Seems the ‘axis of evil’ has another target out of a self-fabricated narrative:

North Korea joins China, Russia in criticising Japan, deepening military ties

Strategic cooperation between North Korea, China and Russia appears to be deepening: Recent reports speculate that Pyongyang and Moscow have increased military cooperation, as Pyongyang echoes its allies’ criticism of Japanese defense policies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday claimed that Russia is preparing to bring in as many as 50,000 more North Korean troops to join its war against Ukraine.

He also claimed that “North Korea’s weapons and combat experience are being enhanced through cooperation with Russia, posing a growing threat to countries in the region.”

At the same time, Putin Urges Businesses to Back Russian Innovation as State Funding Shrinks.

Moscow universities face higher competition for tuition-free university spots as paid seats are being eliminated while military quotas expand.

And Russia’s healthcare crumbles amid Putin’s war with Ukraine, one of the biggest consequences being a massive exodus of skilled specialists from the medical profession, as the number of doctors has declined from 800 000 to less than 600 000 from 2014 to 2026.

Russia spends more on military and disinformation campaigns than it spends for education, science, healthcare.

At the same time, Putin Urges Businesses to Back Russian Innovation as State Funding Shrinks.

Moscow universities face higher competition for tuition-free university spots as paid seats are being eliminated while military quotas expand.

And Russia’s healthcare crumbles amid Putin’s war with Ukraine, one of the biggest consequences being a massive exodus of skilled specialists from the medical profession, as the number of doctors has declined from 800 000 to less than 600 000 from 2014 to 2026.

Russia spends more on military and disinformation campaigns than it spends for education, science, healthcare.

Yes, and Russians have been doing that already this entire year as you may know. The cash held outside banks reached 19 trillion roubles (+200 billion euros) in Russia, a new peak never seen in this century, according to the Russian Central Bank. It already puts pressure on banks which rely on deposits to fund themselves.

All fine now?

Yeah, why would you read the article when you’ve already found a sentence that fits your authoritarian narratrive, right?

Japan does support Ukraine, not Russia like China does. Japan doesn’t bully its neighbours with war games, China does. Just to name two examples.

The threat that a situation like the Ukraine invasion happens doesn’t come from Japan. It comes from China.

Do you agree with that?

Can you stop hyperfocusing on that?

I am not ‘hyperfocusing.’ The topic here is the threat that posed by China, Russia, NK. They are a threat not just to Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific region, but to the entire world. We see that now as China, through its decisive support for Russia, is a threat to Ukraine and, therefore, Europe. And the same could happen in Asia, which is what this article is about.I am fully on topic.

Don’t know why you bring up ‘conservatives’ Japan, the threat comes from somewhere else.

… xenophobic and completely divorced from the reality …

What exactly do you mean? The threats are very real, and they come from China and its ‘allies’ in the first place.

China’s military build-up over the last three decades - the larges in history during peace time - and its war games in the region are well-documented. Some of its diplomats even openly threatening officials and citizens of foreign countries.

China and North Korea are also heavily supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

Don’t know why you distract from these simple facts.

I think Japan (and all its partner countries in the Indo-Pacific and beyond) understand very well the danger coming from these three state actors.

I never understood the MMT and what it’s good for. The theory - if it is a theory at all - has many flaws that don’t add up in my humble opinion. It also reminds me more on Keynes (which has as many flaws imo) than on Money Theory. But that’s just my 2 cents, maybe I am wrong.

Oh, I guess I have some good understanding. In short: East Turkestan, which is referred to as ‘Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’ by the regime in Beijing since its occupation, is a region in Asia where Uyghurs and other minorities are suppressed under the pretext of ‘national security’ and ‘poverty relief’.

I attack no one.

The law clearly says “Organizations and individuals outside the mainland” … It effects every individual no matter where they live. It has nothing to do with your theories of ‘splinter groups’ and the like. Do yourself a favour and stay away from wherever you get such stuff.

@Calfpupa@lemmy.ml

What an absurdly weird framing.

“Organizations and individuals outside the [mainland] territory of the P.R.C” means exactly that: organizations and individuals that live abroad. Your comment is a nothing burger, unfortunately typical for ml.

The headline is grossly misleading.

Here is the link to the original report:

As a reason why planted forests grow faster (and why it has a bad long-term effect on the climate) it says,

Planted forests … tend to feature fast-growing species like eucalyptus and poplar and are often actively managed, with people removing competing vegetation and even fertilizing them. These interventions reduce competition for light, water, and nutrients … This discrepancy peaks in planted forests when trees are around 30 to 40 years old and then declines noticeably after age 40. In contrast, natural forests grow more slowly but steadily, so have an advantage over the long term.

From 2000 to 2020, China experienced a net change of 2.1 Mha - that’s 0.96% - in tree cover, according to Global Forest Watch.

To get a full picture: China has historically a net rate of forest loss, but since 2000 it has implemented a series of large-scale forest restoration programmes that gained it a positive tree cover rate (although this doesn’t necessarily contribute to the fight against climate change, as the Chinese study cited in the article also says).

But at least China’s record of reforestation is positive regarding tree cover in this millenium.

However, when it comes to the deforestation linked to China’s imports, the picture is far worse. China is a major importer, processor, and exporter of forest- and land-use–related commodities.

A 2025 Forest Trends report found that China’s agricultural and timber imports drove an annual loss of more than 400,000 hectares (ha) of tropical forest - four million ha in total - in the period between 2013 and 2022. This comes at the expense of the climate, as well as the natural world: the same report found that this amounted to as much as 5% of carbon emissions from tropical deforestation during this period.

• China’s imports are associated with massive tropical deforestation, particularly in Brazil and Indonesia.

• Imports of palm oil, beef (including buffalo meat), soybeans and plantation timber are the biggest contributors to China’s imported deforestation.

• Cattle production is the largest single driver of global deforestation, and 42% of exports from Brazil, the world’s top beef exporter, go to China.

• China is the world’s largest importer and consumer of soybeans, which contribute 18% of global deforestation.

• China is also among the top global consumers of palm oil, importing large volumes from Malaysia and Indonesia.

• Rubber, maize, cocoa, cassava and coffee are among other commodities responsible for China’s imported deforestation.

• Almost 70% of China’s tropical deforestation footprint comes from forests illegally converted for commercial agriculture and timber plantations.

But I guess OP will continue forwarding pro-China propaganda headlines from the tankie comms under - in my opinion - a weird pretext. Don’t get me wrong, this is not to say that someone - including me, of course - can post some shitty source once in a while, but just forwarding from ml all the time ends up almost automatically in a series of nothing burgers.

[Edit typo.]

For the time being I trust the U.S. statistics.

The Chinese official data is mostly rubbish. As for the trade data: Since the beginning of the pandemic, China’s own official balance of payments trade surplus even diverges significantly from China’s customs trade surplus, particularly since 2022.

The obvious objective for cooking the books: China is artificially reducing its trade surplus.

We would think that if a foreign firm (or a joint venture between a foreign firm and a Chinese firm operating in China) is manufacturing goods in China for sale in China, the deal would not end up in China’s official trade balance, because no good crosses the border.

However, Chinese officials seem to have a different view. In its balance of payments data, China basically reports a trade deficit with itself because of foreign firms producing in China.

Appendix VII of the International Monetary Funds’s China Assessment in 2024 - opens pdf - which is when the change in China’s statistics was evident - is very revealing.

The divergence seems to be mainly caused by the difference in methodologies to record imports and exports of goods in BOP {Balance of Payments] and Customs. In BOP, imports and exports of goods are recorded when ownership of the goods is transferred between residents and nonresidents regardless of the location of the goods. Customs records imports and exports of goods when the goods physically cross the border of China regardless of ownership of the goods.2 The methodological difference is particularly relevant in the recording of imports and exports related to global production arrangements (e.g., factoryless manufacturing) where nonresident enterprises (e.g., multinational enterprises) outsource part of production to contractors in China

Factoryless is, in this case, the wrong concept as the factories are all in China, they are just (partly) owned by a foreign company.

If the foreign firm then sells the goods that a contract manufacturer produced for it inside China, these goods are counted as an import in the balance of payments data.

As we can reasonably assume, the firms’ sales prices for the goods are usually higher than prices the contractors have billed them. The result, therefore, is a trade deficit in the balance of payments.

Simply speaking, if a foreign firm in China produces goods for the Chinese domestic market, it generates a trade deficit, and, therefore, China produces a trade deficit with itself.

The linked IMF report states,

Since 2019, the Customs-based trade surpluses have been persistently above the BOP-based surpluses, with the gap widening significantly over time. In 2023, China’s BOP goods trade surplus was USD 594 billion while Customs recorded a surplus of USD 823 billion, a difference of USD 229 billion or 1.3 percent of GDP.

And:

Exports and imports arising from factoryless manufacturing seem to have been reducing China’s overall goods trade surplus in BOP. When a Chinese contractor sells produced goods to the nonresident enterprise that outsourced the production, exports of goods are recorded in BOP even if the goods remain in China (e.g., in warehouses). If the nonresident enterprise subsequently sells the goods in China, imports of goods are recorded in BOP. Given that the Chinese contractors’ ex-factory price for the nonresident enterprise (China’s exports) is normally lower than the nonresident enterprises’ wholesale price for Chinese distributors (China’s imports), these transactions result in a deficit in the goods trade balance in BOP. Customs does not record exports or imports for these transactions because the goods never cross the border. So, these transactions do not reduce the trade surplus recorded by Customs while they do in BOP.

All this, of course, makes no sense.

And this is one reason why you can’t trust Chinese official data.

[Edit for clarification.]

According to data from the Chinese government, even U.S. imports from China are on the rise …

This is not true.

U.S. imports from China in the first five months 2026 are around a third lower than in the comparable 2025-period, according to the U.S. census data (you can safely forget trade data published by the Chinese government, especially since Beijing introduced a very weird methodology to calculate its export/import data during the pandemic).

U.S. imports from China in 2025 were around a third lower than in 2024.

Of course, any perceived inflation benefit of importing must be offset by the fact that domestic producers are potentially being undercut, making their businesses less prosperous.

Unfortunately, Goldman Sachs, which was one of the first Western banks to open a Chinese branch in China more than 30 years ago with strong ties to the ruling party, does not elaborate here.

The ‘perceived inflation benefit’ (is the inflation now perceived or real?) comes at a lower GDP, lower level of employment, and, therefore, a lower disposable income for other markets (such as Europe); not to forget that it makes countries vulnerable for Chinese political and economic coercion as we have increasingly seen in recent years.

It is particularly noteworthy that the alleged inflation is being paid to a large extent by people in China and China-controlled supply chains who work under forced labour schemes.

These are major points in my opinion which Goldman Sachs has forgotten to mention.

“Although the main driver of our relatively benign inflation outlook is that domestic supply and demand broadly appear in balance, …

I don’t understand that. Domestic supply and demand isn’t in balance in China, that’s for sure. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

The use of Yuan (and currencies other than USD) is still quite low as the article says.

Would betting on Yuan be a good idea for Thailand?

China would have an additional measure to pressure the government in Bangkok for whatever political or economic gains Beijing is aiming at, simply by devaluing (or appreciating) its currency.

This is important as the bilateral trade between the two countries tells a story well known from many others of China’s trade partners: In 2025, Thailand’s exports to China reached almost USD 40 billion, while imports from China were significantly higher at USD 108 billion.

Thailand’s deficit with China in 2025 - USD 68 billion - represents an increase by 50% year-on-year and ranks among the steepest annual widenings of all of China’s trade partners in the Asian region, second only to Malaysia’s 62% deficit increase and similar to Vietnam’s 40% jump.

Maybe more importantly, Thailand’s trade deficit with China has grown every single year for the past five years.

The devastating consequence of China’s export surge is industrial contraction. Thailand’s Kasikorn Research Center estimates that 4,300 Thai factories closed in the two years to 2025, spanning automotive, electronics, garments, furntiture, steel. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued a forecast of 1.6% and the World Bank anticipates approximately 1.7% - the lowest growth rate for Thailand outside of crisis mode like the pandemic or the 2008 turmoils.

If and when the Yuan gains ground in Thailand China-trade in a meaningful way, Bangkok risks its economy (and politics) to open up for more coercive tactics and exploitation by Beijing.

As it has long been reported, Indonesia’s over-reliance on China is a warning for other Global South countries,

[A year ago, in June 2025], China imposed a 20% anti-dumping tariff on stainless steel from Indonesia … The penalty will remain in place for five years. But the real story isn’t the tariff. It’s the reckoning behind it: Indonesia is losing control of its most prized asset. And it has only itself to blame …

The country may sit on the world’s largest nickel reserves, but China holds the value—and the power. That imbalance didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of weak governance, poor planning, and a political system too eager to please investors rather than protect national interests …

The recent tariff from Beijing underscores just how exposed Jakarta has become. “The anti-dumping duty will erode the competitiveness of Indonesian products due to shrinking profit margins,” said Sudirman Widhy Hartono, chair of the Indonesian Mining Experts Association (Perhapi) …

Around a quarter of Indonesia’s exports go to China (mainly commodities such as Nickel, mineral fuels, steel), and 36% of its imports come from China (machinery, electronic equipment, vehicles, plastics). Indonesia’s trade volume with China is higher than with the entire ASEAN.

With more debt owed to China (the bond buyers are China-linked investors only), Indonesia’s dependence on China is likely set to rise, the island country’s industrial development about to slow down.

Why? The article linked in this comment says it clear, using the Nickel industry as an example as Indonesia has the world’s largest nickel reserves:

This isn’t the end stage of Indonesia’s nickel policy. It’s the middle. For all the talk of “downstreaming,” most of what Indonesia produces—nickel pig iron (NPI), ferronickel, and stainless steel billets—are still intermediate products. “They’re not the final products of nickel downstreaming,” Sudirman noted. “The domestic downstream industry is still not developed. Nearly all NPI and stainless steel is still exported abroad.”

Why didn’t Indonesia develop those downstream industries? The answer, in part, is corruption.

From sweetheart land deals to opaque tax incentives, many of the major industrial projects were fast-tracked with little transparency and minimal safeguards. Environmental and labor regulations were ignored. Licensing became transactional. Strategic decisions were too often made behind closed doors, benefiting a narrow circle of elites rather than the broader public.

Chinese companies, predictably, capitalized. They responded to the incentives they were given—cheap land, tax holidays, and a compliant regulatory environment. They brought capital and technology, but on their terms. Indonesia never set the rules of the game. It simply played along …

This bond will not cut dependence on the US dollar, it will increase dependence on China’s coercive policies, making Indonesia more vulnerable for Beijing’s coercion such as tariffs and other punishable trade measure.

It’s almost funny that whenever the Florida man imposes tariffs, the media is full of (absolutely justified) critique. If China creates the same trade restrictions, the media is largely silent. As if it made any difference.

That’s Chinese propaganda. China is the big bully, and unfortunately not only in the Indo-Pacific region. Just today, another so-called ‘live fire drill’ started in the Taiwan Strait.

China has also seen the biggest military built-up in peace time over the past 30 years. For 2026 alone, China’s official military budget is to be 1.90 trillion yuan (around 250 billion euros), the second largest in the world behind the U.S.