No one knows. Here’s a video of Trump from a few days ago saying he’s willing to concede Taiwan.

https://youtu.be/Iv4N2uCZGhk

With that offer on the table, who knows how much China would be willing to pay Trump. Trump is just in it for himself. He just put a trillion dollar chip on the bargaining table.

The US won’t block it, but it will be blocked. Tik Tok itself said it will turn off it’s servers and block US ips like it did with India.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/17/politics/tiktok-ban-supreme-court/index.html

So it will be tik tok itself enforcing the ban. Which is hilarious. USA showed all this bravado and now has to turn around and beg tik tok to return. I fully expect in the long run tik tok will be sold to Chinese agent Elon Musk and be turned into the spy apparatus US claims it to be. The whole situation shows what a clown USA is.

Oh thank God for a moment there I thought we might actually do the right thing. Thank God for our global leaders assuring the universe will be safe from the disease that is humanity. /s

This makes me question what it takes to be a super power. Between this and the leading cause of US bankruptcies being medical related, it’s almost as if super powers can only be super powers if they don’t give any of their citizens healthcare. It’s as if working their citizens to death is the only way for them to maintain their hedgemony.

Well we can only speculate, which is why I said IF I WERE TO SPECULATE. However, Algeria also vetoed, a primarily Muslim nation and Washington is calling them out as representing Arab nations.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/algeria-takes-seat-un-security-council#:~:text=Twenty years after its last,term that begins this month.

So there is evidence towards but I’m not seeing anything definitive. But again, that’s the definition of speculation.

No, I’m only stating their formal argument to the best of my ability to explain it and ignoring speculation. Now, if I WERE to speculate, I’d say what you’re saying is probably closer to the truth. For Russia at least I’m almost 100% certain that’s the reason. China is very different. I’d argue that China’s stance has nothing to do with Russia, USA or Taiwan. There’s this weird myopia when it comes to China and their interests. China’s interests span far greater than those three little pieces of land.

No, for China I’d argue we’d first need to ask who is their audience for this. That answer is the other nations in the middle east. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, etc… China has been trying to formulate a narrative that they are friends to Muslims regardless of the accusations of what they are doing in XinJiang. So, it’s almost certain China’s stance comes from conversations with those nations. So technically they are telling the truth in the sense that their saying what others are telling them. Reality is it’s just to win favor over the oil producing nations so they have stable supplies of energy.

*Edit. Essentially what I think China is saying to the middle eastern world is you have a veto with me, the same way India has with Russia.

So I want to be upfront and say I don’t really agree with their argument, but I do understand it. What Russia and China are saying is by tying the ceasefire to the release of hostages is unfair to the Palestinian side. This is because they lose all leverage and then would be easy targets for Israel who doesn’t seem to mind bombing Palestinian civilians.

My issue is that technically the only reason their bombing is because of the hostages and perhaps if they release the hostages peace talks can begin. The opposite of that argument is it will allow Israel to be even more aggressive after the temporary cease fire is ended.

I don’t know, but that’s the argument.

Yes, but this is happening in the states too yet we don’t have this kind of insanity. For example, onlyfans is basically a website dedicated to monetizing incels. But there’s an implicit understanding that those actresses have their own lives. For some reason, in S.Korea they’re not allowed to have their own lives. It’s bizarre no matter how you look at it.

While that’s true, I would argue the total human cost is similar. Your estimates do not count stolen and killed Ukrainian civilians. Adding those would make the numbers far closer, especially since no Russian civilians are caught in this conflict so far.

Not saying any of this is OK. Just unfortunately the numbers are very similar. War is miserable.

*And yes, the fact that Ukraine is suffering more losses due to the fact that it’s Russia invading absolutely makes Russia the bad guy here. I’m just pointing out that the losses are unfortunately very close.

You know, unlike USA, China arrested their version of Trump. Look up Jimmy Lai. Where as in the US, they’re saying the leaders are these people below, in China they say the leader is the one promoting it in newspapers. Which again to your thinking is freedom of speech but also why China doesn’t have that. If your promoting the riots, your the leader, not the guy on the ground.

Wow, so stupid. These were riots. Are you saying we didn’t know the leaders of the Jan 6th riots or BLM riots? They literally stood up with megaphones.

They did find the ring leaders what are you talking about? I literally just said they cut it off at the head and feel that’s enough. In fact this is one of the reasons the US keeps claiming China is oppressing people. When China feels it has enough evidence they arrest the leaders. They don’t have to pass what US thinks is enough like your personal obsession with ballistics. Thus, the US complains China oppresses it’s people. But the reality is China just thinks differently and doesn’t want to waste time explaining it to ignorant people.

I’m actually happy we are having this discussion. I would have never realized how different the thinking is without you. Thanks, this is great. Even if you have no idea.

Oh wow, I just realized you optimize American ignorance.

After Tiananmen, the Chinese government realized their mistakes and instead of spending agonizing time to find all the assailants, they decided instead to reform. They spent the next decades doing capitalist reforms and trying to improve everyone’s lives after that incident leading to today where China is unquestionably just behind USA.

After Jan 6th, US decided the best thing to do with it’s time is to hunt down everyone at the Jan 6th riots. Creating a massive divide in the country. Causing friends and family to turn on each other. Because hunting down the rioters was more important to them than fixing the actual issues at hand.

You see this in the HK riots too. China only arrested the leaders, they let everyone else go. They aren’t interested in identify exactly who did what, they know that cutting off the head is enough.

But then, that’s the difference between western and eastern thought. Westerners are so individualistic they obsess over every individual. Eastern thought is that if we see something like this, there must be something structurally wrong and we need to fix it.

And I’ll say again, after these riots is when China reformed and changed their laws, not hunt down individuals. Where as in the US, the Americans say their laws are absolute and they need to hunt down every individual.

*Edit: And while you may not agree with China’s law changes and say they’re oppressive, the simple reality is, when China sees structural issues like this, they’re open to change.

Lol, god so you admit what I was saying

And, also, no, if they had any piece of the weapon they could id its manufacturer.

Yes, I know this, in fact I’ve been saying it over and over if they had the gun. But no they didn’t go around digging through the corpses to find all the data. Again, I get that YOU want them to, but they didn’t. And again, this is why China just says fuck you. Because it’s none of your god damn business what they choose to do. They chose to sweep up everything as quickly as possible and return things to normal, not go out of their way to hunt the protestors. China isn’t as revenge obsessed as Americans.

If they had the gun. Which they don’t. I’ve also said that again and again. They needed the gun to match the barrel and bullet.

*Edit: Matching to barrel is also different than matching to type. They only kept enough to match to type unless they had the gun in question.

… Every country makes its own database, honey. There isnt a single database.

Bingo and as I said over and over China didn’t invest a lot into this. So they didn’t have the data to trace. It’s not rocket science.

*Edit: Also, it’s not like I said they couldn’t trace anything. I said they could trace to type at the time, but not as detailed as manufacturer. You’d need enough data to do that and they didn’t think it was important to collect to that level.

Ah yes Europe, the Asianest of continents. Wait no it’s not. One of the problems China had was that the west wasn’t sharing all the data with them. It’s cute again that the west thinks they’re the international world. But guess what, Asia never felt that way. It’s literally one of the dividing issues. Again, so ignorant.

*Edit: Also it’s important to note that I’m not saying China couldn’t match a barrel to a gun. I’m saying China didn’t have this magical database that could let it identify to the manufacturer. It simply wasn’t important to China at the time to match to manufacturer. If they found the murder weapon it was enough for them to identify the murderer.

*Edit 2: Wait in 1933 was just the standardization of how to identify barrel to gun. There was no database at that time. You’re just makin stuff up to trick me. WHEN DID THIS MAGICAL DATABASE EXIST!?

Wow, such an American thing to say. Hey the world isn’t America, we don’t all have gun violence problems. It shouldn’t be surprising that China didn’t invest in ballistic forensics as much as America did. But to YOU, not having good ballistic forensics is the same as having no idea about basic crime investigation.

Hey, here’s another secret, crime existed before guns. Crime investigation existed before guns. Not all countries had psychopaths like the US toting guns and shooting everyone that ballistic forensics became important.

Jesus, you sound ignorant of the real world.

Like I said, china was backwards in many things at that time. The reason all their weapons were Soviet was because they didn’t know how to even begin to make their own. The Chinese story is one of coming from nothing in the 80s and 90s to becoming a super power in the 20s.

So yeah, their military definitely didn’t meet the gold standard at that time.

What about it.

And thus, again, why China just says fuck you. There’s no reason to let anyone know where in advancement stages china was in.

At that time, very. That’s actually well known. China’s boom didn’t really start until the early 2000. Which is why America likes to say that they created China.

But all that is actually not the point. It’s not an issue of incompetence but simply not keeping stacks of useless data about minor forensic differences in bullets. As with most places at that time, you’d just have enough to give you type of gun but not make and manufacturer. I’m not even sure that US would have had it at that time.

*Edit and China didn’t care at the time because unlike the violent shithole that is America, they didn’t have a lot of gun crime.