When living in Beijing in 2017-2019, I thought that the CCP would probably lose the power soon. I didn't believe it would be swept by a popular revolt, or a military coup. I assumed that once the current generation of Party leaders dies, the Party will degenerate and collapse.
Why did I think so? I hanged out with students of Peking and Tsinghua universities. And noticed that in their view the Party career was not prestigious. Founding a start-up, doing a Phd in Stanford or getting a job in Tencent was cool. Becoming a Party official - not cool at all
This wasn't because of oppositional views - such a stance was purely pragmatic. Around 1980 a talented and ambitious young Chinese hardly had any alternative to a Party career. You could not rise your social status without joining the nomenklatura.
But the economic boom created opportunities more lucrative than the Party career. Top Chinese alumni know that Party officials are poorly compensated. Yes, if you are lucky, by the age of 50 you gonna live well. But why wait if you can join Huawei and live well right now?
Therefore, current rulers of China are people who chose the Party career when there was no alternative to it. At that period, the Party incorporated the most intelligent and ambitious young Chinese. Current rulers are some of the smartest and hardest in their generation.
But the younger generations of Party officials chose the Party career when there were plenty of more lucrative opportunities to it. Most of smarter and more ruthless folk would probably choose the private sector over the Party job.
I extrapolated those tendencies to the future and concluded that there was now a mechanism of negative selection to the top Party jobs. Once the current generation of Chinese leadership is gone their places would be taken by far less capable successors
That's why I believed that a quick collapse of the Party after the death of Xi and his generation is likely. Now I think I was wrong.
The dynamics of career paths among the brightest young people of China are changing quickly. In the late 2010s the number of alumni of Peking University, who would choose a state job increased by more than 1.5 times. Meanwhile the number of those entering the tech sector halved.
Why did it happen? Not so sure. I think one of more important reasons might be that the emigration became less attractive. When I lived in Beijing a lot of the brightest young Chinese wanted to emigrate to the West. Nowadays this idea is far less popular
What does it all imply? First of all, China seems to return back to normality, and by normality I mean its historical tradition. It's cool to take an exam and become a civil servant, while being a merchant or an artisan/engineer - far less prestigious.
Secondly, we should not expect a 'natural' collapse of the Party. If the negative selection to the ruling elite continued, I would say that collapse is likely. However, if China returns back to normality - when the most capable become mandarins - I don't think it gonna happen.
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If you want to imagine Russia, imagine a depressive, depopulating town. Now on the outskirts of a town, there is an outrageously over-equipped, overfunded strategic enterprise that has literally everything money can buy in the world. It feels like a spaceship from another planet
Strategic industry is extremely generously equipped. Western companies look scoundrels in comparison. That’s why I am so sceptical about the whole “corruption” narrative. Not that it’s wrong. It’s just that it is the perspective of a little, envious bitch.
What needs to be funded, will be funded. It will actually be overfunded and most literally drowned in money. Obviously, overfunding the strategic sector comes at the cost of underfunding almost everything else (like urban infrastructure). That’s why the town looks so grim.
We have successfully documented the entire Russian missiles industry, mapping 28 of its key enterprises. Read our first OSINT sample focusing on the Votkinsk Plant, a major producer of intercontinental ballistic missiles. How does it make weaponry?
The strategic missiles industry appears to be highly secretive and impenetrable to the observers. And yet, it is perfectly OSINTable, based on the publicly available sources. This investigation sample illustrates our approach and methodology (31 p.)
Our first and invaluable source is the state propaganda, such as the federal and regional TV channels, corporate media, social media and so on. It provides abundant visual evidence, particularly on the hardware used in the production of weaponry.
In August 1999, President Yeltsin appointed his FSB Chief Putin as the new Prime Minister. Same day, he named him as the official successor. Yet, there was a problem. To become a president, Putin had to go through elections which he could not win.
He was completely obscure.
Today, Putin is the top rank global celebrity. But in August 1999, nobody knew him. He was just an obscure official of Yeltsin's administration, made a PM by the arbitrary will of the sovereign. This noname clerk had like 2-3% of popular support
Soon, he was to face elections
By the time of Putin's appointment, Russia already had its most favoured candidate. It was Primakov. A former Yeltsin's Prime Minister who broke with Yeltsin to contest for power. The most popular politician in Russia with massive support both in masses and in the establishment.
In Russia, the supreme power has never ever changed as a result of elections. That simply never happened in history. Now that is because Russia is a (non hereditary) monarchy. Consequently, it doesn't have any elections. It has only acclamations of a sitting ruler
Obviously, there has been no elections of Putin in any meaningful sense. There have been only acclamations. And that is normal. His predecessor was successfully acclaimed with an approval rate of about 6%. Once you got the power, you will get your acclamation one way or another
Contrary to the popular opinion, Russia doesn't have any acclamation ("election") problem. It has a transition of power problem. Like Putin can get acclaimed again, and again, and again. But sooner or later, he dies. What next?
My team has documented the entire Russian missile manufacturing base. That is 28 key ballistic, cruise, hypersonic and air defence missile producing plants associated with four corporations of Roscosmos, Almaz-Antey, Tactical Missiles and Rostec
The link is in the first comment
Our report How Does Russia Make Missiles? is already available for download
By the next weekend, we will be publishing the first OSINT sample, illustrating our methodology & approach. The rest of our materials will be made available laterrhodus.com
Key takeaways:
1. Missile production is mostly about machining 2. You cannot produce components of tight precision and convoluted geometry otherwise 3. Soviet missiles industry performed most of its machining manually
That was extremely laborious and skill-intensive process
No one gets famous by accident. If Alexey @Navalny rose as the unalternative leader of Russian opposition, recognised as such both in Moscow and in DC, this indicates he had something that others lacked. Today we will discuss what it was and why it did not suffice 🧵
Let's start with the public image. What was so special about the (mature) @navalny is that his public image represented normality. And by normality I mean first and foremost the American, Hollywood normality
Look at this photo. He represents himself as American politicians do
For an American politician, it is very important to present himself as a good family man (or woman). Exceptions do only corroborate the rule. Notice how McCain defends @BarackObama