Steve Hayward at Powerline has a post on Why the Future is Trumpist which I agree with fully. Do read it. But what is particularly interesting are his comments on China.

Let’s start today with just the single issue of China (or “Chy-nah,” as Trump likes to enunciate it). I was struck by some recent survey findings from Pew Research displayed in the chart below. You can see that public opinion toward China has turned sharply negative all around the world over the last few years. Trump did that. And it will leave a residue that Biden will have to deal with. Biden—and craven corporate America that doesn’t want to see its lucrative Chinese market shrink—may try to go back to business as usual. But it will come at a political cost. Trump forever shattered the complacency of the China-accommodationists of both parties over the last 20 years.

He also finishes with a word on the Belt and Road program which should be of interest to the Premier of Victoria who will be looking to finance his many idiocies both past and present.

The Financial Times over the weekend notes some significant changes in China’s international lending practices. China’s government control banks were lending massively (more than the World Bank and its affiliates in many years) to promote their “belt and road” strategy that aimed to secure markets for China. But this was the epitome of predatory lending. When a developing country was unable to make payments on loans, China would convert the debt into equity, and thus extend their ownership of foreign infrastructure. You might even call this imperialism. In any case, China’s lending has suddenly dried up.

Biden will no doubt continue to try to sell America out, but perhaps the Chinese will no longer be buying.

Commentary has virtually disappeared from across the web so I will content myself with this that was posted at Instapundit yesterday. For myself, almost no one really seems to care since for virtually no one their personal circumstances will not change, or not soon enough for them to notice, especially in the Age of Covid. We have by stages introduced a Mussolini-type fascist system into the United States, which is a one-party corporate state where things are run by political leaders in partnership with large business. The same system was found in Franco’s Spain from the 1930s to the 1960s. You will not starve, there will be a form of freedom for anyone who is content to just get along with the powers that be but will be static and generally all right for anyone who wishes to just get along. Sort of like having the return of the Roman Empire after the Republic had been put to bed. We will have our modern form of Bread and Circuses, welfare and Netflix being the modern form. Donald Trump has given us our last taste of what a free society could look like. It has gone and I cannot see how it might ever come back again, or certainly not soon enough to matter to anyone alive today. The rest below is from Instapundit which is itself pretty defeatist. No one seems to care even in the slightest.

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A COUPLE OF COMMENTS FROM FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK ABOUT LAST NIGHT’S SUPREME COURT OPINION:

“We lost. Treating that as the end of the world and saying everything is hopeless is exactly what the other side wants us to do.”

“I don’t trust the Dems. Nor do I trust the Republicans. But I do trust people like Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas. SCOTUS has ruled. I think they are erring on the side of leaving states alone, which from a certain standpoint is the right call. But man, people, there is so much work to do in the next four years. To ensure the *next* fraud is not nearly so easy for the DNC. They exploited a unique situation: the Covid Panic. Circumstances will not always align for this. And, they’ve cheated before. It’s how Kennedy won in 1960. It does not mean we’re destined forever to be disenfranchised. It just means the Prole Rebellion has to go GROUND GAME in precincts and in the state legislatures. Nothing is permanent. Biden-Harris can be survived. Gotta make sure the Prole Rebellion doesn’t exit with Trump. It should never have been about one man anyway. It should be all about the idea: of the Little Man wresting back control of his government from would-be oligarchs and technocrats.”

“Consider. Tammany Hall once ruled New York City. It was utterly corrupt, and utterly controlled that city for a long time. Until . . . it shriveled and bled and died of its own necrotic rot. Something the Tammany crew would have thought unthinkable in their prime. To echo what I have already said: corrupt systems often seem at the height of their power, right before they collapse. Did anyone guess in 1988 that the Soviets would collapse and be done for within 24 months? Did LBJ or Kennedy believe Nixon would come back to win big? The ballot box took a hit. It’s smoking. It is not destroyed. Now the Dems get to spend four years with Biden-Harris doing a clown show in the White House.”

“Stop. Even if all you do is make them cheat harder, you will vote. Don’t let the lying, cheating, stealing bastards get you down. Time to fight. Or fight harder. And prepare. Because sh*t will get real soon enough. Make sure you are ready.”

UPDATE: Another friend sends this: “A discussion of all lawful means to oppose the near certain incoming Biden administration and to organize to prevent the same fraud occurring in future elections, including in Georgia in a few weeks, would be good. People on the right are so irate that some small number are virtually certain to do spasmodic and foolish things, that would provoke a very destructive crack down. In fact, I have to believe this is what the Ds snd the nomenklatura want. Giving people a lawful and potentially affective outlet for their legitimate anger would be helpful. I really don’t know what the answer to this is at all, myself, and I’d like to start hearing ideas.

Let me add a few of the comments from the top that begin with the generally considered “best” comment.

The tragedy isn’t Trump losing – although that is terrible – it’s the disenfranchisement. It’s how out in the open and naked it was. How do you change the laws when they can literally just summon up an unlimited number of votes? “Vote harder” doesn’t work in th at scenario. No, I’m not proposing giving up or not participating, but these are honest questions: what does trying harder look like? How does one change a rigged system.

Don’t worry. Corrupt, oppressive oppressor regimes eventually collapse under their own weight. The British invaded Ireland and only 700 years later they were driven out. The same thing with the Moors in Spain. By the 28th century they will be out of power and democracy and the rule of law will be restored.

For the first time in my adult life, i am not sure that the kind of discussions i read here will be legal and permitted in four year’s time. We didn’t lose – the highest and most political court in the nation refused to hear the case. For the eight horrible years of Obama, i kept thinking that the only way the left and uniparty would act this way was if they truly believed they would never be out of power again. Trump’s victory defeated their margin of fraud. They will never make that mistake again. To read so many comments about ‘we must fight the fraud harder’ next time is disheartening. I understand the human desire to want to believe things will be the same. But the left runs the country, the Constitution no longer protects you. We have lost our rights to a new King George. It is up to each one of us to decide how much we are willing to give to get them back. Pretending this was just another election and we can go back to normal in 4 years is a drug of the mind, it’s a lie we tell ourselves to avoid a terrible truth.

I don’t understand this post. We will have mass amnesty, increased censorship, interminable lockdowns, and tracking of every citizen, presumably for our own safety. The New normal is here. Vastly less small business and the self-reliance that engenders, increased control from every Federal department from the EPA to HUD, and social and economic Justice. They’re going to make sure that this never happens again.

To think that today we are freer to speak our minds in Moscow than in New York. Think about that. In Russia, if you don’t attack Putin, they’ll leave you alone. Here, they will fire you, harass you, and someday soon, jail you for defending your religion, espousing traditional marriage, saying there are two genders, or stating that Climate Change is just leftist control freakery BS.

This is a rarity, an article on the Chinese economy which forecasts that it is going nowhere. By Rowan Callick in The Australian yesterday: Ticking time bomb: why Xi is dragging down the dragon. The sub-head: “It’s a scenario that has become almost unthinkable, but what if China’s economy — which is being driven substantially by Western stimulus funding — starts to slide backwards”.

It is the innate belief by virtually everyone that a centralised socialist economy can outperform a free market capitalist economy. It is the combination of Keynes with Marx that makes this seem to make some kind of sense, but these are both macro views of the world without a smidgeon of microeconomic thought about how resource allocation is to occur so that inputs flow towards their highest valued uses. I thought this was a pretty big sign of the times for Victoria the other day when it handed down its insane budget: Curious case of the missing budget paper:

The Andrews government has come under fire for omitting a key budget paper revealing expenditure on infrastructure projects, sparking accusations from the opposition that it is censoring the budget.

What are they hiding, you might ask. Head down St Kilda Road sometime and see the massive works on the station at The Shrine, a billion dollars worth of  uncompleted construction to build a station where no one ever goes, other than on ANZAC Day. Centralised economies become such disasters that eventually there is no hiding the problems any longer. And so it is with China. For me, this is evidence of an economy in a complete shambles:

The consumption share of China’s economy is low today — only 39 per cent of GDP — compared with 66 per cent in the US, and it is well below the 45 per cent reached in China itself at the start of the 2000s.

Oz also has around 66% consumption share. The article also shows the published GDP stats:

GDP is such a misleading indicator. I used to love pointing out the massive holes in front of our building at RMIT where our state socialists are building some kind of station for a train line that won’t be operational for seven years. All that expenditure goes into the National Accounts, but not until the train line opens will there be even a single dollar’s worth of value added returned for all of the prior expense.

So with China. The Chinese are amongst the most entrepreneurial people on the planet, but if their entrepreneurs are overridden by political leaders it will not mean a thing.

As for our dealings with the Chinese, foreign policy should not be mixed up with trade. We are part of the Western alliance. There is no abandoning our foreign policy essentials even in a Biden-led America (heaven help us). If China won’t buy our coal and lobsters sell to someone else. Markets, as mysterious as they are to your average socialist nong, are our friend.