The China Thread

[HVC]

Lets send George RR Martin to China.

[HVC]

Also, if internet literature is the window into the soul of a society then the west is way more into furries and my little pony than I'm comfortable with.

[Jacob]

To totally flip the topic on its head....
Barbie.
Random LinkedIn post from a Chinese translator (nobody I know.) I found interesting.
...
Scratching further apparently this is a big thing in China. Officially sanctioned subtitles which completely miss the point, sanitise, and render shit, and then fan retranslations which get things right.

I do wonder whether its just the official people being 'wrong'. This post blaming it on their gender. Or something more nefarious and (self?-) censorship.
Fascinating and I'd love to find out more.

(alas the cool post they talk about is in Chinese so useless to me- https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4E22AQGO98q4OUQ9Tg/feedshare-shrink_800/0/1698303080724?e=1701907200&v=beta&t=m8dqY4gJgbiBUGJL3eLaC9yYDXqjUQm3C7D8r1DtCD4)

My take is that decision making power in China rests with a bunch of conservative old men who are very subject to "kids these days" ignorance. They are 100% comfortable and able to push their own view with no real opposition, and have whole bureaucracies devoted to anticipating and catering to their prejudice (including the bureaucracy responsible for approving films and providing official translations).

So far this lens has about 100% success rate in providing reasonable explanations for phenomena like the Barbie translation situation, IMO.

[Tamas]

So what are the odds of a landmark agreement from the Biden-Xi meeting?

[crazy canuck]

Turns out Michael Kovrig was a spy after all.

[Grey Fox]

Wasn't Spavor a drug dealer too?

[crazy canuck]

Wasn't Spavor a drug dealer too?

?

[Josquius]

Some military moves going on lately with China deliberately injuring some Australian divers by ignoring all warnings and using active sonar on them.

This was followed by the US navy with two carrier groups trapping the Chinese carrier in a pincer and making the Chinese military shit themselves.

Read a good comment somewhere about china's shitty actions in the seas- it's basically childish bullying. Cause enough hastle and annoyance for other nations, who afterall don't have much to lose, that they just decide it's not worth their trouble and stay out of the waters where China is being a cunt.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

well, the Chinese navy is still a bit of brownwater one....

[HVC]

Three gorges damn is cracking again.

[grumbler]

So, the new Fujian aircraft carrier has finally gotten underway, though still incomplete.  It is shaping up to be one of those bureaucratically-driven failures like the US Zumwalt class destroyers, as political pressures forced the PLAN to take huge technical risks without any real means to constrain their losses in the event of failure.

For instance, the directive came down from the supreme military command, headed by Xi himself, that the PLAN was to bypass the normal technical evolution of catapults and instead jump directly to electromagnetic launch systems like the new US Ford class.  The ship's power plant though, lacks the energy output to operate EMALS at anything like a normal operating tempo while also providing propulsion.  Even worse, there was no time to build prototype land-based version of the EMALS they wanted to use, which was a completely hypothetical one proposed by an engineering student at Beijing University.  There have been no tests of the EMALS and it isn't entirely clear that it is even fully installed or, perhaps not even fully developed.  The officer in charge of PLAN R&D, who oversaw the project, was arrested for "corruption" (but likely actually for making promises that could not be kept).

That creates another severe problem, because the proposed aircraft for the Fujian is the venerable J-15,  which is an extremely heavy aircraft for a carrier-based fighter, and its successor is still on the drawing board.  The only positive for the PLAN in this is that they don't have the pilots to man the new air wing, so not being able to launch or land aircraft is not such a drawback.

It is possible that the PLAN will figure out how to make the EMALS work, and draw enough planes and pilots from their two existing carriers to start crew training, but since Fujian uses a completely new launch and landing system and flight deck "dance," training is going to take a few years even given the ability to call on experienced crew members from the first two carriers.

All signs are that this ship, like Zumwalt, \was a step too far in advance of what the technology would actually allow.  It looks like heads have already started to roll.

[Zanza]

China has a new defence minister. The previous one disappeared without explanation a few months ago. New guy is from the navy.

Anyway, I saw this (small) picture in a news feed. What's going on? Raised fists, five persons standing behind him. More sitting on chairs uncomfortably? Strange.

[Syt]

They seem to be doing that sometimes. This image is from 2015:

[HVC]

Looks, like they're yelling into an invisible large prop telephone.

[Syt]

Looks, like they're yelling into an invisible large prop telephone.