BY STEPHANIE KLEINE-AHLBRANDT
The wave of anti-Japanese protests that swept across dozens of cities in China this weekend, prompted by Tokyo’s purchase of three disputed islands, has obscured a potentially more worrying development that risks drawing the two countries into a larger conflict: China’s adoption of a legal framework empowering it to expel foreign vessels in disputed waters in the East China Sea.
……More frequent Chinese patrols in the area, along with the Japanese Coast Guard continuing to patrol near the islands, raises the risk of maritime clashes higher than it has ever been. Although the two countries have dealt with past run-ins — such as when the Japanese Coast Guard arrested a Chinese skipper in 2010 after his boat collided with a Japanese vessel — and succeeded in cooling tensions, the current situation is of a different order. That act could be attributed to an overzealous Chinese fisherman. But now, a skirmish between official law enforcement vessels in the current context could prove irresolvable.
via Dangerous Waters – By Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt | Foreign Policy.
Colin Twiggs is a former investment banker with almost 40 years of experience in financial markets. He co-founded Incredible Charts and writes the popular Trading Diary and Patient Investor newsletters.
Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.
Focusing on interest rates and financial market liquidity as primary drivers of the economic cycle, he warned of the 2008/2009 and 2020 bear markets well ahead of actual events.
He founded PVT Capital (AFSL No. 546090) in May 2023, which offers investment strategy and advice to wholesale clients.
This is the sort of thing you can expect with tens of millions of single extra men and a comunist government. Nationalism.
With an ageing and shrinking workforce east asia wasn’t too attractive to locate a manufacturing base going forward. Fukushima and now this just reinforces the risk to global supply chains being over reliant on the region.
I expect jobs to start leaking back to the uk, america and other countries with with expanding human capital and stable governments.
The warning signs are a totalitarian government and economic strength. If you don’t treat your own citizens with respect, you are unlikely to treat your neighbors any better. Whether Hitler’s Germany or today’s China.
The key is: never trust a totalitarian government. And never appease them. As Winston Churchill said: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”