Oh. Ha. Covid.

 

My live in parent finally has covid. Amazing. They've been going full face commando for over a year inhaling everyone's germs and have been fine. I thought they were one of those lucky ducks who were immune! Nope. They have covid. 

And now so do I.

Yet again, the people who aren't masking, who can't maintain vigilance are the ones infecting me. Sigh.

Today in Geopolitics...

I first became aware that China was a problem in the mid 1990s. I was working in international trade and that gave me a front row seat to the actual dynamics of things that were just headlines for most people.

I saw the sheer volume of trade funneling into China. It was insane. To where you couldn't help but wonder why there was so much of it.

At the same time, Chinese foreign agents would literally show up at the company doorstep, cameras hanging around their necks pretending to be a customer, and they would do anything and everything to gain access to manufacturing intel. They were aggressive and clearly doing this at scale, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down.

Then you get into what it takes to open a company or factory in China. China/Chinese businesses must have an ownership share of 51% and they basically get full access to everything; your tech, your formulas, your best practices. China wasn't going to be used, they were going to use you instead. They were always very clear-eyed about making sure their interests were served first and foremost.

It's always been interesting to me that China hasn't been able to go further than they have because they were gobbling up intel nonstop. Sometimes I wonder if they got too much data and struggled to make sense of it all. You could see signs that they had trouble getting their quality to match their aspirations.

At one point, my employer opened a factory in China and it was a shit show. Americans think once something is taught, you're good, but other cultures have a different sense of training and quality. We flew in the chemists and engineers for a short training period and then they came home. Well, the manufacturing went to shit the second they weren't there. The folks running the plant ran into issues and then got 'creative' about throwing what looked to them like input equivalents into the work flow.

Some of you may remember, there was a scandal with toys (if memory serves it was Disney) being painted with lead paint. Someone made do with what they had. That was the ethos of the Chinese manufacturing sector at the time. If you wanted a red toy car, you were going to get one. It's just the paint might be made of polonium. 

They were very serious about making their commitments without much interest in the fine details. Even if they had to make it out of toothpicks and dryer lint, you were going to get your order. The fact it fell apart or caught fire once it arrived on your dock...well, that's your fault. 

Anyway, I got called into the boardroom and asked how to fix it...which is another story so I'll skip it as it's too far off topic, but I'll never forget being the only woman and the youngest person in the room and none of the good ol' boys making bonus knew what the fuck they were doing. It was like, 'oh, you won't promote me, pay me, or consult me on the front end, but once you've turned it into a circus of clusterfucks with your collective micropeen energy, it's on me to wave a magic wand?'

So I was in the soup, watching all these dynamics simmer, and there was just too much money going into China. Way too much money. I handled logistics and supply chain all over the world and easily 90% of the volume was going to and from China. Global trade was strangely lopsided. Looking back, I can see that the West failed to realize we needed to develop other markets too. It was a warped tunnel vision version of globalism, one where all that mattered was China.

And then there'd be some political drama with China in the news and they'd throw their weight around. They weren't working with us. It was and is really obvious if you're paying attention. The West gave China all this investment to try and move the world to a better place, to improve relations, but China had their own agenda. 

(Namely to build a military full of weapons they could point back at us. 

We paid for their warships. Their air force. Their nukes. Every made-in-China item in your life...it links back to destructive weapons.

Weapons they now want to send to Russia.)

So the soup was sloshing along and geopolitics would occasionally heat up (although compared to current events, I can't believe I thought anything before this latest era was serious lol) and lil ol' me would wonder 'why the hell hasn't US foreign policy developed an economic counterweight to China?'

Which should have been India, but the West has a lot of baggage with India. They were aligned with the USSR during the Cold War and have a long standing relationship with Russians. And the US sided with Pakistan against India in their 'threatening to go nuclear' dust up of, I think it was, the late 70s. Meaning, India and the US aren't BFFs. The nations work together and are friendly, but it's an edgy relationship. We're far from ride-or-die best bitches.

And the West just...never did anything. We lost our sense of urgency. We never made much progress with India. We kept feeding the tiger. And at the same time, we fed the Russian bear, too. The West thought trade was the cure for every ill and kept leaning into that, waiting for money to turn everything it touched into a friendly democracy. 

Meanwhile, China and Russia joined a club called BRICS which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. (I would add Iran as well to that.) All countries with populist autocratic leaders (although Brazil seems to have broken the cycle for the moment). 

And did you know? BRICS nations don't just weaponize social media against us and meddle with elections, they also do military exercises together. They just did one a few weeks ago.

The West likes to think it won the Cold War, but would you call this winning? What did we win exactly?

Because it looks to me like the prize is more war.

The Cold War didn't end, it metastasized and the West didn't even notice until it was too late.