In the first half of the year, the nationwide per capita disposable income of residents was 19,672 yuan, a nominal growth of 6.5 percent over the same period last year, and a real growth of 5.8 percent after deducting price factors. In terms of urban and rural areas, the per capita disposable income of urban households was 26,357 yuan, a growth of 5.4 percent (unless otherwise specified below, it was a year-on-year nominal growth), and the real growth was 4.7 percent after deducting price factors; the per capita disposable income of rural households was 10,551 yuan, a growth of 7.8 percent. After deducting price factors, the real growth was 7.2 percent.
IIRC China denominates their loans in USD because they have a massive USD surplus due to the US-China trade imbalance. It's aligned with China's policy today of rapidly shrinking US Treasury holdings.
Taiwan is not the DPP and the DPP is not Taiwan. The fact that everyone in the West seems to think this is the case is a product of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in "speaker fees" to US politicians and influential people visiting Taiwan.
It's important to remember that in the US, political aims are achieved by funding think tanks and political parties and "independent protests" rather than on funding the government at large. So, I'm attributing the actions of the decision makers in the US (Republican officials, key Republican decision makers) to American policy at large. After all, in a two-party system, the Republicans will eventually regain power and they will follow the policy of these key decision makers. It's rather odd that the decision makers in American politics aren't government officials, but I guess that's the wonders of a two-party democracy. You can say that Koch (for example) isn't an American government official, but then I'd ask you what defines a government official if not a high degree of influence over government policy.
On the Chinese political scale, Xi would be seen as right-moderate. His rhetoric is in line with a good chunk of Chinese citizens, but ostracizes Shanghai and some of the southeastern coastal elite.
Famously, Xi Jinping said "houses should be for living, not for speculation."
The notion that China's growth is slowing is true, but I think it lacks context. For the past decade or so, Chinese economic growth has been buoyed by a burgeoning construction sector. With changes to economic policy a few years back, that sector is seeing contraction and regressing back to replacement rate. Real estate shrank from nearly 30% of GDP to less than 20%. Yet, China is still reporting GDP growth in excess of 5% this year. Eventually the real estate industry will plateau, but nobody really knows where or when.
Sonar is fucking terrifying. It's lethal to marine life as well as humans, and the fact that we're happy to spam it out into the ocean is an ecological tragedy.
The fact that Russia's prison system has shit for doctors isn't surprising to me. Russia, the country notorious for penal military units and penal labour, doesn't have adequate healthcare for prisoners? No way...
I mean, isn't there pretty substantial evidence that those "ghost cities" are just speculative development that, most of the time, is productive?
See: https://youtu.be/SR4EYQ6JFUI?si=brfvaXCezqVI0hiL
The party's approach to dealing with the marginalized rural population is to just urbanize as many people as possible. That's also why they speculatively build out housing. In 2023, at least, rural people are getting more disposable income growth than urban ones: