xiaohongshu

This is like when you send a generic letter to all the recipients with the Find and Replace function.

Therefore, we invite you to participate in the extraordinary Economy of the United States, the Number One Market in the World, by far.

lmao. this timeline is not real!

This is quite common. In the 1980s, a few Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia had hoped to receive some technology transfer by giving massive tax breaks to multinational semiconductor companies (Intel, AMD, Hitachi etc.), but mostly they ended up doing the finishing packaging, assembly and testing work for foreign corporations to sell to their export markets. The core technologies are usually kept protected.

China can of course choose to democratize the technology by sharing them with the developing countries, but that would end up killing their own private companies that needs to survive on the market economy.

As they say, if you borrow a bit from a bank, the bank owns you. If you borrow a lot from a bank, you own the bank.

Similarly, if you import a bit from an exporting country, the country owns you. If you import a lot from that country, you own their economy.

Covid was practically a trial run for a supply chain shock of the eventual global trade war the US would launch.

China's BYD to start assembling electric cars in Brazil Reuters

• Chinese electric vehicle maker ready to open Bahia factory
• BYD eyes Brazilian assembly of some 50,000 cars in 2025
• Executive says labor lawsuit will not derail factory timeline

SAO PAULO, July 7 (Reuters) - China's BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab is poised to start assembling electric vehicles at a new factory in Brazil as early as this month, a top executive said, reducing imports as tariffs start to rise in its largest foreign market.

Alexandre Baldy, senior vice president for BYD in Brazil, said the goal is to assemble 50,000 cars this year at the plant in Bahia state from imported kits, adding that he is negotiating a lower tax rate on those vehicles.

"We should inaugurate in the coming days," Baldy said in an interview late on Friday, without specifying a date, as final regulatory approvals are still pending. "We've already completed this year's imports, taking advantage of the period before the import tax increase that took effect on July 1."

BYD had sent a surge of finished cars into Brazil this year to take advantage of temporarily lower tariffs, shipping some 22,000 from China in the first five months, according to Reuters calculations.

That stirred complaints in Brazil's auto industry that BYD was privileging Chinese manufacturing over production from Bahia, where a labor probe and heavy rains have disrupted plans. A state labor secretary said in May that the plant would only be "fully functional" at the end of 2026.

However, Baldy said it would begin full production in July 2026, after assembling vehicles from "complete knock down" (CKD) kits for the next 12 months.

Once fully operational, he said, the complex in Camacari is likely to generate up to 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Expectations for the operation, on the site of a former Ford plant taken over in 2023, suffered in December when labor inspectors leveled accusations of labor abuses involving Chinese contractors hired to build the complex. Brazilian prosecutors filed a lawsuit in May holding BYD responsible for human trafficking and submitting workers to "slavery-like conditions," after talks on a settlement fell through.

"BYD has always sought to respect Brazilian law and human dignity in all operations," Baldy said, adding that the company wanted to reach a resolution. He did not say why efforts to negotiate a settlement had fallen through.

All it took was for China to halt Brazilian beef import for Brazil to cave. Amazing. Brazil has less leverage than it thinks it has.

Better than Ukraine trying to rewrite history and erase the contribution of the USSR there.

The CPRF Congress adopted a resolution recognizing Khrushchev's report on Stalin as a mistake RBC

The issue is about recognizing as “erroneous and politically biased” the report of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee on Stalin’s personality cult, which he delivered on February 25, 1956 at the 20th Congress of the CPSU

The Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution recognizing as “erroneous and politically biased” the report of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Nikita Khrushchev on the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, an RBC correspondent reports.

In 2016, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov called the merits of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin the fact that they “assembled the entire empire, built nine thousand of the best factories, gave the best social policy, essentially created nuclear missile weapons and broke through into space.” He criticized Khrushchev for trying to debunk the “Leninist-Stalinist modernization” and thereby “committed a crime against the people.”

Vologda Oblast Governor Georgy Filimonov claimed in an interview with RBC this spring that the data on Stalin's repressions were "greatly exaggerated" by Khrushchev and that they were "an instrument for strengthening power." "We need to speak about repressions in a balanced way; it was a necessary instrument for strengthening power at that time," Filimonov believes. A monument to Stalin was unveiled on the territory of the branch of the Vologda State Museum-Reserve "Vologda Exile."

In a 2017 interview with director Oliver Stone, Vladimir Putin called the “excessive demonization of Stalin” one of the ways, one of the ways of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia. It is important that political repressions do not recur in the country’s history, he said in 2023 at a meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights.

In April of this year, Putin promised to consider renaming Volgograd to Stalingrad, and in the same month he named Volgograd airport "Stalingrad".

Took them 71 years.

Russian Wage Growth Hits 16-Year Peak Amid Race to Find Workers (Bloomberg)

THE BELL: Russians have never lived as well as they do today (bne IntelliNews)

Protests against surging mass tourism in Mexico City end in vandalism, harassment of tourists AP

Tension had been mounting in the city since U.S. “digital nomads” flocked to Mexico City in 2020, many to escape coronavirus lockdowns in the U.S. or to take advantage of cheaper rent prices in the Latin American city.

Since then, rents have soared and locals have increasingly gotten pushed out of their neighborhoods, particularly areas like Condesa and Roma, lush areas packed with coffee shops and restaurants.

Michelle Castro, a 19-year-old college student, was among the flocks of people protesting. She said that she’s from the city’s working class city center, and that she’s watched slowly as apartment buildings have been turned into housing for tourists.

“Mexico City is going through a transformation,” she said. “There are a lot of foreigners, namely Americans, coming to live here. Many say it’s xenophobia, but it’s not. It’s just that so many foreigners come here, rents are skyrocketing because of Airbnb. Rents are so high that some people can’t even pay anymore.”

The Mexico City protest follows others in European cities like Barcelona, Madrid, Paris and Rome against mass tourism.

Interesting development. It used to be that developing countries want to attract as many foreigners as possible to stimulate the local economy with their strong currencies, now people are even fed up with American tourists.

Doesn’t look very welcoming for those who want to flee from Trump as well.

If you have a chance to talk to Chinese grad students or postdocs, just ask them about what it’s like back in the country.

Only ～5% of the population (～70 million people, or ~9% of total workforce) have to pay personal income tax, because most people don’t even reach the minimum income needed (5000 yuan/month, or ~$700 USD/month) to qualify for income tax payment. The wealth disparity is huge.

Actually China is already trying to take advantage of the situation and offer positions to American scientists.

But read my comment here - the Chinese academia is way harsher for foreigners to survive the environment and work culture. Most Americans are probably more suited to the more relaxed European academic culture than in China.