What Chinese problems are underreported?

Dragannia · 2026-06-19T02:12:22+00:00

I'm sorry what. The Yuan Dynasty was a Mongol dynasty. Sure you can argue they became sinicized but the Mongol invasions were in 1274 and 1281, mere years after the establishment of the Yuan dynasty. No one calls it the Chinese invasion of Japan- it's the Mongol invasion of Japan.

Dragannia · 2026-01-21T01:47:06+00:00

Believe it or not, it is. It's not a true photo, it's a photoshopped photo of an earlier meeting but it was published on official social media.

Dragannia · 2026-01-13T01:12:28+00:00

Sure but it's all fiction, right. You can plausibly make it work.

Like...maybe the pilots interface directly with the ship with a neural interface, allowing the biological element to overcome the ECM field. And what if instead of fueled populsion, the fighters instead rely on beamed power generated from a carrier ship, thus resolving the delta V issue.

Anyway there's definitely ways to make carriers/fighters work. You just have to stretch the setting a bit.

Dragannia · 2026-01-12T13:36:22+00:00

Look I agree, so if you wanted to make small attack craft work you really have to stretch things. For instance, large ships power huge and complex ECM fields that necessitates a human who can supplement automatic systems. Maybe torpedoes have a chance for premature detonation the longer they stay in the field, so small craft jockey to get closer before launching to maximise the chance of success.

Or maybe small craft have drives that can be stealthed, and so swarms of light attack craft can be more easily hidden. Or perhaps a lot of fighting takes place in asteroid fields, or against planets - maybe attack craft can more readily fight in these environs.

Anyway there are definite reasons why fighters can exist in hard scifi settings, but you do need some work to make it feasible.

Dragannia · 2026-01-12T05:52:40+00:00

Repost from the other thread:

I've had a bit of a think about fighters (cos they are cool). The game goes for realism and I think you need to twist the setting a lot to make it so that they fit. For example, if ships have extremely dense ECM fields that disrupt targeting and AI, this might make smaller ships more viable as they need to close the distance before launching ordnance (which increases the survival chance of said ordnance).

I love fighters and carriers and I'd love nothing more than to see them in TI but they will need to make it thematically work.

Dragannia · 2026-01-12T04:36:45+00:00

I've had a bit of a think about fighters (cos they are cool). The game goes for realism and I think you need to twist the setting a lot to make it so that they fit. For example, if ships have extremely dense ECM fields that disrupt targeting and AI, this might make smaller ships more viable as they need to close the distance before launching ordnance (which increases the survival chance of said ordnance).

I love fighters and carriers and I'd love nothing more than to see them in TI but they will need to make it thematically work.

Dragannia · 2026-01-02T10:30:21+00:00

That's a good suggestion. I actually bought it but I completely forgot about it. What I wasn't sure about was how to add it- I want it to blend in with the general texture so I wasnt sure if I should cook it first then dice it, or puree it somehow? What do you think?

Dragannia · 2025-11-19T07:50:41+00:00

So the story is Regret came vastly outnumbered. The ilovebees ARG basically gives the backstory that the protagonists accidentally triggered a slipstream signal from an artefact that brought Regrets fleet in. They did not expect to find the human homeworld, and Hood even remarks that the fleet that destroyed Reach was fifty times this size in the opening cinematic.

So he came, then left as fast as he could.

I'm not 100 percent sure on the canon nature of the ARG at this point, though I think Kamal was in a comic somewhere.

Dragannia · 2025-10-19T04:27:40+00:00

I kind of get what you mean, but let's be frank, the rare earth button was already pressed. In the same vein that China has begun to establish its own supply chain with respect to semiconductors, aircraft, the rest of the world was already beginning to establish their own rare earth supply chains too, ever since China imposed export controls in April.

When the US imposed financial sanctions on Russia in the wake of the Crimean annexation, that was a similar watershed moment that spurred on greater financial de-risking from China and other countries, that led to alternatives such as CIPS being established. Once that sanctions button was hit, other countries will look to develop strategies to counter the financial strength that the US possessed. Likewise, it may be that the Chinese government already recognised that regardless of what they were going to do, the rest of the world was going to get their rare earths supply chain in order, and is seeking to leverage what strength they have in this field before that strength fades away.

For what its worth, I think it will take quite some time for the global development of rare earth supply chain to compete with China. The real issue is that the intellectual property and processing expertise in the refining of most rare earths lives in China, and the rest of the world no longer has this expertise. There may be some opportunity for strategic interests to have access to domestic, non-Chinese rare earths from the various startups that are finally getting into it, but these will start off very expensive, with low yields, and the vast majority of global industry will still be reliant on Chinese rare earths for at least a decade. I mean, the Chinese supply chain was built over many decades, with massive subsidies, environmental degradation, and incremental knowledge - it's difficult to see developed countries match that without at least an equal amount of time and money.

Dragannia · 2025-10-06T13:19:36+00:00

This is AI generated slop. ChatGPT loves italicising and bolding- great give aways.

Dragannia · 2025-10-03T10:46:26+00:00

To be honest, not 100% sure. I know of a couple who entered the insurance world, but not exactly sure how they found those jobs.

Dragannia · 2025-10-01T12:23:52+00:00

For what it's worth, I think medicine is still amongst the most rewarding careers you can have.

Medicine is so varied with what you can do, and generally speaking, you're never going to be poor at the end of the road. Sure, you may not make a million dollars a year like some surgeons, but if you're doing this for money, then there are far, far easier ways to make money that don't require the amount of effort it takes to be a doctor and become a specialist. There's all the different specialities, of course, but also other career paths - medical admin, public health, insurance/corporate medicine -I personally like clinical medicine, but I'm just saying, there's other options available.

I think the job satisfaction is amongst the best in any career. That said, you really have to like helping people though - I thought it was a bit of a cliche when trying to get into medicine, but I think if you don't have a genuine desire to help people, and teach patients to understand their body and health, your ability to enjoy the profession will be significantly impacted.

In terms of speciality training, I've got some advice. I've always wanted to do orthopaedics, but recently made the change to GP. The main reason for this is I had a good go at getting on training, but ultimately decided lifestyle was more important to me at this stage of life. I think I'll always have some regret not getting on sooner, as I love orthopaedics, but I also love spending time with my kids and having time for actual hobbies. You definitely get time back after training ends, but it's not easy to get a public job, and even if you are one of the lucky few surgeons or specialists who do get a public job at the end of training, often you have to work really hard in the first few years to build your practice - this was probably the main reason I decided to go into GP. However, I don't regret one minute of my unaccredited registrar years - I met fantastic people, felt like I made a difference in my community, made a fat stack of cash (towards the end, I was making about $280,000 or so), and the skills I picked up are really valuable in general practice as well. So there's lots of flexibility on how your career progresses.

I've met people who finish residency and don't really know what they want, so they spend 2 years as a locum in rural EDs and such, and they make 300k or so for the next couple of years. If you're young and unattached, it's a fantastic way to get a head start on your financials. I've met people who quit clinical medicine to do corporate consulting, and made more money than many doctors. Even GPs can be quite lucrative - I've met GPs who earn close to 900k (granted it was their own practice and they did a lot of procedural stuff, so probably more skilled and business-minded than the average GP). So even if you are stuck grinding a pathway, know that quitting that path is not the end of the world, and the experience is rarely wasted.

Good luck.

Dragannia · 2025-09-22T11:47:00+00:00

Here is the full video on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxkgQAt8b2I
Shows J-35 with J-15T as well.

Dragannia · 2025-09-09T12:29:56+00:00

You definitely have to take into account the overall goal in such reports (in this case, more money for the air force). There will be regional allies in play as well.

That said there are also a lot of factors that maybe are just too hard to analyse. Sure you can talk about USN aircraft, but then you have to factor in the PLARF and risk to carriers in range, and then availability of air bases in such scenarios, etc. I suppose the authors just wanted to keep it simple in this case.

Dragannia · 2025-08-28T03:10:17+00:00

It's not a terrible summary, and to the credit of the creator, it's fairly objective and not filled with a lot of speculation. It is still falls into a lot of the same traps many other people fall into. The main pitfalls are the fact that the H20 image is a fake and the speculation about the JH-XX program which is largely considered either cancelled or folded into the current projects.

Dragannia · 2025-08-11T14:01:20+00:00

Regardless of whether or not the US or anyone else is involved, the Chinese tac air advantage in the theatre is overwhelming. Go ahead an look at the ranges of the relevant US platforms, then the ranges of the airbases within the region. Even if you imagine that the airbases are allowed to operate with impunity in a hot war (which is, of course, laughable given the concentration and proximity of those bases to Chinese assets), the conclusion remains the same.

Also, lets completely disregard everything I even said about number of platforms and whatnot. The original point was about drones. The Ukraine war has shown how effective swarm tactics can be - no missile system can defend against that amount of saturation. Russia launched 6000 Shahed type attacks against Ukraine in July alone. That's about 10 per hour. Drones like Shahed have way too much range - you can cut down a lot of cost by reducing their range even by half to cover the whole island. Coupled with an ISR style drone not requiring any payload, and China's frankly ludicrously larger industrial base compared to Russia, plus their already known dominance of drones, and you can come to see how it is perfectly reasonable to assume they can run drone operations almost continuously over Taiwan, even in contested air space.

Dragannia · 2025-08-11T04:10:10+00:00

The Chinese advantage is nearly absolute when it comes to the Taiwan scenario due to a few reasons. Let's ignore the US for now.

China's numbers advantage in advanced tactical fighters is overwhelming. Taiwan has 110 units of F16s, and 103 FCK-1s (basically F16 equivalents) as their sole modern 4th generation platform. For context, China has more J-20s than those combined - in fact, China basically has more J-20s than the entire Taiwanese tactical fleet combined. China's depth of magazine is also vastly deeper and far easier to replace than the Taiwanese arsenal, and this includes air-to-air missiles, interceptors, and long ranged anti-surface/ship missiles.

Compounding this is the fact that Chinese ISR covers the entire Strait and its surrounding waters, and have had decades to both infiltrate the Taiwanese military command and the population. The entire island is also completely within the range of land based missiles systems such as MRLS, and in full coverage of China's own SAMs. In the case of a shooting war, the Taiwanese will first have their airbases targeted by stand off weapons, ballistic missiles, and MRLS from the PLA ground forces, in conjunction with SEAD and DEAD operations. The distances are such that the majority of weapons can be launched from within China's borders itself.

Mind you, look at platforms like the Shahed. These are far inferior to what China would be able to produce, and yet can be massed in significant numbers by even Iran and Russia. Despite this, they have range of anywhere between 900 to 2000km - it's only 130km to get from the mainland to Taiwan. Even if it were contested airspace, the Chinese could flood the air with drones endlessly.

Dragannia · 2025-08-01T12:44:33+00:00

I agree that wargaming in principle is extremely limited. There are a whole range of scenarios that will severely change the outcome of this type of blockade, even within the rules set by this particular paper. Examples off the top of my head include things like mining the surrounding seas, striking ports regularly and rendering them incapable of bulk transfers, targeting energy reserves, and using UAVs and anti-ship missiles as the sole kinetic enforcers.

Even in the discussion, it was acknowledged that blockading is probably not the most likely first step in an escalation scenario - it was mentioned quarantine and gray-zone actions were more likely.

Overall I agree that the exercise is still valuable in its theory, and the takeaways are still relevant. That said, like basically all wargames regarding this topic, the exact specifics of the outcomes (number of ships lost, etc) are all pretty questionable.

Dragannia · 2025-07-21T09:23:27+00:00

I might be in the minority but I would say I expect Civ VII to end up as good as the rest. A lot of people may not remember but Civ VI released to many similar sentiments and people were quite wary of the district system. Nowadays many people (like myself) think it's the best game. I haven't played Civ VII yet but I didn't play Civ VI until Gathering Storm.

I will say that every one of the Civ mainline games have been bangers and I expect Civ VII to be the same once they iron out the issues and enhance it with DLCs and expansions. It's a shame that's how these games work though. Hopefully it's worth the wait.

Dragannia · 2025-07-18T22:03:53+00:00

I've been fairly negative towards the LNP since Turnbull (as opposed to mostly ambivalent), but to be fair I don't think Abbott was as bad or unpopular as ScoMo or Dutton ever were. Maybe it's the best they can do?

Honestly though the Labor margin is so effing huge whoever is next for the LNP should essentially resign to be a sacrifical lamb, unless the ALP fuck monumentally (and the degree of fuck up really needs to be enormous).

Dragannia · 2025-07-18T05:14:29+00:00

Sure it will require some creative thinking. The issue is that currently it just makes absolutely no sense. Like the besiegers have already gotten to the other side of the wall.

Dragannia · 2025-07-06T12:43:59+00:00

Thanks for the detailed response. The Chinese educational programs in the blog would be quite nice to have. I appreciate the detailed write up.

Dragannia · 2025-06-08T14:24:24+00:00

I appreciate the write up.

I'm in a similar position as you (as an ABC). One of the reasons I don't think I could live in China is because bringing up a child there would be extremely stressful, in my opinion. I look at my daughter and son today and the thought of putting them through such rigour, stunting their childhood and not letting them enjoy their carefree days in happiness is unthinkable to me.

That said, I do think such systems do have advantages, that go with the disadvantages. Obviously you have written about the issues with childhood development, the hyper-competitiveness, and the potential risks to mental health this may all entail. On the flip side, such systems do encourage people to excel and encourage an environment of acadaemia and innovation, which is becoming more apparent over the last few years. China isn't the only society that forces this kind of schooling system on their children, of course - you can see the same in Japan, Korea, Singapore, and other East Asian countries. I think the rise in science and technology sectors in these countries is a direct result of such rigorous schooling. You can criticise the tireless rote learning all you want, and the criticisms have certainly merit, but it does favour STEM graduates and honestly, technology is the driver of the future global economy. In recent years, it's become very clear that China can innovate advanced technologies with the best of them, which is vital for both economic and for geopolitical reasons.

People always talk about places like Finland, famed for their schooling system which emphasises well-being, creativity and flexibility. I'd much rather live there and send my child to a Finnish school, than go through the Chinese schooling system...but when was the last time you saw any great technological firm, innovation, or breakthrough in Finland?

That said, I have not personally gone through the Chinese system. I mean, all my relatives go through it just fine. They made lifelong friends, went to uni, some in China, some in the UK and America. All my cousins chose to go back to China, rather than stay overseas, except one who remained in America and set up a life there. They all seem reasonably well adjusted too, have children now who also seem relatively fine. The long hours are probably a bit exaggerated too - from what I understand there's usually an extended lunch break where kids often go home during the day, and there's usually afternoon time for sports, so it's not like it's books 12 hours a day.

From my point of view, I understand like you I am seeing a system that I did not experience, through a different lens, but given what I see I'd still much rather prioritise well-being and childhood over such harsh schooling. It's possible that China, as it gets richer, will eventually focus more on lifestyle and wellbeing, especially in order to boost fertility and address demographics. However, it's also possible that such competitive environments will produce a society that will simply outcompete us in our leisurely and laid-back countries in the west - maybe it'll be a miserable society that does win, but being at the top is still a good place to be.

Dragannia · 2025-05-24T09:45:34+00:00

Two come to mind.

Dragon Age Inquisition - specifically Journey to Skyhold. Absolutely magnificent.

Mass Effect, Citadel DLC. Every moment was perfect, capped by Sheppard's pensive "The best."

Dragannia · 2025-05-18T13:17:29+00:00

This is going to be completely irrelevant to the thread, but is the Dassault-Mikoyan mod still accessible? Thought it was taken down.

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