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posted by janrinok on Tuesday February 27 2018, @06:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-truth-is-what-we-say-it-is dept.

TechCrunch:

"China's web scrubbers have been busy banning a collection of terms and dropping the hammer on user accounts after the Xi Jinping, the country's premier, got the all-clear to become 'President For Life' after the Communist Party moved to amend the constitution to remove an article that limits Presidential terms to two five-year terms."

BBC:

"The comments remaining on the popular Sina Weibo microblog are mostly monosyllabic statements from users simply say they "like" or "approve" the amendments.

They are likely to be from China's "50 Cent Party" - a nickname coined for internet commentators who are paid small amounts to post messages supporting the government's position.

Some posts have attracted thousands of comments - but only a few are available to view. This is traditionally indicative of online censorship by government administrators. "

China Digital Times:

"Following state media's announcement, censorship authorities began work to limit online discussion. CDT Chinese editors found the following terms blocked from being posted on Weibo: [...]"

Sources:


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  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:43PM (7 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @09:43PM (#644820) Journal

    You basically read my mind on the matter, yes. This could get ugly, in ways that only a nuclear superpower with world-leading technology can make things ugly...

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:10PM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:10PM (#644829) Journal

    Here's one out of left field: the focus on an economic enemy and the upcoming decreases in the cost of space travel will bring the U.S. back to the "glory days" of the Cold War, or even beyond that. It will take a rivalry with China to make the U.S. great again, and clear away the stagnation of previous decades.

    g2g

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    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:41PM (3 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday February 27 2018, @10:41PM (#644846) Journal

      No. Fuck that jingoistic nationalist bullshit. Do you have any idea how close we came and how many times to nuclear armageddon playing that game with Russia? Besides which, we don't have the natural resources to pull that off any longer, nor the in-country production, manufacturing, etc. abilities.

      Now if we'd been spending the last 15-20 years on energy independence, desalinization, and similar tech, and weren't beholden to half the rest of the world for natural resources, maybe this would be a workable if immoral (for the reason above) strategy. But at this point, we don't even have what we need to pull that off from a realpolitik standpoint.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:05PM (2 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:05PM (#645204)

        The rest of your comment seems fine, but I have to question your bit about natural resources. How does the US lack in that? The US still produces much of its own oil for instance (and probably all its own natgas), there's no shortage of coal (though we don't use it so much, but I do think we export it); honestly I can't think of any resource the US currently lacks that it didn't lack in the past. I think we're lacking in lithium, but I don't think we ever had much of that, we just didn't need much before they invented batteries that used it. We don't have much titanium, but again we never had much of that, Russia did, so when we started trading with Russia after the USSR fell, we could suddenly get it much cheaper and make jewelry with it.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @09:38PM (#645415) Journal

          Cobalt, tantalum, lithium, rare earths of all sorts, thorium if we ever pull our heads out and get on that...we're past the age where nothing but coal and gas matter. High-tech society needs these lanthanides, transition metals, and (with any luck) low-weight actinides in order to function.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:18PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:18PM (#645478)

            Cobalt, tantalum, lithium, rare earths of all sorts, thorium if we ever pull our heads out and get on that

            Again, how were we ever flush with these resources? Your original post said "we don't have the natural resources to pull that off any longer", which implies that we did have them at one time. I don't think the US was ever bountiful with cobalt or thorium or lithium.

            As for rare earths, I thought we actually did have a lot of those mined in the West.

            High-tech society needs these lanthanides, transition metals, and (with any luck) low-weight actinides in order to function.

            Explain please.
            Lanthanides: neodymium is very useful for high-power permanent magnets. The rest, I have no idea. Nuclear medicine maybe?
            Transition metals: this is a very large category, and even includes iron and nickel and chromium, as well as titanium, scandium, molybdenum, silver, gold, copper, etc. In fact, it really contains all the thing that laypeople would consider as "metals". Some of these the US has plenty of, others not as much. I don't think it makes any sense to say that "high-tech society" needs these, any more than to say that it needs matter.
            Actinides: this is thorium, uranium, plutonium, americium, etc. Last I heard, there's no shortage of uranium in the US. Plutonium doesn't exist here because it doesn't exist anywhere in nature, it (along with a bunch of others on this list) have to be synthesized. I think americium is used in smoke detectors. We're not really building new nuclear fission plants. Why exactly do we need actinides again?

            I'll give you the transition metals thing, but again that is a bit silly because of course modern society needs things like copper and iron (just as ancient societies needed them), you really need to be more specific here. The rest, I really don't see why they're so important.

  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:55AM (1 child)

    by RamiK (1813) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:55AM (#644959)

    This could get ugly, in ways that only a nuclear superpower with world-leading technology can make things ugly...

    Why? Guy been around forever and saw China through some of it's most prosperous years in the past decade as president as well as the top-wig of the military and the party. It's not like China went 180 from a democracy into an autocracy overnight. They were never a democracy at the state level to begin with and never really worked towards becoming one.

    Honestly I'm not seeing anything disastrous happening any time soon. Too many well fed mouths and well lubricated pockets everywhere.

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    • (Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:40PM

      by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday February 28 2018, @03:40PM (#645188) Homepage Journal

      They were very democratic, but they called it republican. I call it FAILURE, they had a Failed State. They didn't protect their Border, they had a big problem with Japan. I always say, if you don't have a Border you don't have a Country. And you could go to China, you'd think you were in Japan. The Japanese said it was Japan. A lot of Countries said it was Japan. The Japanese, believe me, didn't send their best people. They sent killers. They sent rapists. And, I assume, some good people. And the other countries said, "look what happened to China, they didn't protect themselves, this is terrible, we'll protect them." And FDR did that whole Pearl Harbor thing, he set up Pearl Harbor, as everybody knows. So he could have a war. Not just to protect China. Because the economy was IN THE TOILET. I won't swear, a lot of people were swearing over that one. And worse. And America had that war, we built a nuclear arsenal -- one of the first -- and used it on Japan. And Russia moved very strongly too. They can be very proud of that. And China was China again, it was a Country. A VERY WEAK AND INEFFECTIVE Country. So Chairman Mao -- amazing leader -- says, "we have too many parties, let's just have one party, let's call it the Communist Party." And it's been terrific for them. They call it communist, it's not communist. It's business, it's a government that puts business first. After itself, after the party. But business is right up there. And it's been tremendous for them. China's agenda is not my agenda. Obviously I'm not working for China. But we can learn so much from them. They took me to the Forbidden City, I saw things no American ever saw. So interesting!