China’s shift to innovation is therefore not a question of strategy but rather if material conditions and the shift to innovation will emerge only in so far as it is made possible and feasible by labor participation in domestic enrichment, natural resource sovereignty, and development of globally-known technologies that lack uncertainties.

This is exactly the case. China has developed to the point where it can seriously consider a change in priorities. Of course, the overall course is still to race towards prosperous socialism but with changing material conditions* come changing tactics.

*the big one being Chinese labor becoming more expensive and Chinese industry becoming highly automated.

Well, in this case, they do have a valid point, in that the growth that China experienced was due to high amounts of capital investment rather than innovation per say. And as we know from the labor theory of value, high amounts of capital investment comes from a correspondingly high amount of the workforce being employed in producing the means of production (rather than consumption).

But to this point, there are 3 rebuttals

1. Xi has made it a point to shift from factor based growth to innovation based growth
2. An an underdeveloped country, China needs high growth in capital. The criticism about factor based growth only applies to fully developed countries. Lifting 800 million people out of poverty is proof that factor driven growth was the correct path for China to take
3. China only became such a massive exporter of goods because the advanced capitalist countries de-industrialised. At the same time, these regions maintained high consumption due to imperialism. Chinese industry is forced to pick up the slack of America/Europe.

But that performance required enormous inputs of capital.

Obviously. That’s how the economy grows you buffoons.

The economy as a whole has fared badly on measures of “total-factor productivity” (TFP), which try to capture the growth in output that cannot be explained by increases in capital or labour.

I had a whole response typed out, but honestly, unless the article starts giving actual data and what the goals of the government were, any comment I make is just speculation.

Interestingly enough, I found a book that shows that TFP may almost be entirely a product how efficiently an economy processes energy resources. Although I doubt this is what the author of the article had in mind. Instead, they were probably thinking about some business magic racial supremacy number of something.

A different policy mix could have encouraged greater household spending, not capital spending, and flourishing services, not manufacturing muscle. These two shifts could have complemented each other nicely.

The existing policies of high capital spending and focus on manufacturing also complement each other. And have the benefit of picking up the whole world’s slack from the de-industrialisation of America/Europe/Japan.

it is difficult to imagine the Communist Party under Mr Xi pursuing a different strategy. “They basically think that rich countries are those that make stuff and the richest countries are those that make the most advanced stuff,” says Gerard DiPippo of the RAND Corporation, a think-tank.

Bruh

Yeah I know this. But how does it follow from this to trump being responsible for the ceasefire?

I don’t follow

I wonder if the ceasefire is motivated in part by the collapse of Assad’s government.

The president-elect described the death toll as “staggering” and added: “It’s a war that I’m going to try really to stop as quickly as I can.”

Western officials including Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte have sought to stress the importance of Trump ensuring “peace through strength” in Ukraine, and avoiding a defeat for Kyiv that would embolden Putin and his allies in China, Iran and North Korea.

It will never cease to amaze me that modern liberals are to the right of actual fascists on the issue of war.

they’ll try to find a way to not have to admit that they got defeated.

They could crowdsource that work to reddit.

Why would Putin agree to a peace deal if he thinks he can win the war?

Because a peace deal is the only way to eventually end the war, unless the Russians fully occupy Ukraine (which won’t be happening).

Putin will almost surely demand an unfreezing of Russia’s reserve assets. This is a potential deal breaker for the Europeans. Unwilling to make any fiscal sacrifices for Europe, the Europeans had been hoping to plunder the $300bn pot of Russian reserve assets

Lmao just saying the quiet part out loud. Did any other country ever get the privilege of playing European foreign reserves as a way of rebuilding from colonialism?

The financial burden is so large that it would either have to be funded through debt, through taxes, or through cuts in social services. I don’t think the Europeans would voluntarily agree to do any of these things.

Well no worries here. The dictatorship of capital will come to the rescue.

Macron would, if left alone, be one west Europe’s most effective supporters of Ukraine, but he is hampered by the political chaos in his own country

And also the unravelling of the French empire in Africa.

Europe was dependent on Russian gas and oil. Some of these dependencies persist to this day.

Delinking from Russian gas fully was a pipe dream

We have put ourselves into a position where Trump is our best hope to end the conflict. How did it come to this?

By being imperialist/liberal pieces of shit, and terminal failures. How else?

Russia has occupied around 1,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory since February, and the rate of advance is accelerating.

Forget reading the article, dronies don’t even read the summary.

Deflation is not a problem in the Chinese case because of their unique circumstances. Chinese households have very high savings so they are actually better off from deflation. They also have an ultra high investment rate which is set by the government. So they don’t need to worry about a deflationary spiral.

For other countries deflation will have different effects which may largely be negative (although that still depends on why deflation is happening). However, the fears of deflationary spirals are … completely overblown. Not only does deflation require abnormal circumstances, but fixing it is extremely easy even for capitalist governments.

While consumers can benefit from falling prices, persistent deflation can also lead to a downward spiral for spending and investment.

This is not a worry for China because they have maintained an absolutely insane rate of investment and growth for decades now.

According to this data, while investment as a percentage of GDP has fallen off during Xi’s term, it still remains well above historical standards and near the top by world standards. Of all the major economies on earth, China is the only one with investment as a percentage of GDP above 40%. Even economies many times smaller and less developed like India still have a lower investment rate than the Chinese.

Furthermore, if you look at the household expenditure per capita, the post covid times still have a much higher level of household consumption than 2019. Not only that, but investment spending is mutually exclusive with consumer spending. Complaining both that China has insufficient investment and consumption is interesting to say the least …

The State Council Information Office, which is charged with fielding questions about China’s leaders, didn’t respond to a request for comment and referred the Journal‘s questions to other agencies that didn’t reply to its queries.

Lol

While U.S. consumers have been frustrated with years of elevated inflation, the economy has also been robust, unemployment remains low, and the rate of price growth has slowed substantially since hitting a high in 2022.

If the American economy is doing so good, how did Trump manage a clean sweep?

Their growth decreased quite a lot but they’re still not entirely a developed economy

Their real gdp growth is still above 5% per year and their industry already far surpasses anything the “developed” economies have.

their wages being reduced by a pretty large percent (my sources are saying around 30-40%, can’t find an official number because they do not exist).

Yeah you are just making shit up. This is complete nonsense.

but it only holds up until China is doing fine economically (which it isn’t exactly today).

Lol. Lmao even. Chinese trade with Africa is at an all time high and growing rapidly.

admit Russia is doing an imperialism

The very fact that you treat imperialism like an action and not a system shows that you don’t have even the minimum possible of understanding of what it is.

It’s only imperialism if it comes from the West

In the present stage of history, yes. No country other than Japan or the western ones have managed to rise to the status of being imperialist powers. The reason is simple. The powers which became imperialist first delayed the development of the rest of the world by literal centuries, preventing any other people from becoming imperialist. Japan happened to escape this fate by geographical luck and developed early, allowing it to join the ranks of the imperialists.

There is a reason why the most dominant/advanced capitalist countries today are still the same ones that were advanced over a 100 years ago.

otherwise it’s just sparkling being an asshole to your neighbors

This has literally nothing to do with imperialism, which is the system by which a handful of the most advanced capitalist countries have consumed unparalleled sums of human labor from the whole of humanity for centuries on end.

Really feels like we are in WW3 and the imperialists are overextending themselves.

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That echoes the peace terms that Zelensky and Putin’s representatives discussed in Minsk, Antalya and Istanbul in March and April 2022. Those talks ultimately failed because the Kremlin team refused to budge on key additional demands such as limiting Ukraine’s armed forces and rewriting laws on language rights.

Well, it seems the Russians have gotten their demand of limiting Ukraine’s armed forces either way. So the first one was at least in retrospect, not a bad compromise. As for the second one, what exactly are those details, would you like to elaborate, Mr. Matthews? Is the reason that you aren’t elaborating that the Russians were against the reduction of minority language rights, as admitted even by an Atlantic Council article?

But in many – in fact most –important ways, Zelensky is a victor. Four fifths of Ukraine will emerge independent of Russian dominion

Independent of healthy prime aged males as well

free to rebuild itself as a prosperous European democracy

Yeah cause the “prosperous European democracies” are doing so well themselves, right? How many European leaders have an approval rating above 30%? How many are neoliberal hellhole police states, Owen?

If Ukraine is very lucky, it may find another leader of Zelensky’s strength and calibre.

With luck like this, Ukraine won’t need enemies.

Well, funding so many wars is partially why the Biden admin lost the popular vote and election in the first place. Nothing too surprising here.