#ccp collection

[gojira-ekkusu]

CCP Artistic Monster Collection Hedorah Figures

[sparklemotioneer]

why did hyx get monkeypawed so bad who fucking cursed it

[jeffgerstmann]

why should I care that the ccp is collecting my data?

If we exclude the concept that TikTok could be accessing data on your phone that it isn't supposed to get without permission (contact data, health data, whatever) I think there's a lot of triangulation that could be done to narrow down your data to something very individual, right? Like, for example, your location data could be matched with your content to figure out things like "oh, you're recording this in front of a military base, now we can cross-reference that with what we already know about this nation's military capability" and so on.

I don't think most people operate in any sensitive areas when posting to tiktok, so that's kind of whatever, but... I don't know, maybe soldiers shouldn't use tiktok while on a military base or something. At least that's the best I can do when trying to come up with a specific reason here.

For me the catch is hey, sure, yeah, I don't want Bytedance to have a ton of personal data on me. But also I don't want fucking Facebook, Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, RaytheonKidz.biz, or the United States fuckin' Government to have any of that data, either! Biden just issued an executive order this morning about personal data falling into the hands of "countries of concern" and motherfucker I'm like YEAH LIKE THE US OF FUCKIN' A, MAYBE? THE ONE I'M MOST CONCERNED ABOUT?

Like I don't want China or Russia getting their hands on a bunch of information about me, but in a world where US-based politicians are already attacking medical procedures and science to make things like gender-affirming care and abortion illegal, all that location data and content could have some very scary uses down the line. And that crackdown won't come from fucking China.

[psychotrenny]

It annoys me how so many people will rightfully the acknowledge the ridiculousness of the "CCP TikTok Data Theft" scare but then do so in terms of it being stupid to think that anyone wants your data when that's simply not true. There are plenty of entities who engage in a great deal of data collection; even if the information of a single individual is of little utility or interest there's a lot of things that can be done in aggregate which tend to be socially useless at best and actively harmful at worst. Like the reason that the People's Republic of China isn't stealing Westerner's data through tiktok is because it's not something that will advance interests of the proletariat (both domestically and internationally) or the oppressed nations of the world. But it's not as though such activities are inherently useless to other institutions or classes, as the USamerican tech Bourgeoisie has demonstrated on so many occassions

[centrally-unplanned]

Gonna make this a quick one since I just don’t have the spoons for a really big effort post: Pre-CCP 20th Century China Did Not Have Feudal or Slave-like Land Tenancy Systems

Obviously what counts as “slave-like” is going to be subjective, but I think it's common, for *ahem* reasons, for people to believe that in the 1930’s Chinese agriculture was dominated by massive-scale, absentee landlords who held the large majority of peasant workers in a virtual chokehold and dictated all terms of labor.

That is not how Chinese land ownership & agricultural systems worked. I am going to pull from Chinese Agriculture in the 1930s: Investigations into John Lossing Buck’s Rediscovered ‘Land Utilization in China’ Microdata, which is some of the best ground-level data you can get on how land use functioned, in practice, in China during the "Nanjing Decade" before WW2 ruins all data collection. It looks at a series of north-central provinces, which gives you the money table of this:

On average, 4/5ths of Chinese peasants owned land, and primarily farmed land that they owned. Tenancy was, by huge margins, the minority practice. I really don’t need to say more than this, but I'm going to because there is a deeper point I want to make. And it's fair to say that while this is representative of Northern China, Southern China did have higher tenancy rates - not crazy higher, but higher.

So let's look at those part-owner farmers; sounds bad right? Like they own part of their land, but it's not enough? Well, sometimes, but sometimes not:

A huge class (about ~1/3rd) of those part-owners were farming too much land, not too little; they were enterprising households renting land to expand their businesses. They would often engage in diversified production, like cash crops on the rented land and staple crops on their owned land. Many of them would actually leave some of their owned land fallow, because it wasn’t worth the time to farm!

Meanwhile the small part-owners and the landless tenant farmers would rent out land to earn a living…sometimes. Because that wasn’t the only way to make a living - trades existed. From our data, if you are a small part-owner, you got a substantial chunk of your income from non-farm labor; if you owned no land you got the majority of your income from non-farm labor:

(Notice how that includes child labor by default, welcome to pre-modernism!)

So the amount of people actually doing full-tenancy agriculture for a living is…pretty small, less than 10% for sure. But what did it look like for those who do? The tenancy rates can be pretty steep - 50/50 splits were very common. But that is deceiving actually; this would be called “share rent”, but other systems, such as cash rents, bulk crop rents, long-term leases with combined payment structures, etc, also existed and were plentiful - and most of those had lower rent rates. However, share rent did two things; one, it hedged against risk; in the case of a crop failure you weren't out anything as the tenant, a form of insurance. And two, it implied reciprocal obligations - the land owner was providing the seed, normally the tools as well, and other inputs like fertilizer.

Whether someone chose one type of tenancy agreement or the other was based on balancing their own labor availability, other wage opportunities, the type of crop being grown, and so on. From the data we have, negotiations were common around these types of agreements; a lot of land that was share rent one year would be cash rent another, because the tenants and market conditions shifted to encourage one or the other form.

I’m doing a little trick here, by throwing all these things at you. Remember the point at the top? “Was this system like slavery?” What defines slavery? To me, its a lack of options - that is the bedrock of a slave system. Labor that you are compelled by law to do, with no claim on the output of that work. And as I hit you with eight tiers of land ownership and tenancy agreements and multi-source household incomes, as you see that the median person renting out land to a tenant farmer was himself a farmer as a profession and by no means some noble in the city, what I hope becomes apparent is that the Chinese agricultural system was a fully liquid market based on choice and expected returns. By no means am I saying that it was a nice way to live; it was an awful way to live. But nowhere in this system was state coercion the bedrock of the labor system. China’s agricultural system was in fact one of the most free, commercial, and contract-based systems on the planet in the pre-modern era, that was a big source of why China as a society was so wealthy. It was a massive, moving market of opportunities for wages, loans, land ownership, tenancy agreements, haggled contracts, everyone trying in their own way to make the living that they could.

It's a system that left many poor, and to be clear injustices, robberies, corruption, oh for sure were legion. Particularly during the Warlord Era mass armies might just sweep in and confiscate all your hard currency and fresh crops. But, even ignoring that the whole ‘poverty’ thing is 90% tech level and there was no amount of redistribution that was going to improve that very much, what is more important is that the pre-modern world was *not* equally bad in all places. The American South was also pretty poor, but richer than China in the 19th century. And being a slave in the American South was WAY worse than being a peasant in China during times of peace - because Confederate society built systems to remove choice, to short-circuit the ebb and flow of the open system to enshrine their elite ‘permanently’ at the top. If you lived in feudal Russia it was a good deal worse, with huge amounts of your yearly labor compelled by the state onto estates held by those who owned them unimpeachably by virtue of their birthright (though you were a good deal richer just due to basic agriculture productivity & population density, bit of a tradeoff there).

If you simply throw around the word “slavery” to describe every pre-modern agricultural system because it was poor and shitty, that back-doors a massive amount of apologia for past social systems that were actively worse than the benchmarks of the time. Which is something the CCP did; their diagnosis of China’s problem for the rural poor of needing massive land redistribution was wrong! It was just wrong, it was not the issue they were having. It was not why rural China was often poor and miserable. It could help, sure, I myself would support some compensated land redistribution in the post-war era as a welfare idea for a fiscally-strapped state. But that was gonna do 1% of the heavy lifting here in making the rural poor's lives better. And I don’t think we should continue to the job of spreading the CCP's propaganda for them.

There ya go @chiefaccelerator, who alas I was not permitted to compel via state force into writing this for me, you Qing Dynasty lazy peasant.

[revindicatedbyhistory]

You're spreading the old "Dalai Lama had slaves' lie to justify CCP genocide against Tibet. And also we haven't forgotten the disgusting anti-black remarks you made about Haile Selassie.

"In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19]"

-Friendly Feudalism

[darkmaga-retard]

Ties between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) are becoming more alarming, with Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer revealing that the VP hopeful is connected to “secret police stations that the Chinese have here in the United States.”

During Schweizer’s latest appearance on Breitbart News Daily, Walz was accused of being connected to a group called Minnesota Global that is allegedly tied to a secret Chinese police station in the Twin Cities:https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?visual=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1895644203&show_artwork=true&maxheight=960&maxwidth=640

The New York Times bestselling author claimed that Walz, who was announced as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate on August 6, is connected to CCP operatives who conduct illegal police activity in the U.S.

While speaking on several of the Minnesota governor’s unsavory links to the Chinese government, Schweizer mentioned the “secret police stations that the Chinese have here in the United States,” which are unofficial but “so-called united front groups that exist in the West.”

Schweizer, who also serves as president of the Government Accountability Institute, said these stations “cooperate with Chinese intelligence” in order to “intimidate Chinese that are living in the United States that don’t like the CCP or [are] critical of the CCP.”

In April 2023, New York police arrested two men for allegedly setting up a secret police station in order to collect information on opponents of the CCP, the Associated Press reported. 

“Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, are both U.S. citizens accused of working with Chinese government officials ​​to commit “transnational repression,” according to the outlet.

Such secret police stations have been reported across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and other countries where the CCP has identified Chinese expats who are critical of their government. 

[avaantares]

Guardian Bonus Bingo: Answer

Okay, I'm going to have to cheat a little on this. I do have an absolutely IDEAL scene for the @guardianbingo "Answer" fill, one that contains the exchange

"Does that answer your question, [name redacted]?"

"If I say no, will you repeat the answer?"

...but I realized I can't post it as a fill because it's the penultimate scene in the (very long) story I'm (hopefully) about to start posting, and as such it would be a spoiler. And since there are a few dozen chapters ahead of it -- most of which I still need to finish editing, and definitely won't have ready before the end of the amnesty period -- I can't just post the rest of the story early to fill the prompt. >.<

So since that can't go live just yet, and I doubt that two lines of dialogue out of context constitutes a bingo fill, I'm going to tackle a question that probably has no definitive answer (see what I did there?). It's one that has mystified me every time I've rewatched this series, and which (conveniently) I was prompted to ask again while pulling gifs from episode 3 for my last bingo fill. The question is:

"Why Do We Even HAVE That Library?"

(If you read that in Izma's voice, you get it.)

The SID has a library. We see it several times throughout the series. But we aren't sure why it has a library, because Zhu Hong straight up states that it's not functional:

...And looking at the books, it's clear that the SID library really is the collection of all time. What's the theme? By what criteria are books selected for inclusion? How are the books catalogued? Why are half of them upside-down on the shelves? Why are there a dozen duplicate copies of several titles? WHO KNOWS?

(Well, probably Sang Zan, eventually. But he's not here yet.)

To probe this mystery, I decided to zoom in and see what I could make of the books. And lo and behold, some of the books have legible titles!

Bottom shelf, left to right:

BLOOD RITE Dominique (not sure if that's an author or a subtitle)

CLASSICAL NOVEL (very original title, that)

Arletta (the Comic Sans nightmare that appears all over the place in various cover colors)

(indecipherable; I think it's both in Chinese and upside-down on the shelf, but it's out of focus)

the statue of liberty (style preserved)

LUXURY HOTELS

Read It Yourself With (last word cut off)

CENTURY

BLOODY HARVEST: The Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs (I am actually surprised by this one; I had assumed this book was banned by the CCP, but there are multiple copies here)

CENTURY (upside-down this time!)

THE CATCHER IN THE (presumably RYE)

Next shelf:

The People's Lawyer

Unicist Organizational Cybernetics

JUSTICE OF THE PEACE (volume numbers obscured by Zhu Hong's hand; it's the book she's taking down)

Something with an approximation of the American flag and a bunch of languages on the spine

untitled

untitled

BLOOD RITE Dominique (same book as lower shelf)

OUYE Sofa + Furniture (this one's repeated all over the shelves, along with CENTURY and Arletta)

Basics of Modern Economic Management (translated title)

Corporate Finance (translated title)

the 10Ks of Personal Branding

GLOWIENKA

GLOWIENKA (but upside-down)

In addition to many duplicates of these books on other shelves, other titles visible on the wide angle pans include:

Anne of Green Gables (good to know this classic also exists on Haixing)

The American Journal of Medicine (we already suspected America existed on Haixing, given the flag stool in ZYL's apartment)

Imperial Crown

Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man (parallel evolution on Haixing? *rimshot*)

The Hotel Book

None of these titles seem particularly relevant to the SID's function -- except, perhaps, for the Justice of the Peace regulations, which Zhu Hong was actually looking for -- which makes me think there must either be a secret code of some kind, or the SID once raided an IKEA OUYE and took all their prop display books into evidence, and then someone at the SID later saw all the books and assumed it was a reference library.

A lot of the titles in this scene aren't really clear, but when I have time to pull up later episodes that have scenes dealing with the library specifically (Zhao Xinci visiting, et al.), it might be fun to grab some frames, enhance with the magic of Photoshop, and put them on my 4K display to see if I can find other interesting titles.

Also, I don't have time to go looking just now, but I'd bet the books in the library are duplicates of the ones in Shen Wei's apartment, which I seem to remember being pretty random. They recycled so much of the set dressing, I can't imagine there would be more than one collection of weird shelf-fill.

Zhao Yunlan's tastes, on the other hand, are a bit narrower. The most prominently-displayed book in his apartment is just titled Furniture.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, this is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. For the new folks here: welcome. I am “that guy” who posted a series of “black history” regarding Rîng Döll. (Hi, Anon https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/752379256585207808/anyone-know-how-to-find-that-one-old-post-about You’re looking for what I wrote earlier? You can find most of them here: https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/715706495130566656/hello-everybody-this-is-the-oldie-chinese with the latest one regarding the company in question here: https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/733744328599617537/hello-anon-this-is-your-oldie-chinese-diaspora ) Hope this helps!

Now, https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/752384817713315840/i-keep-forgetting-what-ringd0ll-did-only-to , I have a little secret to tell you. It was something I had planned to post a few months back but never got around to it, but now is as good of a time as any. You see… when it comes to the CCP stance of “China is indivisible” (a.k.a “Tibet and Taiwan both belong to China”), Rîng Döll is far from alone. During the 2020 HK uprising, virtually every Chinese dollmaker had posted – in Chinese, of course – on their social media some version of “China is indivisible”, “Taiwan/Tibet belongs to China”, etc. From the screenshots I have collected, both companies and individual artists have voiced these sentiments and pretty much every name you can think of has posted this stance. What made Rîng stand out is that they also posted this sentiment to their FB in English. That’s the only reason why the people outside of Asia know of their politics.

We make decisions based on what we know, but also how we feel, and as I always liked to say, “your mileage may vary.” The more you know doesn’t always translate to a change in your behaviour, and other people’s response to your decisions may or may not affect you. I remember someone here on the blog mentioned that they were dismayed that people still flock to Rîng for their “official” danmei characters despite knowing their political stance. I see people here lament that they liked the SmD pear body in spite of the knowledge that the company owner has a lot of skeletons in his closet. At the end of the day, the choice to separate the art from the artist is an individual choice, one that is yours to make and yours alone. Even the OCDA™️ is neutral when it comes to other people’s choices in life, despite being personally affected. I like to think that I make the choices that are right for me, and I extend that goodwill to everybody else, too.

Right… one final tip if some vocal commentators choose to bother you: apparently there’s a “good until” date for RD. If your acquisition is prior to the day they posted that infamous FB post, apparently folks will cut you some slack. I think the same goes with second hand RD dolls as well. It might help?

~Anonymous

[models-photoshoots]

Ekaterina Novikova in Bali - 📷 Chernyavsky Kirill

IG -> killer_katrin , killers_story & chernyavskyphoto

Source and other photos -> www.instagram.com/p/CCp-c4ihkok/ www.instagram.com/p/CFfIK6-oO84/ www.instagram.com/p/CCB21IEIE-p/ www.instagram.com/p/BwcxSd2FG04/

(fyi, all these photos are gathered from tumblr posts, just to make a nice collection of the photoshoot)

[syre-stane16]

DO THE GEO VISION HOLDERS DESERVE THEIR ELEMENT?

First thing first...

GEO SYMBOLISM

Crystallise is similar to swirl, in that it's an almost universal reaction. Collecting the elemental crystal gives you a shield.

Contracts are an interesting association, however I believe it's due to how contracts are in theory rigid and sturdy, protecting the agreeing parties.

This is another element I can see with the concept of knowledge due to fossils, preserving history in a way.

I can also see loyalty and stubbornness, with rocks remains unmoving for years.

Rocks are hard and reliable, and protects us from weather. Which is why we normally house ourselves in structures made from rocks.

Precious ores and gems being products of the earth allows for an association in elegance, beauty and wealth. Already you can associate geo with a certain rich mommy.

The earth is also old AF. But that doesn't apply to any of our playable vision holders. :/

NINGGUANG

She's the leader of Liyue, and she's rich.

Born into poverty, she has a rags-to-riches element to her story.

Interestingly, she's not as controversial of a character that I thought she would be, but that's not what you're here for so :p

NOELLE

MY DAUGHTER THAT CAN DO NO WRONG!

If she fails her knight exam again, forget Albedo, forget whatever plans the Fatui or the Abyss Order is hatching, I WILL DESTROY MONDSTADT MYSELF.

Noelle's a hardworking, strong ,reliable, dense sweetheart of a shielder. I ship her with The Traveller so hard.

These traits makes her feel perfect for the element.

I am giggling as I write this, she's so cuteeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

ALBEDO

It's heavily implied Albedo is made from Chalk.... which is a mineral.... earth

That and like Sucrose, he's also an Alchemist.... so the universal crytalise reaction... yeah...

GOROU

He's a reliable character, and he's loyal. Rock

ITTO

Itto and Paimon have similar characterisations now that I come to think of it.... anyways.

hard headed

dense

stubborn

strong

protects his found family

YUN JIN

An argument can be made for elegance, but I feel I should give a Doylist reasoning for her specifically.

You see... Genshin kinda gets away with a lot of China's censorship laws [we still get femboys] because the CCP see's it as an opportunity to showcase China's rich artistic culture to the rest of the world.

Which is why 'Devine Damsel of Devastation' slaps so hard and why we're getting another vision holder that showcases another one of China's art forms.

While dance may work with flowing elements such as hydro and anemo, maybe even pyro for dances like flamenco, peking opera may seems to align with geo more aesthetically compared to the other elements.

So yeah.

Anyone else planning to pull for Gaming?

NAVIA

She's such a sunshine lab FFS she makes me so happy!!!!!!

A reliable character, who's pretty strong. This girl summons canons in her burst, heavenly principles protect this woman from any more sadness, gods bless.

She has the desire to help and protect people.

She once again feels like she could be associated with gemstones, like, if you take a gem in sunlight and see the colourful refractions in the light, that feeling, you know. She feels like that feeling, you get me?

I don't know how to explain just how happy she makes me feel.

my words can't word how the feeling me feel.

CHIORI

I feel obligated to pull for her since we're in the same field... ALSO TLDR at the end of hers if you're not that interested in fashion.

Fashion is a large umbrella term that gets a lot of bad rep in media, specifically Haute Couture, Avant Garde sets or the artisanal fashion sub branches , you know, the ones that are not meant for regular wear and is meant to be new and never seen before or to make a statement.

But you're not here for the essays I have to write on fashion , you're here for Chiori and here's my analysis on a character we know about from just one quest.

She's shown to be reliable, and is well-connected which is necessary if you wish to thrive in creative fields.

I was gonna talk about how she has to be commissioned for an outfit and how this makes her brand closer to that of a luxury brand, until I realised that Teyvat doesn't seem to have fast fashion brands... and then I realised that she owns a boutique and not a tailor shop, which DOES make her a luxury brand owner. so...

She made Kirara's outfit, she states that she used her as a walking advertisement for her brand, so its probably not quite luxury, something closer to Gucci where you can see and recognise the logo. but at the same time, it could just be that she expects Kirara to say her name if anyone asks about the outfit, since there is no major design element that's repeated in Kirara's and Navia's outfit.

[I finished typing the above and realised that all that matters is whether she has a luxury brand or not, and not which type but im not deleting all that brainpower I put into that.]

she also designed the costumes Lyney and Lynette wear for their shows.

So, her works are specifically decorative pieces, she does put enough thought into her designs, however, making the front of Navia's dress open to allow for more freedom in movement.

SO TLDR FOR CHIORI:

reliable

rich [luxury]

gemstone association [decoration]

CONCLUSION

Compared to Anemo, Geo seems actually have noticeable standards in who worthy of wielding it.

Which may mean that anemo is the Hermes Cabin for vision holders that don't fit the ideals of the other elements, which feels about right.

As long as you do what you love to do, then you get the anemo vision because YOU give yourself the freedom you need to what you love, and no-one should take that away from you, you can't be defined by the other elements but what makes you different fits with what freedom is about.

so... electro next... see ya!

[f-liiiz]

Carol Christian Poell A/W 1994 via Gap Men Press Vol.3 "The way I started was like an accident," says Poell looking back on his first collection. With just five items, he expressed his avant-garde style through transparency that still seems fresh even now. Having gained attention by word of mouth, the following year CCP established his company.

[apricops]

📓 Event: The Soulhackers

Manorpunk 2069 AD

Recognizing spirituality as too useful to ignore, either as a method of maintaining personal sanity or as a tool of social control, the Soulhackers developed several different constructed religions during the Nth Great Awakening (We Lost Count).

The Suburban Samurai of the exurban East Coast and Midwest developed Founder-Christianity, better known as Founderism - a formalized version of American Civil Religion with the Founding Fathers revered as saints and a generic Jesus slapped on top. It’s like the Rawhide Kobayashi version of imperial Shintoism, and is best known for creating the Deck of Statesmen, a Tarot-like deck of cards featuring mythologized figures of American political history and used for divination and fortune-telling.

Meanwhile, the Hyperwonks of the Bay Area developed Hill-and-Hive, a dour and fatalistic set of beliefs summarized by the slogan “ants make hills, bees make hives, humans make states” - in other words, we are biologically predestined to form the State, and should surrender ourselves to evopsych.

This initial form of Hill-and-Hive was, understandably, not very popular. It would have gone down in history as a curious footnote, but then a few years later it reinvented itself as the State Pantheon: a collection of demigods intended to represent ‘the eternally recurring aspects of the State,’ such as the quick-witted and androgynous Eunuch of Knowing, the diligent and ruthless Void-General, and the cold yet loving Queen-Mother.

(A few holdouts who preferred the original version of Hill-and-Hive formed a splinter group called the Neo-Neo-Confucians, but that was mostly an excuse to get the CCP (Chinese China Party) to cut them a check.)

These new faiths leaped into the American conscious after reaching the Westphalian Polycule of Seattle, and now converts of both Spiritualisms are appearing in our [PLAYER_POLITYRANK].

Choose One:

We shall adopt the State Pantheon.

Gain Polytheistic Tchotchke Market modifier for 10 years: +15% income from Treats; -10% Vibes

We shall adopt Founderism.

Gain Divination Cottage Industry modifier for 10 years: +15% income from Content; -10% Vibes

Can’t we all just get along?

Gain Ingratiating Centrism modifier for 5 years: -10% Attention

[manorpunk]

A Brief Materialist History of the Former US in the Mid-21st Century

2030s: the Polycrisis. Unresolved issues of climate and pollution cause more and more intense natural disasters, which wipe out swathes of vital but poorly-maintained infrastructure. The US federal gov't is too hollowed-out at this point to fix anything, and the tangle of middlemen contractors responsible for actually building and repairing that infrastructure all try to deny responsibility, causing a massive growth spurt of federalism as state governments are forced to step in and try to put out the literal and metaphorical fires. All this embarrassing chaos tarnishes the US's economic reputation of stability, causing a feedback loop of economic contractions as more and more foreign investors pull back from US investments, causing stock market drops which make even more investors panic and pull back, etc. The decade ends with the signing of the Qingdao Accords, a sort of reverse Marshall Plan where the newly-formed Global Logistics Network pours money into infrastructure projects in exchange for creating their own tangle of middlemen contractors. The signing of the Qingdao Accords is generally taken as the end of the Second Cold War with a Chinese victory.

2040s: the Sheriff's Insurrection. A loose alliance of small-town sheriffs (as well as small-business tyrants, conspiracy theorists, retvrn types, and various opportunists, all collectively referred to as 'Sheriffs') resist the "Chinese takeover of America" in a 21st century version of the evergreen landowners-vs-industrialists conflict. They are quickly fought off by GLN-hired paramilitary forces (the same forces will go on to form the Surplus Young Men, an Armored Core/Outer Heaven style 'security force' which is technically unaligned but everyone knows they're cashing GLN checks). The Sheriffs flee to the Midwest, creating a decentralized zone of tiny feuding principalities derogatorily dubbed ‘the manors.’ Other former US states begin to unite into new regional nations - Boswash, California, Cascadia, Texaplex, and the Great Lakes Republic. These new nations actually seem like they might be here to stay, but with much less ability to go sticking their nose in the rest of the world's business, and the decade ends with a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, China’s victory in the Second Cold War proves to be a Pyrrhic victory as the death of Xi Jinping (probably of natural causes but who knows) allows the GLN to balloon in wealth and influence. The CCP takes a sharp nationalist turn, re-branding itself as the Chinese China Party and turning party politics into a game of who can dunk on Americans the most.

2050s: Things are… good? The GLN is delivering on their promise of a new economic order, an automated and algorithmic 21st century market socialism with an infrastructure-based middle class of technicians, data analysts, and civil servants. There's still a global underclass of cheap mobile labor to actually go out to the middle of nowhere and build all this stuff but, y'know, it's a smaller global underclass. The manors calm down a little as the GLN supports the formation of autochthonous American nations: the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota and Dakota in the Midwest and the Diné Nation in the southwest, along with the progressive majority-black government of Piedmont in the Atlantic South, make it feel like we might be doing something about that whole ‘foundational white supremacy’ thing (The GLN was, of course, happy to take credit for solving racism forever). The GLN gets to claim even more PR victories as various post-colonial regions peacefully unify as ‘leagues,’ EU-style intra-national coalitions that work together on economic on diplomatic matters while letting individual states largely manage their own affairs. The US nations start to wonder if it might be time to form a league of their own. (Incidentally, by this point the EU has split apart into Frankistan and Mitteleuropa, Spain has exploded again, and Punished Britain is not coping well with their fall from grace.)

2060s: Who knows? Things start getting tense as the global construction boom slows down and the money-hose starts to dry up. 'Minor' regional problems and potential long-term issues are swept under the rug because "we’ve got a good thing going here, don't fuck this up," and the once-radical new visions for the world are already beginning to seem calcified and sclerotic. The newly-formed American League is poised to be little more than a rubber stamp for GLN policy… or is it?

[wildbeautifuldamned]

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[mariacallous]

On July 18, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) concluded the Third Plenum of its 20th Party Congress. Held in a secured military conference hotel on the western outskirts of Beijing, proceedings closed with a ritual appearance by top leader Xi Jinping. Third Plenums, so called because they’re the third meeting of the party’s five-year cycles, cover economic policy; outcomes are scrutinized by cadres and global businesses alike.

This Third Plenum duly addressed the economy but also broke from precedent: When the conclave wasn’t scheduled during the accustomed time last fall, speculation swirled around delays due to party purges and economic headwinds. With the session finally finished, we can now parse speeches and documents for insights into Beijing’s economic thinking—and gauge how CCP institutions have fared under Xi’s norm-bending rule.

One recurring catchphrase this session has been “reform and opening up”—a term with a rich history but invoked today in circumstances starkly different from the time of its original coinage. In 1978, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping was picking up the pieces after Mao Zedong’s chaotic rule. Deng sought to create stable conditions for economic growth. He sidelined Maoist cadres advocating “class struggle” and promoted reformers keen on economic experimentation. The 1978 Third Plenum keynote speech was Deng’s victory lap. In his clipped Sichuanese accent, speaking at the same military hotel, Deng called for China to open itself to foreign capitalists and overseas manufacturing firms. This new “reform and opening up” policy drove decades of growth, lifting the masses from poverty and integrating the People’s Republic with the global economy.

While official meetings were erratic under Mao, Deng sought a steadier rhythm. The terrors of the Cultural Revolution were subsiding; cadres found a certain solace in bureaucratic rituals. The headline event of the party calendar is the National Congress; in the pattern set after Mao’s death, it is held usually in October of years ending with 2 and 7. (Xi, for instance, ascended as CCP general secretary in 2012, gained a second term in 2017, and an unprecedented third in 2022.) At a full Congress, thousands of delegates convene in Beijing to ratify decisions about leadership and ideology, while 99 million party members look on.

After the Congress concludes, subsidiary plenums are called over the ensuing five-year span until the next full session. These intermediate meetings typically convene a few hundred CCP bigwigs and selected experts and have historically been held five to nine times (most commonly seven) before the following Congress half a decade later. Plenums typically cover party appointments (First Plenum), government personnel (Second), economic reform (Third), party-building activities (Fourth), fixing a new Five-Year Plan (Fifth), management of culture and history (Sixth), and a closing summation (Seventh) before the next Congress. Each meeting also disposes of sensitive party business arising in the interim. Since the Second Plenum in early 2023, several members of Xi’s top team—including ministers of defense and foreign affairs—have vanished into the CCP’s disciplinary apparatus, snared in graft and other indiscretions. At this plenum, their fates were finalized. Some offenders, stripped of party membership, now face criminal trial. Others got off more leniently: Last week, former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who was disappeared for a year, formally lost membership of the elite Central Committee. But in an official document, he kept the appellation “comrade”—demotion without total disgrace. Such individual intrigues ultimately matter less than the overall tone: the “party line” and “main melody” of propaganda. In earlier eras, plenum themes reflected a more collective leadership. Today, that agenda closely follows the will of Xi himself.

Ever since Deng’s 1978 breakthrough set the template, observers have eagerly watched Third Plenums for portents of change. Results have always varied. Over the 1980s, one Third Plenum widened economic reforms from the countryside to the cities, but, with inflation rising, the next Third Plenum tightened statist wage controls and commodity price caps. After the Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 1989 froze political reforms, the 1993 Third Plenum signaled that economic reforms would continue: The communiqué made rhetorical room for capitalism by advocating a “socialist market economy.” This turn of phrase translated into epochal change: the dismantling of many state-owned enterprises and the end of “iron rice bowl” welfare security for more than 20 million people. The Third Plenums in 2003 and 2008 were, in hindsight, milquetoast: missed opportunities to update China’s growth model and rectify an unruly (and sometimes greedy) party apparatus.

When Xi took over in 2012, he had a mandate from his colleagues to secure the CCP’s future by taming corruption and enacting structural reforms. Xi’s first Third Plenum as leader—in November 2013—was met with high expectations. The conclave announced big changes: a plan to end the one-child policy and a determination to let market forces take a “decisive” role in the economy. Outside observers, squinting to see China’s economic modernization tracking toward convergence with the West, hailed the plenum as a masterstroke and Xi as a bold “reformer.”

The one-child policy was duly scrapped after several years. But the CCP soured on market mechanisms after Chinese stocks swooned in 2015, threatening the stability of the broader economy. The state responded with heavy-handed measures: strong-arming equity sales and detaining financial reporters. Meanwhile, party institutions grew more visible in everyday life and acted more assertively toward private businesses. Crackdowns snared rights lawyers and journalists; government regulators humbled China’s booming tech sector. Politics took priority—and command—over economics.

By 2018, Xi had decided to abolish term limits for the presidency of the People’s Republic, a post held concurrently with the more important role of CCP general secretary. Though the position is a state title—technically outside the party bureaucracy and calendar—this move seemingly disturbed the regular rhythms of party politics. The Third Plenum in 2018 fell early, landing in February rather than the fall. Unusually, that meeting focused on personnel rather than economic issues.

Today, a look back on Xi’s inaugural Third Plenum in 2013 shows the limitations of prognosticating based on that or any other party meeting. Some plans were implemented. In other cases, unexpected events may have overtaken the best intentions. But whatever the rhetoric, more than a decade later, the reality is trending toward more government intervention in the economy rather than less. A reformer Xi has been—but rarely in the direction Western observers might have hoped. Since Xi took power and held his inaugural Third Plenum at the expected time, two subsequent Third Plenums have fallen outside their usual season. Xi is now in power indefinitely, having amassed more formal titles and personal influence than any leader since Mao.

At the recently concluded Third Plenum, Xi and his comrades affirmed the expected themes with range of slogans, with some—such as “reform and opening up” and “Chinese-style modernization”—reflecting Deng’s legacy. Documents highlighted security and control while also calling for “high-quality development” in key sectors, such as green tech and semiconductors, believed to be crucial to future growth. Some perennial problems have resurfaced again after being mentioned in past Third Plenums but never faced.

In 2003 and 2013, communiqués suggested a property tax to raise local government revenue for health and welfare spending, but no comprehensive policy resulted. Now, a crumpling real estate sector threatens to tip into crises in local government debt and the economy at large. In 2024, the CCP sounds more tepid today toward market forces than in 2013, reprising the 1993 slogan of a “socialist market economy” while calling for “market order” and making scant mention of the private sector.

Even in 1978, the important politicking actually happened behind the scenes before Deng’s inaugural Third Plenum. In Deng’s keynote speech ending the session, even as he exhorted his comrades to “liberate [their] thinking” and “look forward,” he made no mention of the phrase “reform and opening up,” instead quoting from Lenin and praising Mao. Deng framed his new initiatives through Mao’s language, saying that to pursue true Marxism, cadres must “seek truth from facts.” Deng’s call for a foreign investment law came last in a list of draft legislation covering routine topics such as forestry, factories, and labor. The radical impact of Deng’s reforms only became apparent over time, through actions rather than words.

So it may have been with the Third Plenum in 2013, when Xi framed his ambitions in the language of his immediate predecessors. Whatever is said at the dais, Chinese policymaking ultimately depends as much—or more—on personalities, and the pressure of events, as on showpiece meetings of party or state.

This year’s arrhythmic Third Plenum has, so far, yielded a 5,000-word communiqué and a “decision” document, along with a profusion of records, commentary, and clarifications to elucidate the CCP’s will. These hail Xi’s “comprehensively deepening reforms” but have offered few specifics so far. Whatever the future of China’s politics and economy, Xi’s continuing central role in guiding both appears ensured.