China Evening Missive Well, Xi Jinping didn’t accept Trump’s invitation to the inaugural, but he has accepted Putin’s May 9th invitation to the 80th anniversary of the “Victory in the Great Patriotic War” AKA the defeat of the Nazis. Perhaps not an apples-to apples comparison, but it is also rare for a Chinese President to publicly accept any invitation months in advance of an event. No question that there’s a host of pieces on the board of the Great Game being played here at the same time. If, and it is a big IF, this gets picked up by the American press you can be assured that there’ll be a message. Rather than see this as it is, leaders of the very broad coalition against the Rules Based International Order meeting, the dangerous meeting of America’s enemies. For me, this is just a very smart geopolitical move by Moscow and Beijing. https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-xi-accepts-invitation-attend-moscows-victory-day-may-tass-reports-2025-02-10/

The Economist never fails nor disappoints. Cover here is from 2015. The road to calling the collapse of #China is littered with more dead bodies than I can count. View quoted note →

This has been making the rounds. Jokes aside ….. he’s not wrong. The guys who built DeepSeek did it as a side project for their quant fund. Nvidia and all those associated to the closed source OpenAI are looking to have a very rough week ahead in the markets. Also, no relation with “goodalexander”

Need to reiterate the following to any/all who are new to Nostr. Engagement with the community is critical. A “lurker’s” mentality will result in a very sub-par experience. Say whatever you want. Post notes on whatever is your subject matter expertise. Be weird, whatever that might mean. Just engage on a regular basis. This is a message I have to keep reminding myself too.

Asked about TikTokers migrating to RedNote in my CNBC segment. Said it would probably be a short lived phenomenon. Then said “the TikTok refugees should go to Nostr.” Explained that it was truly decentralized and even a far better option than Bluesky. The hosts didn’t know where to go after that. Was great to preach the Nostr protocol on CNBC though.

Holy Abomination Batman!!!!!

China Morning Missive This, right here, is what occurs when a government makes the decision to starve an economy of leverage. Bitter medicine, and why it is the Xi Jinping has been telling his people for two years that it is necessary to “eat bitterness”. Hard choices were needed, and hard choices were made. Watching the western business media lose its mind during this period has shown me that the G7 nations aren’t anywhere close to taking the same measures. Largess from the governments will continue. Fiscal dominance appears to be the only way out. What remains to be seen is whether this Chinese policy of aggressive, systemwide deleveraging will, ultimately, prove successful. There is pain throughout. Small and medium sized businesses are closing at an accelerated rate while household sentiment remains at very low levels. Will China be able to power through and get to the other side? That is the question. In fact, that is the only question that matters. 2025 could be highly consequential.

China Morning Missive As a strategy, this just won’t work. Then again, the targeting of both Tencent and CATL is just more of the same approach to “containing” China which the Biden administration has followed for years. Am also not entirely certain how Tencent, a gaming and social media platform (WeChat) is working with the Chinese military in a way that harms American interests. Maybe it’s along the lines of how FaceBook and the old Twitter (plus Google and Apple) aligned with various Washington agencies over the past decade. Then there’s CATL. The company dominates the battery market for all electric vehicles. Suspect that the move to restrict the company in the United States is more about regulatory capture than anything else. If you can’t compete, then simply block your competitor from accessing your market. The same tactic was used to ban drones from DJI for the expressed, albeit unstated, aim of assisting Skydio. America needs to do better. Putting up barriers in the name of “national security” is nothing but weak and reflects – at least to me – some very late state Empire antics. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-adds-tencent-catl-list-chinese-firms-allegedly-aiding-beijings-military-2025-01-06/

Can we all just agree on this one point. The coolest people in the entire world are on Nostr at this very moment. I say we close off all further applications to join. Full stop.

Trump choosing violence such as this isn’t much of a surprise. What this sort of message does though is singular. It’ll drive more nations into the arms of China. The Global South doesn’t want to fight. As a group, they are looking for fairness and the American led “rules based order” isn’t fair by any stretch of the imagination. China will reap the rewards of this unnecessary blunder.