partial_accumen

That’s an interesting bit of info I never knew. Thank you for sharing that.

What’s the opposite of forced abortions? Because given the history of the CCP that could be where this is heading.

Decree 770

“Decree 770 was a decree of the communist government of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, signed in 1967. It restricted abortion and contraception, and was intended to create a new and large Romanian population.”

"To enforce the decree, society was strictly controlled. Contraceptives were removed from sale and all women were required to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist.[3]: 6  Any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. The secret police kept a close eye on hospital procedures. "

You’d think they’d have learned from the cold war, but I guess not.

Well, many parts of them have. Eastern Europe, formerly under Soviet conrol, is now firmly in market economies. Armenia has left the CSTO (Russia’s wish.com NATO), and Ukraine famously kicked out its Russia puppet leader. All of these were part of the Soviet Union or under their control before.

But Russian soldiers on the intercepted calls appeared doubtful that they would have enough commanders to lead the new units, or enough weapons and ammunition to arm them 979 days into Moscow’s invasion.

From what I can guess, I don’t think they need to hold a gun or fire any bullets to accomplish what Moscow wants out of them. Russia will march those North Koreans out in “meat waves” to absorb Ukrainian bullets and drones while forcing Ukrainian defenders to reveal themselves to shoot the North Koreans forcing themselves be targeted by artillery.

To see how it gets worse, look at history. Specifically Decree 770 in Romania in 1967 source

"Enforcement: To enforce the decree, society was strictly controlled. Contraceptives were removed from sale and all women were required to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist.[3]: 6  Any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. The secret police kept a close eye on hospital procedures. "

China would love for RMB to become a default reserve currency. There are strong accusations that China is a currency manipulator though. I’m not educated enough on the topic to have an opinion on it. However, countries choosing it as a reserve currency may be left holding the bag.

there ways to mitigate that, without relying on the dollar and although they are not insignificant,

Sure, you can rely on other stable currencies like Euros or GBP. Alternatively you can rely on gold, but if you have the ability to trade your own currency to someone willing to accept it and give you sufficient gold, and that you can produce that gold on demand to buyers, you don’t really need a fiat currency except to facilitate transactions easier. The problem is these countries aren’t backing their currency with gold (or other precious metals).

The tradeoff to gold backing is that you can’t grow your economy either. The amount of currency in circulation will always be limited by the ratio of gold you’re backing your currency with. This is why the USA abandoned the gold standard, and it was the right decisions. Before doing this, if you wanted to borrow money, you had to FIND someone with money that would be willing to lend it. There were instances of limits in growth simply because all the folks that held the vast majority of the wealth (and thereby gold backed currency) weren’t lending it, so loans couldn’t occur in volume.

Feel free to post the alternate currency that was more stable for the history you’re showing. I’d wait, but I’d die waiting.

How will this be any worse on BRICS Clear than it currently is on Swift ?

Lets say you’re Egypt selling cotton to Russia. BRICS Clear is pushing local currencies. So Russia wants to pay for the Egyptian cotton in Russian Rubles. Lets say the amount of Rubles would buy 10,000 barrels of crude oil at the time of settlement. Russia is currently in economic dire straights and the currency value is dropping. When Egypt wants to spend its Rubles, if it can find a country willing to take them, it could only buy 5,000 barrels of crude oil.

How eager will Egypt be to settle another transaction in BRICS Clear when the value can evaporate. This is way international trade wants to settle in stable currencies.

Here’s where it falls apart, right here:

[Vladimir Putin] also said the increased use of BRICS national currencies for transactions will “minimize geopolitical risks.”

Some of the BRICS countries have wildly volatile currencies either because of governments “printing money” to devalue their currency for economic stimulus for exports or to pay down debts. Alternatively straight up currency manipulation by the sovereign states issuing them. I would think this makes settling transactions in these local currencies a big risk for commerce. You don’t know if the value of the currency you accept tomorrow will be worth what it is today. These are reasons GBP, Euro, and USD are so valuable as currencies, they generally have pretty consistent values.

Likely the article author (or editor) simple searched their stock photography subscription with the keywords “chinese text on smart phone” and went with the first result.

Superintendent Chalmers: “A room full of gold, build in a room under a hospital, at this hour? Can I see it?”

IDF Skinner:“…no.”

As most language learner might know, professional fluency is far from “not zero”. I have near perfect mark in English for my high school entrance exam in China.

我懂了. 我学习中文一年可是我的中文还没好.

No, I am saying public worker needing to submit passport is not new. Here are some Chinese source:

• https://www.zhihu.com/question/582316284
• https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_26669534
• https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/487193115

I am not saying that they are not expanding the scale of the program.

This is good information, thank you for sharing that. I also appreciate you bringing your personal experience to this conversation. You are living firsthand the topic, and brought that valuable perspective. 谢谢!

I’d like to believe that, anecdotally I’ve seen a number of engineers head back because they felt they could leverage their skills where they were the one-eyed in the land of the blind.

I agree with you. I don’t think those engineers are wrong that they will likely do well as the CCP has a big push to develop domestic research married to its strong domestic manufacturing.

You really should want to leave though, Xi is not subtle in his desire to control all aspects of Chinese life.

This is the part that confuses me about those engineers actions. Jack Ma was one of those engineers at one point. If you’re too successful, bad things happen to you. So what does that mean for the engineers that are going back? Do they perhaps see themselves reaching upper middle class status, then stopping career growth? Do they not see that even being rich in China doesn’t give you the right to express your opinion?

The richest will definitely consider leaving, but I think the choice between life and money right now still leans toward money unless you can feel safe getting money out.

The data doesn’t back your idea. Since 1950 (the beginning of this dataset) China has had a negative Net Migration rate. More people have chosen to leave China even accounting for others that choose to come to China.

source

About 310,000 more people per year leave China than come. source

Because of the language barrier, people typically needs years of preparation to leave the country.

English is being taught as early as Kindergarten in China. source

“English is a required subject in China, and most students are taught their first lesson in the third grade, while others even start during kindergarten. Most reputable jobs ask for proof of English proficiency. A college English test certificate is acceptable.”

So I would imagine most folks considering this aren’t starting from zero with English skills.

Imagine finding a H1B job with zero connection in the U.S. and subpar English, that is literally impossible.

While the USA is a place many aspire to emigrate to, its not nearly the only country in the world. Here’s a slightly older statistic:

“This statistic shows the number of immigrants from China into Canada from 2007 to 2017. In 2017, Canada received approximately 30 thousand immigrants from China, over 3,000 people more than in the previous year.”

source

Not to mention, leaving China also means leaving everything they know behind, friends, family, way of life, and especially money, like the other post suggests.

Besides the money point, this is true of any emigration, yet millions do it from countries around the world. I’m in the USA, but if I saw the United States government revoking passports of its citizens arbitrarily I’d start considering emigrating myself. So far the only reason (besides actual crimes) is revocation for large sums of unpaid taxes, and even that list of people is pretty small.

In fact, confiscating public workers’ passport has been practiced for at least a decade; partly for control, partly for security. And that did not spark mass exodus, slightly expanding the program likely will not change much as well.

Citation needed. Are you saying the CCP has been revoking passports at this new scale and against the same targets for the same reasons for at least a decade?

Fine, I’m suggesting most people would choose their money over their lives right now, though that might change over time.

I agree with you on this. My point at the beginning of this thread was the group of folks choosing their money over their lives is now getting smaller now that it looks like they may not have the chance the make the choice again at a later date (when their passport is seized).

I disagree

I’m not sure what you say you’re disagreeing with.

I’m saying a portion of the population with still valid passports may choose to leave because of these new restrictions. Are you disagreeing and saying “not a single person with a valid passport will choose to leave China forever”?

The problem is: People know if they leave, their money will probably be taken.

The old adage applies: “Your money or your life”

Depending on what they think their future holds, leaving all their money behind may be a very very small price to pay.

You’re referring to capital controls, and yes, China has strict controls on how much money you can move out of the country. I’m referring to people themselves. If you have a valid passport right now, you can still get yourself out legally. Most of your money may have to stay behind, but that could be worth it for many situations.