I thought China already owned a large portion of the world's rare earth reserves, as well as the vast majority of current global production.

But Xi wants to control everything, the entire world...

China Throws Its Weight Around Russia's Backyard
wrote:

Former Soviet republics in Central Asia have finalized a deal to build a railway that will provide China with a trade link to Europe that reduces Beijing's dependency on Russia.

The 324-mile railway connecting the three countries will cost around $8 billion and is part of China's global infrastructure development strategy the Belt and Road Initiative. It will provide a vital trade route for the landlocked Central Asian republics that are in Moscow's sphere of influence. [...]

Does Putin understand that his war in Ukraine and Western sanctions offer China a first-class opportunity to reverse a century of Imperial Russian conquests in Central Asia? All the states in this region will be liberated from Russian embrace (only to become dependent on China). However, the West will welcome this railway and start using it ASAP to circumvent Russia for the foreseeable future. If Russia changes one day it will be too late. Chinas highways and railways will be the shortest, most cost-efficient and best maintained ones connecting China and Europe.

In one generation, no Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik will speak Russian anymore, but they will want to learn Chinese as foreign language in every school. China, unlike Russia, is a trading empire, which can offer them perspectives in their own country instead of cheap jobs abroad in Moscow as construction workers or cleaners, while Russians view them with racist eyes as inferior.

Can't Putin hear the remains of Tsars rotating in their graves?

Can't Putin hear the remains of Tsars rotating in their graves?

Commie ears don't hear Czars.

Can't Putin hear the remains of Tsars rotating in their graves?

Commie ears don't hear Czars.

But these 'commies' never were true communists. They have always only called themselves that to deceive their people. They never strived for brotherhood, equality and justice among the 'proletarians' of all countries. Instead they only wanted absolute power and have always sought world domination. The Russian commies were Bolshevik Imperialists, the Chinese Maoist ones. They simply pasted their theoretical reasoning onto the pure idea of Communism to create Mao Bible and Lenin's Writings which they then presented like a religious monstrance legitimating their claim to power. They killed the previous aristocratic class in the Red Revolutions only to adopt their imperial self-image.

And that is what I observe: While Xi is purposefully rebuilding the Chinese Empire, step by step... Putin destroys the legacy of the very Czars he cites as his spiritual idols. He and Russia's leading class seem too incompetent to grasp that. Or they still ponder on how to remove Nero without burning Rome.

I bet that Xi will get around to addressing this problem.

China's Millionaires Are Leaving the Country.

China is expected to lose more wealthy people via emigration than any other country this year, according to a recent study.

"China is again on track to be the biggest millionaire loser globally, with an anticipated net exit of 15,200 [high-net-worth individuals, or millionaires] this year," said a report published June 18 by British investment migration consultancy Henley & Partners (H&P).

Since China ended its strict COVID lockdown policies at the end of 2022, the world's second-largest economy has had a stuttering recovery, plagued by a real estate crisis, high levels of local government debt, youth unemployment, and lukewarm consumer demand.

This has coincided with Chinese President Xi Jinping's crackdown on open displays of wealth and tighter grip on the Chinese economy, with a focus on "common prosperity" to reduce wealth inequality and promotion of sustainable growth.

This has been a drag on wealth accumulation, wrote Curtis Chin, former U.S. ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, and may have impacted China's wealth flight, though it represents a small percentage of the country's 862,400 millionaires.

The U.S. is predicted to be the top likely destination for of high-income emigrants this year......

The communists of the past had this solution: let those who want to emigrate leave the country. Their money and property simply become state property.

The communists of the past had this solution: let those who want to emigrate leave the country. Their money and property simply become state property.

Ah, the era before bitcoin. You did see where Chinese are assisting Mexican drug cartels to launder their funds across the US border.

I bet that Xi will get around to addressing this problem.

Kim's solution: all you aunts and uncles for three generations go to the torture cells.

Of course being an overseas agent it also acceptable.

Pooh Xi's pirates are stepping things up to another level.

China’s “game of chicken” in the South China Sea hasn’t been going so well. So it has unleashed its Krakens.

China’s “game of chicken” in the South China Sea hasn’t been going so well.

So it’s unleashed its Krakens.

The 12,000-ton China Coast Guard ship, widely nicknamed ‘The Monster’, has arrived in the Spratly Islands and dropped anchor alongside a Philippines cutter at Sabina Shoal.

It’s the largest coast guard vessel in the world.

But its arrival comes just weeks after Beijing deployed a new legal ‘Kraken’, a vague but powerful set of laws ignoring the territorial definitions laid out by the International Convention on the Law of the Sea.

This enables China’s coast guard to seize “foreigners and foreign ships” in any waters it deems to be its own.

Together, this represents a dramatic escalation in Beijing’s internationally rejected move to lay claim over almost the entirety of the South China Sea........

1st it was real estate and now Xi has a banking problem.

China Reels From Banking Crisis.

At least 40 high-risk Chinese banks have been lost to mergers in the first six months of this year alone as local lenders buckle under exposure to debts, according to reports.

Small and medium-sized banks, long an integral part of poor towns and villages, numbered 1,636 at the end of last year, according to government statistics, comprising about 40 percent of China's total number of banking institutions.

Many of these local lenders have been hit hard by China's economic slowdown, in particular exposure to the debt crisis roiling the country's real estate market, which earlier this year saw a Hong Kong court order property developer Evergrande to liquidate.

The number of smaller banks that had buckled as of June 24 is four times the number that shuttered in the whole of 2023. The trend is only expected to accelerate as restructuring picks up pace, financial news agency Yicai Global cited industry insiders as saying.........

Will Xi's plan to repopulate Hong Kong work or will it just make his crumbling economy worse?

After a population exodus, Hong Kong looks to mainland China for new residents.

An interesting situation. Before the end of the British mandate in 1997 there was a fairly constant stream of people leaving China to set up a new life in HK. This dwindled to a mere trickle in subsequent years as the Chinese government cracked down on the HK economy and imposed tightet controls on the population. And then people began to leave HK by various routes (leagal or otherwise). Now the population (probably the wealth demographic) has dropped to a critical level and so the Chinese government has entered panic mode and is forecably moved.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

It was also British policy to offer every Hong Kong Chinese a British National (overseas) passport even after 1997. This was done in response to Chinas breach of the 1984 Sino British Joint Agreement of "one country, two systems principle" after 1997. The UK thus provided the Hong Kong Chinese with a Plan B. This was certainly not in the interests of the People's Republic.

There are 7.5m inhabitants and...

Home office estimates that there are around 2.9m BN(O)s in Hong Kong.

He's put a target on his back and Pooh Xi will not be happy with his revelations.

Former Chinese spy who spoke to Four Corners set to give evidence to Canada's Foreign Interference Commission.

A former Chinese spy is set to give evidence in a major Canadian inquiry into foreign interference following his appearance on Four Corners, where he revealed Beijing's illegal operations on foreign soil.

The former spy, known as Eric, worked for the Chinese secret police, one of the country's most notorious intelligence agencies, between 2008 and early 2023.

In an interview with the ABC in May, Eric revealed details about his role in surveilling the prominent dissident and artist, Hua Yong, and infiltrating his group of activists.

Mr Hua died in Canada in 2022.

The Canadian government launched the public inquiry last year to investigate and respond to foreign interference in federal elections and democratic institutions.

The Foreign Interference Commission, which is conducting the inquiry, singled out China as "the main perpetrator" of such activities against Canada, following public hearings over several months.......

Xi pirates are still acting the aggressors.

Chinese and Philippine ships collide again in disputed waters, and the countries are trading blame.

Chinese and Philippine coast guard ships collided at sea, damaging at least two boats, in an encounter early on Monday near a new flashpoint in their increasingly alarming confrontations in the disputed South China Sea.

Both blamed the other for the collision near Sabina Shoal, a disputed atoll in the Spratly Islands, where overlapping claims are also made by Vietnam and Taiwan.

There were no reports of injuries.

China's Coast Guard accused the Philippines of deliberately crashing one of its ships into a Chinese vessel......

The Philippines may need to modify the design of its coast guard ships. The ancient Greeks had a solution for this type of conflicts: