Miscellaneous News

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
Yet Russia managed to find other partners pretty quickly and recover much of those losses. China does not have too much of an alternative to Western clients. Certainly not of the same value. Russia fears being cut off from Western clients less than China does. Of course it's a two way street and the West absolutely fears being cut off from Chinese clients (and more importantly, suppliers). China is slowly weaning itself off Western dependence faster and more effectively than the West is weaning itself off Chinese dependence. Western corps get economic advantage while China gets supplies it currently isn't able to provide itself with. However that list is shrinking by the day as only a few strategically important tools are not within China's inventory of expertise yet. Western corps and economies cannot survive without China's "over-production" and deflationary effect of affordable Chinese exports.

Hence both sides lose some things. It just doesn't make sense to compare Russia. A relative small player.
For sure both sides lose. But ultimately, this has already been discussed in the Taiwan thread many times in the past

If a full decoupling happens, I would much prefer to be on the side which has all the manufacturing and "no money", than on the side of zero manufacturing capacity and a lot of money.

What is wealth? Goods and items or paper/digital money?
 

Eventine

Junior Member
Registered Member
The West doesn't just have money, it also has the resources of three continents - Europe, North America, and Australia. All that colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide have given them a tremendous advantage over the rest of the world and especially China, which is relatively resource poor.

Control of the seas is key. If China cannot protect its trade with the Global South then the West will win by just having more resources and trade "partners" to exploit. This is why investing in a navy is still worth while.
 

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
The West doesn't just have money, it also has the resources of three continents - Europe, North America, and Australia. All that colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide have given them a tremendous advantage over the rest of the world and especially China, which is relatively resource poor.

Control of the seas is key. If China cannot protect its trade with the Global South then the West will win by just having more resources and trade "partners" to exploit. This is why investing in a navy is still worth while.
Resources without intermediate processing steps are just a fart in the air unless West has discovered a magical tech that transforms resources to finished products

For China, resources can be obtained by land if maritime trade is blocked or whatever.
 

Eventine

Junior Member
Registered Member
Resources without intermediate processing steps are just a fart in the air unless West has discovered a magical tech that transforms resources to finished products

For China, resources can be obtained by land if maritime trade is blocked or whatever.
Trade over land is much less cost effective especially for China, since its most promising resource partners outside of Russia, are Africa and South America, both of which are far away. The Belt and Road land routes are ironically most useful for accessing Europe, which have fallen further and further into the US camp - a consideration Chinese leadership never seriously believed until recently, I think.
 

Overbom

Brigadier
Registered Member
Trade over land is much less cost effective especially for China, since its most promising resource partners outside of Russia, are Africa and South America, both of which are far away..
You mention "promising", "less cost effective" but at least China can have access

So, China can get from everything to limited, West can get from everything to nothing. Limited is still much better than nothing
 

horse

Colonel
Registered Member
Someone explain to me how this is any different from the freezing and seizing of Russian assets.

Yes. No. Maybe.

1. This is no different that the EU just taking Russian assets.

2. This is entirely different, because this is just a empty bluff. The West seems really weak right, especially Europe. By making these threats, they hope China does not move drastically against their interests.

3. This NATO summit has turned into a political disaster, the only thing worst would be a return of President Trump.

4. No ... wait ...

5. Stick a fork in him. He's done like dinner.

:p
 

Index

Junior Member
Registered Member
The West doesn't just have money, it also has the resources of three continents - Europe, North America, and Australia. All that colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide have given them a tremendous advantage over the rest of the world and especially China, which is relatively resource poor.
China has the resources of continent sized Russia and the Middle East, not to mention its own resources that are about the same as North America's. The more important part is if resources can be used to produce useful stuff.

Having how much iron ore or whatever buried is just not useful at all if you can't get machines to dig it up and refine it, machines which requires parts to function, so you better hope you have the industrial competence to make them competitively.
Control of the seas is key. If China cannot protect its trade with the Global South then the West will win by just having more resources and trade "partners" to exploit. This is why investing in a navy is still worth while.
If the west attempts a blockade on China's seabound trade, China can also attempt a blockade on western ability to access resources in Australia and Europe. China effectively borders Europe through Russia.

There will not be much resource extracting from the west's much vaunted "3 continents" when 2 of them will be under constant severe bombing.

Which leaves us with north America alone, and as I've stated before, I think that is a concession China has to make to the western "civilization", solely because of nukes. Let them have north America and practice their dictatorship there, as long as they stay there.
 
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