China contemplates the nuclear option.

This is a  Chinese joke  that can temporary damage to the USA -  but in the longer term had a much more serious impact on the Chinese.

The Chinese are using their US Dollars to fund capital projects in Africa to enhance their image in Africa at no real cost to themselves - so why should they waste that valuable asset?

They are desperate. ..bluffing is their last option. 

And then you have this.......:

After US Tariff Increase, Hong Kong, and Taiwanese Firms Plan to Move Production From China

“Hong Kong and Taiwan businesses are planning to pull some of their production from China after the U.S. administration announced that roughly $200 billion worth of Chinese-manufactured goods would receive a tariff increase to 25 percent from 10 percent.”

“Hong Kong

Lau Tat-pong, one of the honorary chairmen of the Hong Kong Small and Medium Enterprise Association, has operated factories in Dongguan since 1989, an industrial city in southern China. He is in the business of paint and aluminum products.

In a recent phone interview with the Hong Kong-branch of the Chinese-language Epoch Times, Lau explained that he had been thinking about moving some production to countries in Southeast Asia since the start of the Sino–U.S. trade war. However, Lau said he hadn’t made any moves, instead hoping that a trade deal would soon be reached.”

“He added that the manufacturing sector in China could take a serious hit, because countries in Southeast Asia will become more cost-competitive, while supply chains in those countries will become more mature, as more companies pull their production out of China.”

“Many tech manufacturers, such as suppliers to U.S. tech giant Apple, have already made plans to move production to Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and elsewhere, from China, after U.S. tariffs were first announced in March 2018.”

“Taiwan

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen held a press conference on May 10 following a high-level national security meeting to address Taiwan’s strategies in the face of the latest increase in U.S. tariffs.

She said that the existing triangular trade model—Taiwanese companies accepting orders from U.S. clients, fulfilling the orders by manufacturing the products in China, and exporting the products to the United States from China—would likely change as a result of the trade war, according to statementsposted on the website of the president’s office.”

I won't accept any bodies opinion until I have heard what rooitwit says

(Orange man bad - grunt, grunt) 

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/22/18192961/crispr-genetic-engineering-baby-ethics-scientist-china-investigation-he-jiankui

Wouldn't surprise me if China were balls deep into this already.

It's now possible to turn normal cells into stem cells. Instead of harvesting only fifteen eggs from a women, they're able to create an egg for each male sperm cell. Allowing for billions of fertilized eggs to choose from. Think about that for a moment. INSANE! 

You can pick the one in ten billion best to re-insert.

Add some gene editing to that.

Insurance implications? Perhaps natural births premiums would be higher on the grounds of them being more risky. Easier to insure an individual that's been screened for all hereditary diseases.

In this race, one has to keep up with the competition. Something this powerful and far reaching must be addressed. 

I'm not inspired by the brain dead questioning of Fokkerberg at the Facebook hearings. People with little to zero expertise trying to question a true expert on the intricacies of his craft. You've got to be kidding. And that's just Facebook. 

Can you imagine the hearings on gene selection and editing?

"Would you please give us a brief explanation of how genes work Mr Lee?"

Haha!

Luckily by the time the next generation views us as apes, we won't be around anymore.

It cost a few hundred million $ to have your genome sequenced less than ten years ago? It's down to $800 now.

These technologies are evolving much more quickly than awareness of them is. 

There's no way, considering China's business/government model, that they won't have a horse in this race. For as long as they've been playing the long game they've been pissing on human rights. Why would they stop now?

Gene editing is the next arms race in my view.

One wonders what would happen if you built a human brain with just 10% more neurons.

"I am Legend " anyone? X-Men? The same as the "clever idiots" at CERN. Messing with serious stuff they don't understand in the slightest. Playing with fire in a dynamite shack.

At the rate they are risking, "Climate Change" won't have time to be the end of us...."666"?

Demo rats love to run down America.

Heard some while back Russia has the size economy of Texas!

China cannot win this trade war. Trump wins yet again. I for one love it. 

See the anti Globalist Brexit Party is polling higher than the Tories and Labour combined. 

Just hope the UK participates in EU elections. 

Kick these globalist traitors out and save Europe. 

"I am Legend " anyone? X-Men? The same as the "clever idiots" at CERN. Messing with serious stuff they don't understand in the slightest. Playing with fire in a dynamite shack."

It's not only the human genome that's going to be manipulated. 

Combine rabies and the flu virus and you might not be too far off the mark Draad.

We are worried about terror attacks now.

What happens when gene editing technology becomes more easily accessible?

Do we trust Iran and North Korea to play by the rules? 

Releasing a virus is a lot easier than sneaking explosives around. By the time you realise you've got a problem, the perpetrator is long gone. Your hitman might now even know that he's infected and spreading it. Give it a two month incubation period so that its got lots of time to spread and a one week kill time. Scary shit huh?

One wouldn't even know whom to blame. 

Plum, I can't recall the specific "who done it?", but in one episode  of CSI or something, they had this designer virus that was designed to kill one specific person. Science is almost there if not there already. Knowledge is power...a lot of power, and power corrupts...we are but pawns.

And Shark China has been at war for thousands of years. They are just so good at covert war that hardly anyone notice.

Shark...Carter should STHU!

"In 1976, Africa was at the heart of the Cold War. As 36,000 Cubans flowed into Angola and Jimmy Carter battled for the presidency, Henry Kissinger tried—and failed—to achieve his final diplomatic coup: forging peace in Rhodesia. It would be the Carter administration, working with the British, with African heads of state, and with the leaders of the liberation movements, that would help usher Rhodesia to independence. In Rhodesia the essence of American foreign policy during the Cold War—stopping Soviet expansion—slammed up against the most raw and explosive aspect of American domestic politics: racism.

The contrast between Carter's astute policy toward Rhodesia with his bumbling policy toward the war in the Horn of Africa helps clarify his foreign policy. The Carter administration anticipated the crisis in Rhodesia and cooperated effectively with London, whereas it failed to prepare for the war in the Horn and was hampered by the inept advice proffered by its European partners.

Drawing on candid interviews with Carter, as well as key U.S. and foreign diplomats, and on a broad array of international archival sources, this study reevaluates the strengths and the weaknesses of both Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter."

The same idiot who got South Africa into the Angolan war and then bailed on us.

Moz

China destroyed the entire Mongol army without firing a single arrow. That's what scares me most about them. Building a fleet of thousands of ships, twice, all with the same tiny error that would cause them to sink when seas got rough. History still says that it was typhoons that sunk the boats when the Mongols tried to invade Japan. It wasn't. 

And the Mongols fell for the same trick twice.

They've found and studied some of those ships and apparently some main central rudder had a tiny error intentionally built into it. They figured it out by comparing ships not used in the two invasions to those that were. The error has been consistent across all the invasion ships they found. 

I just wonder about the level of secrecy involved in doing something so sly on such a large scale, while under the whip. It's Rogue One or hive mind stuff.

And the Mongols fell for it...hahah twice!!!

The Mongols had a great sense of humor though. Have you ever read any of the letters the Khan sent to Japan? Super sarcastic.

For those interested, there was some pretty interesting discussion about gene editing on a Joe Rogan podcast recently. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBPnjte2UV8

Haha Moz

It's more the mindset. The the willingness to play the long game, to make the necessary sacrifices and the ingenuity to pull it off.

I'm not sure why China have throughout history not been more aggressive than the West in conquering other countries. 

The last hundred years aside, they've seemingly always been ahead of the technological curve and yet it never translated into land. 

I certainly don't know enough about their history to even venture a guess as to why.

What I do know is that even some of their children's toys showed an understanding of science that our European militaries hadn't understood or made use of at the time.

Is it literally just down to not being as aggressive as our cold land ancestors?

Anyway, here's a breakdown of a letter from Kublai Kahn to the King of Japan. I think you'll enjoy it.

https://bluecerealeducation.com/blog/we-think-you-already-know-letter-kublai-khan

Geez. That's a very specific put down. 

"May his waters avoid your meadows and hit your land instead with a severe destructive downpour."

Guy spent some time to think about what he wanted.

Very interesting posts Plum and Mozart and entertaining reading.

Chinese and Japanese peoples are quite different in make up although to the untrained western mind there appears to be similarities, certainly Mongolians today are not even a shadow of their past. Mongolia a vast deserted land but exquisitely beautiful with peasant populations here and there, is a mystery how they fell to this level or in a way there's that beauty to it if you like these remote and intriguing features.

The Chinese have a unique manipulating manner which can be very powerful...just look at their perfection in military discipline. Be that as it may they like all nations have extremely lovely people. The Japanese are very polite and extremely hard working...work is their culture, quite the opposite of Africans.

The Western mind struggles to understand them. I once had a little girl friend who was Chinese before I got married the first time. She was lovely, was studying medicine at Wits but her dad was a gangster book maker. She was gentle, pretty and thoughtful but it was the apartheid years and this prohibited a deeper relationship. I loved her very much and was heart-broken. When I first met her when we went on a course to Jo'burg I did not know that Chinese were not classified as whites. Her parents where nevertheless very strict. I often wonder what happened to her.

I think the women are quite different to the men, rather submissive.

https://youtu.be/MyPt1GtntsA

Koreans...

Koreans..?

No of course not...those are Chinese Draad.

If you mention Chinese and Japanese, the Koreans are worth a shout too.

Haha

I hear South Korea is about two years ahead of everyone else. A bit like visiting the future. Their software development is also ridiculously innovative.

All this while their northern neighbors are pulling plows by hand. 

And they say communism doesn't work.

Yes Draad, eastern women are very pretty generally...the N Korean matching is also phenominal but the Chinese take the edge...their skirts are more aesthetic showing their beautiful legs.

These people are perfectionists, watch them in gymnastics and water ballet and diving...no one comes close.

Yes Plum communism in a certain context does work for the masses but it has disastrous results in the end and destroys moral and spiritual fibre and initiative in people...Karl Marx probably has destroyed more of mankind than Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin and the rest put together.

It's not dead either but taken on another form that appears to be more lighter (socialism) which has infiltrated into virtually every country in the world...it's subtle and therefore equally dangerous, even perhaps more so as better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Deception of the hearts and minds of people is the weapon of today and with IT it is easy to propagate.