Posted On: Tuesday - July 31st 2018 3:02PM MST
In Topics: China Big-Biz Stupidity
See, just when I got done apologizing, they PULL ME BACK IN!. This one can really go under the topic of the western nations' long-term stupidity in giving up economic supremacy to the Orient. Per Financial Lyin' Press branch Bloomberg from a week back, we read that U.S. Airlines to Accept Chinese Demand on Naming Taiwan.
Taiwan, in case don't know the history, is an island 100 or so miles off the coast of E-SE China (off Fujian province) to which the Nationalist Army under Chiang Kai-Shek, along with millions of other Chinese people fled, after the Commies under Mao Zedong took over the country in the civil war ending in October of 1947. Due to the inherent differences between Communism and Capitalism, Taiwan had been way ahead economically, and, in fact was the place that kid's little toys USED TO come from. "Taiwan, R.O.C." meant "Republic Of China" as opposed to the "(some of the well-connected) People's Republic" on the huge mainland. Taipei, the capital, has flights to all over the world, per it's status as still an independent country... uh... well sort of.
Unlike the Neocons, this libertarian does not believe it is America's business, duty, or anything else, at this point in history, to spend taxpayer dollars defending Taiwan from the government of the mainland. This is NOT 1965, and we're not in the Cold War. We are also very damn broke, just as an aside! That's not my problem with the diplomatic confrontation described in the article.
I don't even care about the "losing face" part, as the Chinese government says (supposedly) private big corporations must change their route maps to reflect Big China's position as to the ownership of that island off the coast. Oh, and the article says the maps should show Taiwan in the same color as the mainland. They've got both a point to drive home and some propoganda to put out there. Now, if the US Congress demanded that Chinese airlines show the capital city here as "Washington, Federal Shithole" on all the maps and schedules ... well, that's not something I'd feel I could argue about ... but just imagine if they'd feel they had to comply. The answer would be something unreadable, both due to our hesitation to put it on a family blog like Peak Stupidity, and due to that language fucking sucks!
This is about how much the power in the world has changed. Even 10 years ago, the western airlines would have just ignored the request. Now, China says "change your maps" and American airline companies say "what color, sir?!" The article does state that the Trump administration called the request "Orwellian nonsense", and some Australian officials said similar words, but guess what? The airlines are not fighting it one bit. "Yes sir!" "Changing the maps, boss!" Since the loss of competition from the mergers of 6 major US airlines into 3 (United/Continental, American/US-Air, and Delta/Northwest) those airlines have become even more globalist in nature, especially at the top end. Additionally, all the code-sharing is big business now, so they don't want to do anything to jeopardize those deals. The US major airline executives may have less loyalty to their American customers than to the Chinese government, at this point.
Yes, the phrase "bow down" is used metaphorically in the article, kind of devious there, but made up for by ...
... one last piece of stupidity in the writing of the article itself. Here, see what's really stupid about this:
Last year, airlines made 7.95 million flights between China and the U.S., a 5.8 percent increase.Look, here at the Peak Stupidity blog, there are more than an average share of typos, homonym-mistakes, and grammar screw-ups. Yes, we have published a few numbers based on rectal extraction. However, look at it - Does it make sense? 7.95 MILLION FLIGHTS? - get TF outta here! (No, not you, please, stay... read some more posts, here's some dumplings.). The writer must have meant revenue-miles, or total passenger-seats, something like that. It can't be 200-odd thousand flights per day. That's a number under 100, and later on, I'll try to speculate more. Come on, Bloomberg, get your act together.
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