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Cake day: August 4th, 2025

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  • China has been trying a lot to become self-sufficient, but in some areas they failed. Food is one of them. China is a major food importer, it’s imports exceed by far the exports (often with ration of 20 and 30 to 1).

    But even if China would be able to grow canola domestically, it wouldn’t mean too much as Canada must diversify its trade anyway. Just because China isn’t a reliable partner and engages in coercion whenever the government deems it appropriate. Diversifying trade is the only way, not in the least as Canada and other allies can’t ignore human rights, e.g., China’s genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet, its aggression against Taiwan, and so on.
















  • I got it, you can just also take China as an example. The story is more or less the same: Critical thinking is only allowed if it doesn’t contradicts the state narrative, belief in the leader’s thought first and foremost, historical knowledge is poor due to censorship (younger people have never heard about the Tiananmen Square massacre, for example, and barely know about genocides such as in Xiniang), state propaganda is prevalent, and it is easy for the Party to implement a totalitarian agenda.

    So it’s basically the same thing.













  • Interesting stuff, especially if we view the wider picture.

    I am using the World Inequality Index cited in the linked report and - as the report does - look how the country’s richest 1% increased or decreased their share of the total country’s wealth.

    Between 2000 and 2023, Canada’s richest 1% increased their share of the country’s total wealth from 27% to 29%.

    • In the U.S., the richest 1% increased their share of the country’s total wealth from 32% to 35%
    • In China, the richest 1% increased their share of the country’s total wealth from 20% to 30%
    • In India, the richest 1% increased their share of the country’s total wealth from 20% to 40%

    You’ll find that the UK’s richest 1% is stable at around 20% between 2000 and 2023, while numbers for Germany and France also remain in the higher 20s.

    So unlike twenty years ago, inequality is now higher in China and India than it is in Canada, at least according to this measure used in the report.

    The global average (purchasing power adjusted) remained more or less unchanged at ~36% in the same period.

    There’s a lot to do for humanity everywhere.

    You can look up for other countries if interested here.










  • I fully agree.

    In addition, we must not forget that there is massive slave-like labour in Chinese supply chains - within China as well as abroad. As I posted in another thread, Brazil is just one recent example for that:

    [In Brazil], in the same month that Chinese BYD’s car carrier arrived in the country, Brazilian prosecutors announced plans to sue BYD and two of its contractors for ‘slave like conditions’ at a factory site. A task force led by Brazilian prosecutors said it rescued 163 Chinese nationals working in “slavery-like” conditions at a construction site […] where Chinese electric vehicle company BYD is building a factory.

    The [Brazilian] Labor Prosecutor’s Office released videos of the dorms where the [Chinese] construction workers were staying, which showed beds with no mattresses and rooms without any places for the workers to store their personal belongings.

    Officials said [BYD contractor] Jinjiang […] had confiscated the workers’ passports and held 60% of their wages. Those who quit would be forced to pay the company for their airfare from China, and for their return ticket, the statement said.

    Prosecutors said the sanitary situation at BYD’s site in Camaçari was especially critical, with only one toilet for every 31 workers, forcing them to wake up at 4 a.m. to line up and get ready to leave for work at 5:30 a.m.

    I don’t think that Canadians want ChEaP cArS made by slave-labour.