I’m not really sure what critical areas China needs to catch up in at this point. The chips they produce are already good enough for any practical applications. It’s also worth keeping in mind that improving software is much easier than hardware. Western software stacks are incredibly bloated. For example, Huawei starting fresh with their HarmonyOS can make a much leander stack by cutting all the cruft and backwards compatibility out.

I also don’t see China being decades behind in chips. They can already make 7nm, they’re prototyping EUV machines, it’s not going to be long at this point. On top of that, China is investing into research of alternative substrates like graphene, spintronics, etc. Any one of these could make silicon look like vacuum tubes overnight if they can scale them up to mass production. There’s no new fundamental physics that need to be discovered here, we know these these things work in a lab. It’s just a matter of scaling up production. And that’s precisely where state driven development comes in.

Can you explain what this tide of reversal you’re talking about with BRI? Last I looked, the investment is record high https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3340442/china-signs-record-us213-billion-new-belt-and-road-deals-2025-report

The Epstein files are the biggest scandal the western system has faced to date in my opinion. This is bigger than stuff like Watergate because it spans multiple administrations in the US, as well as other western regimes. It’s a total indictment of the idea that there’s any sort of a democracy in the west. It’s now plain for everyone to see that the west is ruled by diabolical monsters who are accountable to no one. And this comes at a time of a rapid decline in the living standards which makes people angry and politically engaged. Things that might’ve been ignored before cannot be ignored any longer.

Finally, it seems to me that the west is headed for a massive financial crash. While people keep playing games with the numbers, it’s pretty clear that all the tangible metrics like job numbers and cost of living are doing very poorly. The only question in my mind is what the catalyst will be. It could be the coming war with Iran which might drive oil prices through the roof.

True, they’ve dreamt of invading Iran since their regime there was overthrown.

There might actually be a direct relationship there as well. Taiwan being the chokepoint for western chip production puts them in a perfect position to insert backdoors into all western tech. There’s a reason the US was freaking out over Huawei tech spreading in the west. The problem with it isn’t that there’s some Chinese malware in it, but rather that western agencies can’t use it for spying.

Yes is is, any class based society is a dictatorship of one class over the other. You either have capitalists or the workers in charge of society. As Anna Louise Strong puts it in This Soviet World:

Yeah it’s going to be a process. The dynamic I see is that people in the mainstream are becoming disillusioned as they see their standard of living continuing to decline while also watching the elites being completely unaccountable. As they fall out of the liberal mainstream, they become open to entertaining new ideas, and that’s where people on the left have to step in to help guide their understanding.

It’s kind of sad how even the far right holds their leaders to a higher standards than libs do with theirs. Liberals are truly a cult at this point.

whatever you say baby Goebbels

I think a lot of it comes down to the foundational mythology of the US. The whole shining city on a hill, the idea of American exceptionalism, and the reverence for the Constitution are all designed to cultivate the belief that the US is the Platonic ideal of human society, and that nothing better is possible.

So when people see the social contract start to fray, their gut reaction isn’t to question the system itself. Instead, they look for nefarious outside agents who are trying to undermine the perfect society the US is supposed to be. That’s why the narrative of Trump being a Russian puppet was so popular. It’s easier for people to accept that he’s an agent of a hostile nation hellbent on destroying America out of envy, than to see him for what he is: an opportunist who is a direct product of the system unraveling from within.

There’s no single report summing this up, but here are a few article discussing European dependence on US arms exports

• https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2025-03/arms-imports-soaring-in-europe-sipri-think-tank-says.html
• https://en.hespress.com/105384-report-european-militaries-reach-60-reliance-on-us-weapons.html?print
• https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/europes-dependence-on-us-arms-rose-in-last-five-years-says-report/article69311997.ece
• https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2025/sipri-top-100-arms-producers-see-combined-revenues-surge-states-rush-modernize-and-expand-arsenals

The problem that Europe has is lack of access to cheap energy. They’re now pretty entirely reliant on expensive LNG from the US, and industries things steel production, essential to the military, are incredibly expensive as a result.

That seems to be the dominant faction in the US right now for sure.

I’d argue both of these things are true. The people making profit off the war want to keep making money, and people who want to consolidate resources for strategic purposes like destroying Iran want to end it. You have to keep in mind that the US is not a hivemind with a common purpose. There are many different groups all pulling things in different directions based on their own interests.

The difference is that nazis in Ukraine are literally the ruling party in the government and in control of the military with elite openly fascist battalions like Azov. Last I checked this isn’t the case in Russia, but certainly is becoming openly the case in the US. Hence I guess why western fascists feel such deep kinship with the Ukrainian ones. Y’all have shared values.

ah yes this fascist movement you’re cheering for being an open fascist that you are?

• https://jacobin.com/2022/02/maidan-protests-neo-nazis-russia-nato-crimea
• https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4440100
• https://consortiumnews.com/2022/12/29/evidence-of-us-backed-coup-in-kiev/
• https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/10/us-imperialism-and-the-ukraine-coup/

Clearly, a fascist regime that suppresses rights of minorities, bans all opposition, jails people with opposing views, gets rid of independent media, and then cancels elections is the pinnacle of democracy.

Literally described what the fascist regime in Ukraine is currently doing there.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/volodymyr-zelensky-secret-police-hunted-down-opposition-anatoly-shariy/280200/

https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/24/ukraine-unguided-rockets-killing-civilians

why would I think that Putin is a communist, only people who even bring this idiocy up are deranged libs

the system eats itself

China is not a net fuel producer, they import a large portion of their energy themselves. They have been donating solar panels however, and hopefully they ramp that up. However, Russia being one of the biggest fuel exporters is stepping up.

Lack of class analysis is really the key problem in my opinion. People just reduce politics to voting, and think that as long as they’re allowed to vote then if things aren’t going their way it’s their fault. This whole narrative that you just have to vote harder if you don’t get what you want was an incredibly insidious bit of propaganda.

if you look at the tangible numbers, there’s barely anything actually being produced in Europe

libs just love to see more people die