Allon

I remember the Sino-Vietnamese war, or the 3rd Vietnamese War, after I got back from Vietnam and was in grad school at the time. I have noticed lately in some discussions, the fact that Vietnam at the time was the 4th largest army in the world, and was well equipped with armaments left by the US when we left Vietnam, is often left out or forgotten. Vietnam did not even use its first line troops in the battles and it still tied up the Chinese along the border. And many of the divisions of troops were fresh from the Second Vietnamese War (our Vietnam War) so they were bloodied and combat ready, especially in guerrilla war. The NVA is a disciplined and formidable army to be fighting against, as we learned ourselves. The Chinese were new and had seen only skirmishes with the Soviets (and their people) and some elements fought in the Chinese civil war. Deng Xiaoping expressed anger with his generals for not being able to dig the Vietnamese out of Cambodia. It is said that if Vietnam had had a better air force to secure the air and provide better logistical help to the army, although the Soviets helped, China would have been totally defeated, instead of just being held at bay. Some of the divisions of PLA that saw action in the 3rd War, were transferred to Beijing in 1989 (after finally getting an agreement with Vietnam about the war the same year) to handle the Tienanmen Square uprising. The divisions in the south did not speak the same language as the people of Beijing or the then division from Shenyang (Mandarin) in Beijing, and so could not be influenced by the actions of the locals. Premier Li Peng and Deng, along with several other hard line ministers, held a meeting without the conciliatory General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, and planned the massacre of students not only in Beijing but Chengdu and Shanghai. The elements of PLA from the divisions in the south had a formidable reputation for their fighting in the civil war in China, but could not defeat the likes of the NVA, although they did gain territory in north VIetnam. All this is discussed in a fascinating book written in secret while under house arrest by Zhao Ziyang called Prisoner of the State. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Ziyang

I hope Larry wasn't disappointed. Fox News certainly wasn't disappointed. Their ratings probably went up considerably, in prime time no less.

This will be very interesting. Google will not be able to sustain this boycott for a long time. They will lose money and steam in other areas of the China market, even Asia in general. The implications with the 5G development will be quite challenging indeed. Meanwhile, the markets will be volatile and investors will get a bit anxious. But so far, I bet with Google and the others.

Yes. There are many subjects left alone in our house. Whether Meng Wanzhou is guilty. If the CIA/NSA knew about the Malaysian flight that disappeared. And the embargo on soy beans and rice from US. Not that we would debate the issue at length. Wish it was not that way....I think it would be easier if Mao was still alive. Or maybe Chou en Lai....

Wish I could see them. At work, they censor the streaming and pictures.

LOL. An understandable turn around.

A bit overdramatic. Jan Wong was with Sidney Franklin and Charlie Cole on the 6th floor of a Beijing hotel. Franklin got most of the credit for the Tank Man shots but Cole hid his film in the hotel room toilet and gave the PLA, who searched his room, a blank roll of film which the soldiers promptly exposed. The pictures of the Tank Man were smuggled out of China in a box of tea by a French national. Cole used a Nikon FE2. But the CCP has been ruthless is suppressing news of the event and I don't doubt the story of even suppressing a Leica commercial, albeit an unauthorized one. They don't want the June 4th Incident as they call it, even recognized, although some Beijing students use the code "89" for concealing that they are aware of the Tienanmen Square massacre, after all, even by Chinese government secret estimates, 10,000 students were killed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests#Official_figures

I get the options, but they are not consistently applied. As I indicated, two computers have the same settings and are similar in platform, but when one goes to sleep, the internet goes off. The other stays on. And I don't want any unencrypted traffic at all going either way. I also do not want to go "naked" that is, plugging directly into a site from any application without the VPN. I use Cisco VPN with my work laptop and do not have trouble at all with it. All my machines have to be sterile. I do a lot of work at home and just cannot afford a breach since I do a lot of internal tech support on a host of other machines. It's just an inconvenience to have to reconnect to the internet when one machine particularly goes to sleep.

I kept ExpressVPN but am still mixed about it, but less so when I checked out other vpn's. The function of turning Wi-Fi off when the computer sleeps and thus blocking anything on the internet is getting old, especially when one computer keep the internet on when asleep (and it has ExpressVPN) and the other goes off. I do have Malwarebytes installed as well as McAfee and I suspect the firewalls have something to do with the unreliability, but it is not really that bad. It is worth the overprotection. I also use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. It encrypts my searches before they go out and no backups/recordings are made by the vendor. (At least that's what they say....) Search performance is not affected. So even my ISP does not know what I am searching even if they have a tracker. Take that NSA.....

They don't get, or refuse to get, that the Taiwan Straits are international waters. If we stop these missions, we tacitly admit that the straits are part of China. Therefore, China is free to marshal (to put it lightly) its troops on the island anytime.

The Japanese call it karoshi or death by overwork. They work as many hours and have developed alternate means of relaxation. Dr. Sanjay Gupta explored it Saturday on CNN. https://www.thedailybeast.com/japan-has-a-word-for-working-to-death http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201630.html?noredirect=on It's interesting that some high rise dwellings in Shenzhen and Guangzhou have nets around the top floors to catch suicides. One suicide was particularly sad. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/technology/companies/27apple.html I wonder, does a net stop the abuse?

First thing my wife would say is "Too much. Too much." You could travel 3,000 miles to find and buy two jars of mustard and she would say it was too much. I would be in the dog house for weeks doing that.

I am reading more about the two Sino-Japanese wars that occurred in the early to mid-20th century. Japan's rise and attendant hegemony toward China and the outlying Asian areas prior to Pearl Harbor could have been foreseen -- better, not it was not watched by us. A major factor was Japan's military that literally formed a government within a government. It was actually the military that caused the rise of Japanese nationalism and the taking of Russian and Chinese territory then. I guess everyone is watching the PLA, including Xi Xinping, as did Hu Jintao previous. Recently met with a group of Chinese friends at a dinner. They were all talking about how "strong" China looked with the constant parades and shows of force in the South China Sea. A remarkable instance of history not repeating, but people repeating history.

Also the only place to get fresh fish -- and you cannot beat the selection of tea and coffee from all over the world. Now if the guys who stock the shelves just knew how to sort things correctly.

Shredding maps? Petty, petty. And the Chinese people see through that. I don't know why China won't let it be.

Huawei is in trouble now. Seems their network for the new 5G upgrade is defective. Bad code. "No end to end integrity." The British really criticized them. Others like the US say it opens their equipment to hacking by the Chinese government itself. Trouble is major networks across the world are going to install it. The article is long but I cut it down a bit. Emphasis mine. From NYTimes today: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/technology/huawei-security-british-report.html?emc=edit_NN_p_20190328&nl=morning-briefing&nlid=87628746ion%3DwhatElse&section=whatElse&te=1

I think China is already one of the world's dominant leaders and wants to be ahead of the US at least in GNP. and may well do it and soon. How many more aircraft carriers and missiles and other military ware will they be manufacturing is the question. The military is always the last resort in a conflict but you have no leverage without it. So far, China can only bully the "small" countries -- VIetnam (although they better be careful there), Philippines, Japan, Taiwan..... I think they will emerge a major player in the development of the world, if we can get them off a course of selfishness. They have done very well, but they cannot catch up to even their own success when they will not have the workers they had in today's time. The one child policy will hurt them more than I think they realize. I just wish all of could sit down at the dinner table and eat in peace.

This is the plight of a lot of Indonesian people who migrate out of their country. There are many of them in Singapore working as maids in hotels, and other low paying jobs. It is a kind of prison and they are treated very poorly. I see that the tone of the articles here are very partial to Snowden, and these people are treated as if they were some kind of heroes, aside from their desperate condition. The tragedy for the US is that Snowden released to the Russians more than what he said he did. He carried several secret projects with him that he did not release to the Guardian or Wiki. And did he really destroy everything before he went to Russia? A book out says he was a spy and was recruited early by the FSB/GRU. (HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft by Edward Jay Epstein)

Nice pictures, Randy.

The one here in Phoenix closed down. Really sad since it was an anchor to the Chinese Cultural Center, a really cool place with a Chinese bank and other restaurants and shops. Beautiful garden to walk. I don't know how they managed to get the biggest green onions at such a fair price. Compared to local super markets, Ranch Market was the place to go for produce. And yes, it smelled of China. I guess Lee Lee markets and other smaller Asian stores sprouted up and took much Ranch's business.

I know we started a book discussion topic at some point but it's probably long lost in the paleontology here. I thought I would mention a great book I have been reading about China called, Out of the Gobi, by Weijan Shan. Shan is a globally recognized financier who went from literally nothing to a Ph. D. in Economics in 10 years. The book is a memoir, not a history, of his life, but quite revealing in its portrayal of life in China during the Cultural Revolution. He was sent to the Gobi desert as part of Mao's re-culturation of China in the mid-60's. He provides a deep discussion of what it was like to be uprooted from Beijing and sent to a place to work in the harshest of conditions, little food or water, with work every day going into the night. He was appointed a "barefoot doctor" for his company of men (and women), and then lost that job due to corruption of the local commanders. A lot of his writing explains to me why the Chinese are the way they are. Mao is still in the blood of our wives, husbands, and children now. Such things as why there is little display of affection, or an over-compensation for not having it. The one child policy. The complete separation of men and women, boys and girls. Entire families broken and sent to camps, never to be re-united. It reads like an adventure, but one steeped in sadness, and triumph. From the Foreword by Janet Yellen Weijian Shan's Out of the Gobi is a powerful memoir and commentary that will be one of the most important books on China of our time, one with the potential to re-shape how Americans view China, and how the Chinese view life in America. Shan, a former hard laborer who is now one of Asia's best-known financiers, is thoughtful, observant, eloquent, and brutally honest, making him well-positioned to tell the story of a life that is a microcosm of modern China, and of how, improbably, that life became intertwined with America. Out of the Gobi draws a vivid picture of the raw human energy and the will to succeed against all odds. Shan only finished elementary school when Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution tore his country apart. He was a witness to the brutality and absurdity of Mao’s policies during one of the most tumultuous eras in China’s history. Exiled to the Gobi Desert at age 15 and denied schooling for 10 years, he endured untold hardships without ever giving up his dream for an education. Shan’s improbable journey, from the Gobi to the “People’s Republic of Berkeley” and far beyond, is a uniquely American success story – told with a splash of humor, deep insight and rich and engaging detail. This powerful and personal perspective on China and America will inform Americans' view of China, humanizing the country, while providing a rare view of America from the prism of a keen foreign observer who lived the American dream. * * * I highly recommend this book for anyone curious of how the history of China affects the ones we love, even when they may not be aware of how.

Very, very interesting comment from a professor in China remarking on the US judicial system. I hope he does not suffer for his candor.

I sent you a PM. No use boring everybody....

Totally agree. I have watched, as you have I am sure, the young guys in their combat BDU's, trying out martial arts and using bats on each other in the parks when we walked. They have no idea what it is like to face another man who wants to kill you. I really wonder what the little Emperor's would do.

The KMT had their funds seized in some investigations that go way back to when they themselves seized some funds in coming to Taiwan. So they lack money to function. What is causing the KMT to lose their grip also is the commerce end. The other parties in Taiwan are working on closer economic ties with China. But China likes working with the KMT better, strangely. I would not rule out the KMT. The current PM is stronger in confronting China now than the KMT. I just think China is waiting for the right time to strike. It would be a stupid move of course. Taiwan is still full of relatives on the mainland.