Miscellaneous News

crash8pilot said:

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I think it goes ''beyond money'' in a way. I don't think simply throwing money will enable them to compete. It could easily backfire as it becomes a money pit for them. The more money you threw at something, the more something becomes it becomes bigger and the more resources it requires to manage. If it was a simple case, of just throwing money, we would be seeing the whole thing jump started earlier.

From what I gather, BRI really plays into the strengths of China and it is hard for other countries to match those strengths because they lack that core traits necessary that make BRI successful.

crash8pilot said:

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If only the problem were just money. Both the US and EU can print money, plenty of them.

Large-scale infrastructure requires careful planning, execution and project management to deliver them on time and within budget. Something the western countries are increasingly unable to deliver even within their own countries.

There are also the challenges of experiences, cost and scalability. Western countries have built relatively less infrastructure projects in the last several decades, compared to Chinese companies which have been building all sorts of infrastructure in all kinds of terrains and climate zones. Western countries may still have the skills in infrastructure building, but they don't have the scale of the workforce to build all around the world, particularly in third-world countries. And I don't need mention their cost, compared to Chinese companies.

Team Blue said:

Yeah I don't blame the PRC. Between riots in HK and stuff I've seen at work, cracking down early is the smart move.

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But is there any political unrest in Macau, let alone an organised political drive to take control of the Macau assembly? I would understand if there were large-scale street protests, but from what I hear Macau has remained stable. The pro-Beijing parties even get 50% of more of the popular vote, compared to HK where I don't think those parties ever got 50%.

Starting to ban pro-democracy legislators in Macau because of something that happened in HK smacks of paranoia rather than a proportional policy for the city. It also suggests that even if you play by the rules you can still be punished on the basis of what someone else has done.

weig2000 said:

If only the problem were just money. Both the US and EU can print money, plenty of them.

Large-scale infrastructure requires careful planning, execution and project management to deliver them on time and within budget. Something the western countries are increasingly unable to deliver even within their own countries.

There are also the challenges of experiences, cost and scalability. Western countries have built relatively less infrastructure projects in the last several decades, compared to Chinese companies which have been building all sorts of infrastructure in all kinds of terrains and climate zones. Western countries may still have the skills in infrastructure building, but they don't have the scale of the workforce to build all around the world, particularly in third-world countries. And I don't need mention their cost, compared to Chinese companies.

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Which is why I think ultimately that all of these attempts to mimic the BRI and will fail largely. Then will end up joining their projects with the BRI so they have at least have some of say on the direction of BRI in those respective regions. But, definitely not in the short term and it will probably take 10 to 20 years probably for the realization that the BRI is not some kind of a crazy scheme for world domination but a net benefit for all parties involved.

Jesus Christ. Will someone explains to BA. A reasonable government don't wait till trouble starts. They prevent it from happening the first place.

I repeat any tools apart from BA can see that the CIA and NED got only one place left to go to stirred up trouble in China!

It take someone with a mind bending abilities of Olympian gymnast to not to see that.

Mr T said:

But is there any political unrest in Macau, let alone an organised political drive to take control of the Macau assembly? I would understand if there were large-scale street protests, but from what I hear Macau has remained stable. The pro-Beijing parties even get 50% of more of the popular vote, compared to HK where I don't think those parties ever got 50%.

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Do you know what cracking down early means? Waiting for large scale protests and instability before acting is the opposite of acting early. "Early," "preemptive," do you understand these English words?

Mr T said:

Starting to ban pro-democracy legislators in Macau because of something that happened in HK smacks of paranoia rather than a proportional policy for the city. It also suggests that even if you play by the rules you can still be punished on the basis of what someone else has done.

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No, it smacks of a government that can learn and apply what they've learned to better future decision making. Waiting for the same thing to happen in Macau before doing what we now know needed to be done in Hong Kong decades ago is called taking away nothing from the lesson. Just like every time when the US bans a technology to China, they think this time, China won't develop it itself like it has every time in the past. That's called failure to learn and apply lessons, the opposite of China.

Mr T said:

But is there any political unrest in Macau, let alone an organised political drive to take control of the Macau assembly? I would understand if there were large-scale street protests, but from what I hear Macau has remained stable. The pro-Beijing parties even get 50% of more of the popular vote, compared to HK where I don't think those parties ever got 50%.

Starting to ban pro-democracy legislators in Macau because of something that happened in HK smacks of paranoia rather than a proportional policy for the city. It also suggests that even if you play by the rules you can still be punished on the basis of what someone else has done.

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Lol that's your opinion and your bias doing the talking. You haven't shown any evidence to support your yet once again "exceptionalistic" assumptions that the move by the government officials in Macau to bar some people from running is going to upend the prosperity or the political stability of the Macau SAR.

Keep wishing and hoping your magical fantasy of "American style democracy" to take hold in China in never never land.

crash8pilot said:

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How can Europe accomplish anything with little money and bad relations with Russia and China (which is crucial to such a project) while having trying to suck up with the USA which is also on the verge of bankruptcy and worse. The covid crisis could have been over if they stopped politicising the crisis against China, now they must suck it up hard

Human rights? Right. Yeah, the land of the free. Let's talk human rights. A certain person here keeps harping on about human rights in Hong Kong, and now Macau needs to look at this and critically analyse why a big country still blockade a small neighbouring country 60 years later. Yet China is the bully in the SCS?​

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UN General Assembly calls for US to end Cuba embargo for 29th consecutive year​

UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
UN General Assembly votes on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba.

23 June 2021

A total of 184 countries on Wednesday voted in favour of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel voting against.
In the meeting held in-person on Wednesday at UN headquarters in New York, three countries - Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil - abstained.
With overwhelming backing from the international community, has been approved ever since 1992 when the General Assembly began to vote annually on the issue, with the sole exception of 2020, due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic.
While the Assembly’s vote carries political weight in terms of international diplomacy, only the US Congress can lift the economic, commercial, and financial embargo in place for five decades.

For those members in the US, please stay safe. Looks like country will be heading for another wave.