China has been conscious of its risks of an age bubble and balkanization for decades and the whole policy of the CCP is aimed at stability and sustainable growth to hedge against any such implosion. Thats why the silk road initiative exists, why they are gobbling up foreign resources and indebting new bases of labor, why they are crushing minorities and separatists. Its not like they are about to be blindsided.

Certainly. But they also have extremely opaque systems in dealing with its currency.
They also have a cult of personality under Xi, who has purged advisors and replaced with loyalists.

The potential for one person to make immediate, sweeping and possibly destabilising changes, is not a construct that creates confidence in a global currency.

China's leadership is less likely to be blindsided than Western leadership. On the other hand, their society and economy are inherently less stable than Western capitalism which has proven surprisingly resilient time and time again over the past 150 years.

In particular, the very top-heavy and autocratic rulership structure of countries like China or Russia makes their success hinge to an unhealthy degree on the decisions of their rulers, with very little off-ramps and options for a course correction. Case in point: China's zero-covid policy which looked promising at first, but then quickly turned into a total disaster, yet the country stuck by it for another 1.5 years. It took Chinese cities being on the verge of open revolt before leadership finally gave in and did a 180 in late 2022. The Chinese society and economy only left covid behind in early 2023, which was 1 to 1.5 years after their Western rivals.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 31 2024 09:18am

Russia unveils the new iskander-1000 and a little while later the Sanctions Evasion Prevention and Mitigation Act appears!

How dare they evade the sanctions. Can't these guys just collapse and burn in Mordor?

Asking for NATO

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13697931/WSJ-Evan-Gershkovich-Paul-Whelan-released-prison-Russia.html
Evan Gershkovich, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Paul Whelan have been released by Russia as part of a large scale prisoner exchange
unclear who else is involved or on the Russian side, but said to involve 20-30 total political prisoners from either side
only details are

>Four Russians detained in the US on charges including cyber crime, smuggling and money laundering are thought to be part of the exchange.
lots and lots of other people involved apparently

Russian outlet RIA reported the names Alexander Vinnik, Maxim Marchenko, Vadim Konoshchenko, and Vladislav Klyushin had disappeared from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons database.

Joe Biden deserves some good headlines and praise for his administration arranging this prisoner swap, serving the common good and our country and deescalation
I'll just sit back and watch the headlines laud him in 5, 4, 3, 2...

/e also includes Vadim Krasikov, who was held in germany on a life sentence, he assassinated a chechen rebel who got asylum in the west, shot him in Berlin on Putin's orders
next few hours are going to be a real who's-who of Russian and American political criminals

This post was edited by Goomshill on Aug 1 2024 06:57am

Chechen terrorist scum to be precise or a freedom fighter to some Al-Qaeda Muslim terrorist.

This post was edited by Norlander on Aug 1 2024 11:11am

How dare you. He was only fighting for (checks notes) free and democratic sharia sunni wahhabist khalifate by killing and terrorizing random civilians as well as lining up Russians POWs to crush their skulls with a car and post it on liveleak or whatever was popular in 2001. The kind of gore that our resident warmongers from Scotland and France here like to watch in their spare time.

A typical political refugee that applies for an asylum in Germany.