree—toss them a pebble, and they might mimic you, picking a fruit and tossing it back.

Writing this, I think of that 17-year-old lad, riding a rickety bicycle, clutching a money order from a magazine, whistling carefree as he pedaled to the post office.

The girl at the post office counter smiled, her eyes arching like crescent moons,took the money order, shocked by the “huge” amount, looking at the 17-year-old with envy and admiration.

In her crescent-moon-shaped smiling eyes, the lad was probably a “novelist.”

Feeling a bit sentimental now. I’ll stop here for today.

If I have time, I’ll add more later.

After all, what China was like in the 1990s is just too enormous a question.

It is believed that people who become fighter pilots do not get well-paying salaries. This thought does not seem to work out well.

It is understandable that at first the salary might appear small. However, that is just the first step. Pilots also enjoy extra funds for housing that is tax-free. This applies to food as well as money is saved on taxes. There is also a fee for boarding the plane known as flight pay. To conclude, the earnings are greater than many people assume even for beginners.

But with time it gets even better. Those who climb the pilot ranks often receive pay raises. Pilots with many years of experience in flying generally earn a good income.

One more thing to consider is retirement. Fighter pilots often retire after 20 years of dedicated work in their 40s. This means they will get monthly payments for life and the payments tend to keep up with rising prices. They can also get extensive healthcare for themselves and their family members.

It takes serious dedication and care to do this job well. You handle the difficult task of operating advanced and pricey aircraft in challenging conditions. The idea that they earn less than other professionals? That is not correct. The full picture shows that fighter pilots are in good condition.