Countries directly bordering the US are innevitably immensely vulnerable to both military and economic pressure and absent an actual revolutionary ideological paradigm in power they will bend the knee to US demands to a notable degree. It was never a question and frankly there is little China can do if America decides to go that road regarding its immediate neighborhood or countries it has long occupied politicaly and economicaly. Any imaginary net importer China could not happen quickly enough and with enough scale to counteract the coercive power and market leverage America holds over a country like mexico. Extrapolating an extreme case like this into some grand proof of what China should or should not do isnt valid. The other extreme to Mexico is a country bordering China with China having an outsized economic footprint and integration, which is the case for quite a lot of countries in Asia actualy where China is even a larger export destination compared to the US. Until a country like that enters into a larger scale tarrif and economic spat with China following american coercion (we dont even know how this will mexico will play out) then jumping off of what mexico does is a huge leap. Even outside of China's neighbourhood, most developing countries dont have anywhere near 70% of their exports going to the US. Most dont even have 30% or 20%. China will be at like ~10% by the end of the year. Hell even in half of Latin America China is a bigger export destination compared to the US. Like what are the math here? What % of developing countries should have China as their main export destination and by what degree?

Also China is already consuming a larger % of its production and manufacturing than most developing and even some developed countries with their exports as a % of GDP not being something eye watering either. Given the above and considering that while chinese consumption has a bunch of room to grow (its slightly lower as a % than some other "SEA tigers" but higher than what is oftenly reported through outdated or wrongly calculated stats), when you say that China needs to become a net importer and do it to a degree that it can replace the american Market for most it means one thing. Large scale de-industrialization. Consumption increase can not nearly be enough for that flip unless the end goal is for Chinese people to be consuming as much or more than americans per capita. It can only happen if China both reduces its exports and reduces the % of its own production that it consumes. This cant happen without rapidly de-industrializing in a notable scale (since you want this to happen in a matter of decades). And when a lot of that manufacturing is getting automated and energy is hillariously cheap it makes no sense to. Well moderately high inflation could help if thats desirable. Also China is aiming for higher energy and food self sufficiency (and is right to do so) and that cant go along with significant increases in energy and food imports, especially without growing population.

Given Mexico's exports what the fuck could China possibly import from them in large enough quanities for China to even compete with America as its main export market (needs a 4fold+ overall increase along with a decrease in americas share to do that) ? Cars? Electronics and household devices and machines? Again not possible if China doesnt de-industrialize almost completely in those sectors. Even if their production in those sectors magicaly stagnated there isnt enough consumption room for a 2 fold, let along 4 fold increase in consumption in per capita volume in those ereas for the chinese consumer. Hell in cars and motorcircles they are closing in to the US in annual per capita sales and consume more volume already. Now go country by country and pose the same questions

New dongfeng numbers to obliderate the baltics with

They pulled out the ufos

Idk if its an unpopular opinion but the various pla branches flags with the color stripe at the bottom are real neat!

Of all the ghouls China might welcome in some dumbass event someone Kissinger related is pretty inoffensive considering Chinese attitudes towards Kissinger for historical reasons.

Well its not a military partnership in any way. The fact that it was mainly Iran that was dragging its feet on the greenlighting of the comprehensive security partnership until they were literally being bombed and after the 8th time of "fell for it again award" regarding western diplomacy and attempt should throw some cold water both on the possibility of dirrect russian involvement and more so Iran's on own urgency and internal political will to form close alliances (and yes dependencies) to Russia and China over the last whatever years

The US has built a disgustingly single digit amount of remotely hardened hangars in their pacific theater bases despite think tanks and analysts screaming that they should for a decade now. Dont be so sure the US is competent in preparing their bases appropriately for this new era of warfare in the theater that matters

its not out of the question that the coordinated Japan-Korea-China response to tarrifs that was talked about was true and it was about strategicaly selling UST, fucking up the bond market and spooking Trump into caving

The car aint going anywhere in the coming decades for hundreds of millions of people. The best case somewhat realistic scenario enviromentaly for those people then becomes those cars being EVs along with cheap and abundant clean electricy through renewables and battery advances. There is, or at least should be demand for this scale of expanded EV production. At least in China there is

Greek results for the Euro-elections are both more of the same and somewhat unique.

On the communist side (there actualy being one is already somewhat unique) KKE ,love it or hate it (or more likely be somewhere in between), continued their steady rise hitting 9.3% (vs 7.5% in the parliamentary/presidential elections) last year and basicaly double the ~5% that they were stuck at over last decade. Yeah they arent on the forefront on LGBT issues to say it lightly (tho still not to be lumped with patsocs culture warriorism, spewing hate or Russian communist party levels of social conservativism) and yeah they weirdly have almost leftcom/maoist positions regarding the Russia-Ukraine war and China. But they have survived the waves of eurocommunism, opportunism,reformism, gladio and anti-communism that have swept through the European communist and socialist scene in the last 50 years and stand today, despite their issues, as arguably the most popular and active hardline ML party in "western democracies".

On the "center-left" /socdem side more of the same. Syriza after having eaten shit and imploded in the last 1-2 years continues to stay in useless territory and got ~15%. Tsipras resigned last year and then they literaly imported some better looking Pete Buttigieg - Beto O'Rourke dude from the US but with worse politics (reaganite, campaigned for Biden in 2008) and made him the leader. Like look at this . That caused some demsocs to split and form a new party "New Left" that got 2% or smth. PASOK continues to do nothing after being Pasokified and sits at like 11-12%. Sad to see since they had a kinda cool socdem regime aura in the 70s and 80s. Varoufakis continues enjoying his internationalist demsoc larp party at ~2.5% outside of parliament.I dont hate him or anything but like 90% of Greece does ,mostly unfairly tbh, but good luck with that.

Reminder that Greece also has an active and well organized anarchist and communist sphere outside of KKE and KKE aligned orgs and unions that doesnt care or doesnt do much in elections either but is also a factor in the relative balance of politics

On the far right there has been some rise but im convinced its much less so overall compared to most of Europe. The voter/supporter pool for far right, hard-nationalist/conservative parties has been at 15-20% for a decade now. Its just that there hasnt been a unified movement or party to exploit that and coalesce that support around them and even break through. Far right is actualy quite fractured in Greece with multiple ultra orthodox, alt right grifters or neonazi parties capturing 1-5% of the votes each and the rulling New Democracy party (not Maoist sadly, 80% Macron - 20% Le Pen) also capturing some % of the fascist base. And they cant as of now act together or have coherent plans and coalitions. In these elections a far right party Greek Solution (that despite its name isnt really commited golden dawn ultra-nazi as much as grifter-orthodox fascists) did managed to rise at 9.3% , matching KKE, but i believe its mostly due to circumstance. They were at 4.5% in last years elections and another fascist party that got 4.5% as well was banned from running now because of connections/being a continuation to Golden Dawn. So they got a bunch of those votes and some ultra nationalists moved from New Democracy to them as well. Overall i still see it as yet another reconfiguration of the existing far right base that just moves to and from different parties as if they are communicating vessells for the better part of a decade now and especially after golden dawn's ban. For example a completely evangelical tier orthodox brainworms party also got 3% and some alt right grifter chick run on incel stuff and being somewhat hot and also got 3%. These parties wont exist in 5 years time and others will have taken their place. Lastly i have to note that in the north part of Greece , Macedonia etc, far right is seeing a surge and the communist party despite also gaining, is being left behind. Thats mostly a function of the whole North Macedonia name debacle that has left many, many Greek nationalists there absolutely seething and maybe something of a movement may be forming.

Lastly the rulling party , New Democracy, got ~29%. A notable drop from last years elections where it dominated with 40%. A lot of their base probably didnt care ,they are increasingly unpopular for sure and also like i said some of their far right and nationalist base moved towards smaller more hard line far right parties in this occassion since to protest against some of the Ukraine war support, Macedonia name stuff and Turkey dialogue stuff . They'll prbably be back tho

With China reconciling with the US

Name a single relevant and concrete concession, policy change or backstep China has taken in the last couple of months in context of this "reconciling with the US" that noticably diverges from their behavior 6 months or 12 months ago. Xi visiting the US and saying "lets all coexist peacefully mmmkey?" or signing some deal for soybeans or whatever doesnt sell the story to me

Even if China's demographic issues are as big as dumbass clickbait YT vids and reddit comments make it out to be that would still put China in the demographic position of SK a couple of decades ago. S. Korea quintupled industrial production between 1992-2010 and their productivity rose x6 while it's factory workforce dropped 25%. It's all about education, tech, and productivity. More important than the aggregate Chinese population is the technically proficient,college educated, Chinese population. That has grown 20-fold, or by 2,000%, in the past 40 years and will continue to grow due to the hundreds of millions of untapped rural population despite the decline in population.

So point is, economy is still growing. The plan has always been to create self-sustaining growth in exports to the Global South with BRI infrastructure + productivity leap at home. Both of those aspects show great success. Exports and imports to the GS are expanding and the entire SEA is brought in the sphere of Chinese digital economy. The "greater China" economy includes another billion people in SE and Central Asia.China is getting 2x to 8x productivity leaps with AI/5G apps in industry/mining/logistics.

And all that is assuming China cant and will not tackle demographic issues in any other manners