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   Jon Sterling (jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 16:56:27 JST Jon Sterling

   https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/opinion/china-xi-jinping-trade-manufacturing-tariffs.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

   I am obviously the last person to be a fan of Xi Jinping, but this article is hilarious… They are mad that (checks notes) China has spent its money building critical distribution and manufacturing infrastructure instead of just letting it rot like the “advanced” US and UK economies do?

   Yeah, it turns out that building bridges and roads and factories is a great idea, both for resilience at home and abroad. Who would have thought? Certainly not me, who rides over approximately 400 potholes every day on my way to work…

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 16:56:24 JST feld

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     @pretentious7 @jonmsterling if China wants to buy things from or in US/EU (companies, real estate, etc) they need dollars and euros. We do not let them pay in their currency.
   • Embed this notice
     pretentious7 (pretentious7@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 16:56:26 JST pretentious7

     in reply to

     @jonmsterling why exactly do chinese capitalists and the central bank want so much euro and dollars, anyway? What do they do with it?

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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:05:16 JST feld

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     @pretentious7 @jonmsterling power, leverage.
     
     It's also good for diversifying their national reserves.
     
     Can be weaponized in various ways to tip a fragile economy as well. The dollar is losing its grip as the world reserve currency now that the Petrodollar is officially dead as of last summer. Timing is perfect if you want to sow chaos.
     
     The currency wars are starting to heat up. Next couple decades will be interesting.
   • Embed this notice
     pretentious7 (pretentious7@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:05:17 JST pretentious7

     in reply to

     • feld

     @feld @jonmsterling so, sort of a roundabout way of transferring money from Chinese workers to the central bank and capitalists to buy assets in the west?

     Why?

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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:09:51 JST feld

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     @jonmsterling @pretentious7 Nobody in western media seems to pay attention to how China is courting all these poor countries that have been historically aligned with the West and giving them infrastructure upgrades and sweet trade deals, but getting them to trade in RMB instead of their own sovereign but very fragile currency. Putting in Chinese banks too. Within 20 years we will probably see e.g., countries in Africa and South America switch to China's RMB for stability instead. Completely reshapes the world trade.
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     Jon Sterling (jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:09:53 JST Jon Sterling

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     • feld

     @pretentious7 @feld Why? Why does the bourgeoisie do anything? Wealth, power, the metastasis of their wicked system...

     Holds for the Chinese bourgeoisie just as much as it holds for ours.

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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:28:24 JST feld

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     @jonmsterling @pretentious7 China can also plan how to execute this over the course of decades while we don't know if our water saving shower heads will still be legal 4 years from now when the next lunatic takes the Oval Office.
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     Jon Sterling (jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:28:26 JST Jon Sterling

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     • feld

     @feld @pretentious7 Yes... Well, I do see awareness of this in the western media to some extent, but maybe it is still not well known.

     I think it is part of the cycle of capitalism-imperialism. Lenin made it very clear how this works in his 1917 pamphlet (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/).

     China is in an interesting position because they are simultaneously a "backward country" in Lenin's terms with cheap labour (and so they have swallowed up the productive capacity of more advanced imperialist countries), but they are developing quickly and are thus preparing for the inevitable rising cost of labour and declining rate of profit domestically by building up an empire.

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     Jon Sterling (jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:34:35 JST Jon Sterling

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     • feld

     @feld @pretentious7 Indeed... (But, I would not mind of those horrible showerheads were outlawed — and bring back incandescent lights please too!)

     feld likes this.
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     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Tuesday, 18-Feb-2025 17:35:01 JST feld

     in reply to

     • pretentious7
     @jonmsterling @pretentious7 yeah and incandescents are proven to be better for sleep cycles, 100%