Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
1JZ Profile picture
1JZ
@JZ281C
Feb 1 • 17 tweets • 2 min read
It is already clear at this point that China won't follow the footsteps of Japan. China should be going through a recession with negative GDP growth right now due to the real estate bust, but it is growing at 5%. Japan was growing at 4-5% during the inflation phase of its bubble during the 1980s.
Jan 7 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The total steel production of the entire Warsaw pact in 1985 was ~215M tons.

China's real estate industry alone consumed 400 million tons of steel in 2020. The Chinese real estate industry from 2010 to 2020 consumed half as much steel in a decade as the entire Warsaw Pact produced during the entire Cold War.
Jan 1 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
This is an issue that Vietnam and India struggles with. They can't stand to allow foreign investors make huge profits from investing in their country. Take VW for example. VW put in ~€250M into China over 20 years from 1984-1999 mostly in the form of in-kind investments like old machinery and blueprints.

It took out ~€50B in dividends from its China JVs from 2000-2020.
Jan 1 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
@alreadydawn I don't think this is a fair critique of Deng. Policy in the real world is about trade offs, you can't take the good without the bad.

The fact is, China was an extremely poor country in terms of capital/capita in 1979 when One Child Policy came out. @alreadydawn The path to development involved exchanging cheap labor to increase per capita capital intensity as rapidly as possible. You can think of the population as fuel in a rocket. You burn rocket fuel to gain potential and kinetic energy.
Dec 12, 2025 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
The biggest W for China was Fukuyama's End of History. It was inevitable that EOH would be discredited once either of China or India sufficiently industrializes. Whoever industrializes first will burn the window of opportunity provided by EOH for the other. The Return of History means more restrictions on global flows of capital, technology, and population. There will be far more geopolitical conflict and resource nationalism. Global growth rates overall will be lower as political risk/national security objectives take precedence.
Dec 5, 2025 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Trump is all about convincing US bond holders that the US will grow its way out of debt instead of inflate its way out. The plan is to inflate away the debt, but this plan can only work if bond holders don't collectively panic and front run the inflation.

You can only screw the creditors if you convince them that everything will be fine first.
Nov 19, 2025 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Musk has likely led the private space industry into a technological blind alley with reusable rockets.

Starship velocity at MECO is only Mach 5, which is well within the operating speed range of ramjets. Using rockets for <M15 is a terribly inefficient launch architecture. Most of the launch mass is oxidizer. Rocket propulsion efficiency at <M5 is terrible. Using rockets for <M5 at both takeoff and landing is doubly inefficient.
Nov 10, 2025 • 29 tweets • 5 min read
VN's HSR project in limbo. Indonesia have 1 line built by China. India have 1 line built by Japan.

China is the only one to manage to get tech transfer agreements from Germany, France, Japan, and Canada.

Everyone else is dealing with 1 vendor or 0 vendors (in case of VN) Image The example of China's success in negotiating tech transfer of HSR technology inspired everyone else to try to copy but also provided a warning to global vendors on what happens if they are too desperate to win business.

No one else have been able to get the deal that China got.
Nov 7, 2025 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
An under-discussed aspect of India's growth is how much critical imports are financed by revenues tied to the Anglosphere. While China-Russia trade is roughly 1:1 in terms of import/export, India-Russia trade is 16:1.

Service exports make up half of Indian export revenue and this is dominated by exports to the Anglosphere.
Nov 3, 2025 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
When Modi started a war in May, I initially thought he had gone crazy. Then I realized, India was always like this, even back during Nehru's time. The only reason why India doesn't attack China like Pakistan is because Mao launched the war of 1962 and won.
Oct 22, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
One of the worst things to happen to the US is the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Science/physics/math had high status in the US in the early-CW era, in the aftermath of Sputnik. The ending of the CW was anti-climatic and a victory for wordcells/ideologues rather than physicists. The victory of wordcells left the US completely unprepared for the rise of China. 2 generations of social elevation of ideologues and wordcells cannot be undone quickly.
Oct 12, 2025 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Going to engage this point seriously just for discussion purposes.

The high youth employment in China isn't because there are no jobs, it is because most young people don't have to take jobs they don't like. Someone who is looking for work, but refuses jobs that require physical labor, pays under X amount, is counted as unemployed.
Sep 23, 2025 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
There is no realistic procurement program for the IAF where it can be a match for PLA Western Theater Command over the next 20 years.

The military-industrial gap is just too large. The gap in military power will expand from here as PLA inducts 5G, 5.5G, CCA in large numbers. Raw airframe counts are misleading. A single J-20S is the equal of multiple 5G airframes like J-20 or F-35 because it has a dedicated CCA command role. CCAs can be stealthier and cheaper than manned fighters. They can be mission optimized beyond the capability of manned aircraft.
Aug 29, 2025 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
One of the least appreciated aspects of the current era is the destructive power of nuclear weapons have stagnated for the past 60 years while industrial productive capacity have skyrocketed.

The world is mentally stuck in the 1960s with regard to nuclear war. Image An industrial civilization powered by solar + possess large numbers of autonomous robotic machinery is extremely robust to nuclear war. Industrial civilization currently operate at a small fraction of its full physical productive potential due to social constraints.
Aug 18, 2025 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Building a house like this in rural China is not that expensive today. This would have been considered luxurious 15 years ago, but a 1-story house like this is on the lower end today. What makes it look fancy is the nice lighting, but LED lighting is dirt cheap today. Look at the video carefully. If you didn't have to pay for land, what is expensive about building and furnishing a house like this?
Aug 13, 2025 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Motuo power station doesn't actually restrict water flow. What it does is help pay for the massive infrastructure upgrades in the region that will come along with the construction of the power station.

asiatimes.com/2025/08/china-… The 1.2T CNY investment isn't actually that economic compared to alternatives like more solar/nuclear if the goal is to simply generate more power. The main goal is to massively upgrade infrastructure in the region and find a way to pay for it.
Aug 13, 2025 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
What if Erdogan is right? Higher rates x high government debt automatically cause higher government deficits which injects liquidity. To the extent that the government borrows to pay interest, this increases "riskfree" collateral that banks don't need to hold reserves against. $37T in debt @ 4.25% (US3M) is $1.57T ~ 5.4% of GDP. If US can sustain 2% real growth this bakes in 3.4% inflation just from interest payments.
Aug 12, 2025 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Interesting timing on Chinese breakthroughs on new laser crystals that can support 550 MW/cm2 energy density.

High altitude drones with DEW will be able to destroy satellites within line of sight. This basically invalidates SBI as a concept.

interestingengineering.com/military/world… x.com/Hurin92/status… I've been saying that he design emphasis on power generation and 3 engines on J-36 is likely to involve future DEW. These will have unlimited ammo for both self defense against AAM and also for intercepting incoming strike missiles.

Jul 19, 2025 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Russia is like a bigger Iran. Without the scale of the Soviet Union and late Cold War levels of military spending it doesn't have the resources to maintain everything it inherited from the Soviet Union. To the extent that Russia is still regarded as a major military power, it is due to the stagnation in Western military development post-CW. Many major military assets from the 1980s are still in front line service today.
May 25, 2025 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
My take is Korea/Japan failed to create an energy revolution so their ceiling is hard capped by their share of energy available in a fossil fuel economy.

Solar/EV is an energy revolution. This raises the ceiling of energy availability globally. UK: Coal
US: Oil
China: Solar

Each superpower transition is associated with an energy transition.
May 24, 2025 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Counter-stealth is a bit more complicated. Stealth aircraft do have bigger RCS in VHF band, but the VHF band sacrifices angular resolution relative to X-band for the same antenna size, this is why the antenna for VHF is so big. VHF will detect presence but not have the resolution to generate a detailed image of the object. This means that it is much easier for decoys to spoof VHF than X-band.