Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Halfhearted04

Trump to Witness Cambodia-Thailand Ceasefire Deal

Halfhearted04 — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:25:22 +0800

https://thediplomat.com/2025/10/trump-to-wi...-malaysia-says/

U.S. President Donald Trump will visit Malaysia to oversee a formal peace deal between Cambodia and Thailand on the sidelines of the upcoming ASEAN Summit, Malaysia’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Cambodia and Thailand engaged in a fierce five-day conflict along their shared border in July, which killed at least 43 people and displaced more than 300,000 on both sides of the border. The two governments agreed to a ceasefire on July 28, but tensions remain high along the border.

Speaking to reporters, Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said that Trump will visit the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur on October 26 to witness an agreement between the two countries.

“During the summit, we hope to see the signing of a declaration, known as the Kuala Lumpur Accord, between these two neighbors to ensure peace and a lasting ceasefire,” Mohamad told the media, as per Reuters. He said Trump was “looking forward” to witnessing the deal, although he did not specify whether the U.S. leader would attend any of the ASEAN-related meetings.

The White House has still not officially confirmed Trump’s attendance at the Malaysian summit, although Reuters cited a person familiar with the matter who confirmed that the trip was “being planned.”

The 47th ASEAN Summit and related meetings, which are due to take place in Kuala Lumpur on October 26-28, will bring together leaders from the bloc’s 10 member states as well as its various dialogue partners. Among those who have confirmed their attendance are Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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Singapore anti ccp cyberpunk cities initiative

Halfhearted04 — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 16:59:43 +0800

[YOUTUBE]JfSIk50Hz4g[/YOUTUBE]

The Chain of Suspicion

Halfhearted04 — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 19:47:53 +0800

[tiktok]7375248699053722923[/tiktok]

No trust . Only first strike in the dark .

we canada now

Halfhearted04 — Sat, 31 May 2025 22:16:53 +0800

[YOUTUBE]-LTwiOCeISI[/YOUTUBE]

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you will make iphone. your son will make iphone

Halfhearted04 — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 11:19:41 +0800

https://streamable.com/jseezl

Westworld CN

Halfhearted04 — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 22:38:33 +0800

[vimeo]https://streamable.com/jseezl[/vimeo]

Long read. China solo-leveling. West blind sided

Halfhearted04 — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 19:35:06 +0800

(source) Looong read. does people still ready anymore in Ai age ? https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/underestimating-china

snips snips

On GDP

QUOTE

...
For example, the idea that the United States’ economy will remain larger than China’s—contrary to most expectations just a few years ago—is frequently offered as evidence of commanding U.S. advantage. But as the economist Noah Smith argues in his analysis of these GDP comparisons, “Americans should take little comfort in the fact that their total GDP at market exchange rates is outpacing China’s.” As exchange rates shift, so do comparisons of relative size, so that a 15 percent depreciation of the renminbi—as has occurred since its peak three years ago—would make the Chinese economy seem 15 percent smaller even if its output stayed the same. Accounting for purchasing power and local prices using the World Bank’s methodology, although imperfect, reveals instead that China’s economy surpassed the U.S. economy about a decade ago and is 25 percent larger today: roughly $30 trillion to the United States’ $24 trillion. This purchasing power adjustment captures the real cost of the determinants of national power, including infrastructure investment, weapons systems, manufactured goods, and government personnel—key factors in sustaining long-term strategic advantage.
...

On Birth

QUOTE

...
China’s challenges are significant. But their strategic importance is often overstated. For example, its demographic challenges will be a major issue in the long term, but in the medium term—a timeline much more relevant to competition with the United States—they are manageable. A generational “echo boom,” as the grandchildren of the Mao-era baby boomer generation enter the workforce, means that, despite an aging population, the percentage of the population below the age of 15 has actually increased, by over 30 million between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, and it has also grown as a percentage of the total population. China’s dependency ratio (of adult workers to children and retirees) will remain below Japan’s current ratio until 2050. And massive investments in education, industrial robotics, and embodied artificial intelligence will help China weather labor shortfalls.
...

Production Power

QUOTE

...
Although still catching up in fields such as biotechnology and aviation, which have been traditional U.S. strengths, China—thanks in part to ambitious industrial policy efforts such as Made in China 2025—produced almost half the world’s chemicals, half the world’s ships, more than two-thirds of electric vehicles, more than three-quarters of electric batteries, 80 percent of consumer drones, and 90 percent of solar panels and critical refined rare-earth minerals. And Beijing is taking steps to ensure its dominance continues and expands: China was responsible for half of all industrial robot installations worldwide (seven times as many as the United States), and it is a decade ahead of anyone else in commercializing fourth-generation nuclear technology, with plans to build over 100 reactors in 20 years. The last great power to so thoroughly dominate global production was the United States, from the 1870s to the 1940s.
...

Innovation

QUOTE

...
American observers tend to underestimate China’s ability to innovate, mistakenly assuming it simply copies and reproduces Western innovations. Like the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and the United States before it, China’s manufacturing strength creates a foundation for innovative advantage. State investment helps, too; it now rivals the United States’ investment in science. And China’s large population provides a deep talent pool and competitive scale. In ten industries of the future, according to a recent report from the Information Technology and Industry Foundation, China is near the leading edge of innovation (or better) in six.
...

War Power

QUOTE

...
This industrial and innovative strength can be activated for military purposes. China’s navy, already the largest in the world, will add a staggering 65 vessels in just five years, reaching a total size 50 percent larger than the U.S. Navy—roughly 435 vessels to 300. It has rapidly increased its ships’ firepower, surging from one-tenth of the United States’ vertical launch system cells a decade ago to likely exceeding U.S. capacity by 2027. Although China lags the United States in aviation, it has broken a long-standing technical barrier by building jet engines at home and is now rapidly closing the production gap, with the ability to build more than 100 fourth-generation combat aircraft annually. In most missile technologies, China is probably the world’s leader: it boasts the first antiship ballistic missile, impressive air-to-air missile range, and the largest stockpile of conventional cruise and ballistic missiles. And in a growing number of military fields, from quantum communications to hypersonics, China is ahead of any competitor. These advantages, built over decades, will persist even if China stagnates.
...

The article ends with some fanciful command and conquer GDI scenario where all the good people of the west comes together and push back the night.

The end

PMX Breaking Bad

Halfhearted04 — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 19:25:23 +0800

"Why can't he be more like Volodymyr Zelenskyy or Bongbong Marcos Why"

https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/08/29/w...g-asian-leaders

The caste system. alive and well in CHINA

Halfhearted04 — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 21:45:03 +0800

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/08/china/ch...intl/index.html

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A fashion major from a vocational high school in rural China has amazed the nation by outshining elite students in a global math contest – but the teenager’s underdog story has now been mired by controversy.

Jiang Ping, born in a poor village in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, ranked 12th out of 802 shortlisted competitors – mostly from prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and MIT – in first-round results released on June 13 by DAMO Academy, the organizer of the Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition.

Launched in 2018 by Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, the free online contest is open to math enthusiasts worldwide, though Chinese math majors typically dominate the top places. This year’s top 85 finishers will win prizes from $2,000 to $30,000.

Jiang’s high placement – in the first of the contest’s two rounds – was a remarkable achievement for a student from one of the country’s vocational schools, which suffer deep-seated social prejudices and whose graduates occupy the lowest rungs of China’s educational hierarchy.

Her success initially garnered nationwide acclaim, with multiple Chinese state media outlets jumping on the story and a deluge of online commentary buoyed by seeing a vocational student do so well in an international math competition.

But doubts about the 17-year-old’s math skills have gained momentum online since the end of last month, ahead of the release next month of results from the much more challenging second round. The organizing committee has yet to address them.

Jiang’s gift for math came to the fore in junior high, where her scores far outstripped those of her peers, state-run news agency Xinhua reported. She was later trained by math teacher Wang Runqiu at Lianshu Secondary Vocational School, where she studies fashion design.

Wang, a three-time finalist in the contest, helped Jiang to teach herself advanced math over the past two years, according to Xinhua.

Since Jiang’s top-20 finish in the first round was announced, a related hashtag topped searches on X-like platform Weibo, amassing more than 650 million views so far. In her hometown, her image beamed from television screens at local malls.

Jiang finished the final round on June 22, and the results will be released in August.

However, just a day after the final, Richard Xu from Harvard Business School, who placed 190th in the first round, announced on China’s Quora-type site Zhihu that he, along with 38 other contestants, had filed a joint letter to the organizing committee asking for an independent investigation into Jiang and Wang’s answer sheets from the qualifying round.

The letter cites “evidence” of alleged fraud, including a theory of “collaborative cheating” headed by Wang, who came 125th.

Four days before the final round, Yin Wotao, a member of the organizing committee, had defended Jiang in a soon-deleted response to a skeptic on X.

“Some math amateurs have indeed placed well in the qualifying rounds in past years,” given the moderate difficulty and generous 48-hour time limit, Yin argued.

Blocked from accessing Yin’s short-lived comments by Chinese internet restrictions, users posted on the Lianshui county government’s website, demanding an official investigation into Jiang and Wang.

On June 27, the local government confirmed what until that point had been an online rumor that Jiang scored only 83 out of 150 in a school math exam held after the qualifying round. The next day, it provided a formulaic response to further related queries, saying “the investigation is underway.”

Soon after, all the posts relating to Jiang were taken down and there’s been no update since.

In response to CNN’s inquiries on June 28, organizing committee member Yin declined to comment without the green light from DAMO Academy, his employer.

CNN has reached out to the academy for comment and could not reach Jiang and her teacher Wang.

Among the cacophony of commentary, some suspect the harsh public scrutiny of Jiang is rooted in social prejudice against vocational students.

“The fact that Jiang, the vocational student, has garnered so much public attention per se mirrors social discontent with China’s education system,” Zhao Yong, distinguished professor in educational psychology at the University of Kansas, told CNN.

These students make up the bottom 40% in China’s senior high school entrance exam, or “zhongkao.” They do not qualify to enter regular high schools, where students cram for “gaokao,” China’s notoriously daunting college entrance exam.

In a society where poor academic performance is often equated with moral failings, “lazy bones,” “small-timers,” and “delinquents” have become bywords for the cohort who perform poorly on the zhongkao at 15 and are generally resigned to toil in factories for the rest of their lives.

This represents a stark reversal from the 1980s and 90s when vocational schooling was respected as a sought-after path to “iron rice bowls,” a popular term for secure jobs, amid the country’s urgent need for technical workers. However, the boom soon died down as higher education expanded in 1999.

As China races to meet its ambitious “Made in China 2025” goal to become “a world manufacturing power,” Beijing has been strengthening vocational education in recent years. But structural discrimination in China’s schools, universities and workplaces means society still favors academic degrees over trades.

In an interview with The Beijing News, a Communist Party-owned newspaper, Jiang said she wanted to go college and that her dream school was Zhejiang University, a top academy in the e-commerce hub Hangzhou. But that could still be difficult despite her apparent maths proficiency.

Jiang’s mentor Wang told the state-run Xinhua Daily that due to restrictions on major choices for future vocational education, she can only apply to three colleges in Jiangsu province, with her best option being a second-tier public university.

“China selects and categorizes talents way too early and too rigidly. This has greatly limited individuals’ future options and paths,” said Zhao, citing Germany and Finland as better examples of dual-track schooling with greater flexibility for students to shift between vocational and academic tracks.

Beijing’s attempt to emulate those European nations by encouraging resource exchanges between the two types of schools over the past decade has met a lukewarm response from high schools busy coaching students to score higher in the “gaokao” university entrance exam.

According to Zhao, Jiang is already “a lucky rarity if she’s truly gifted in math.” But he warned she may become a “disappeared Einstein” – one of the many buried talents in China’s education system.

The jury is still out, with second-round results due next month.

Jiang considers math her “Plan B,” prioritizing fashion design for future study, according to The Beijing News.

Zhao said working in a factory is a “reasonable choice” for the 17-year-old village girl, who as a vocational student has limited options for higher education.

“After all, she has a mouth to feed,” he said.

Blast from the past [What If]

Halfhearted04 — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 12:42:29 +0800

Full article. https://www.bbc.com/storyworks/future/ukrai...namic-it-sector

found this gem buried in my open tab...

... like maybe in another timeline where Biden lost and Putin friend and convicted criminal won his second term

Marcos channeling Zelenskyy at the Shangri-La

Halfhearted04 — Fri, 31 May 2024 22:23:00 +0800

WATER CANNONS LET'S GO !

[YOUTUBE]BJYWFDPKmpY[/YOUTUBE]

MY fastly becoming TW backup center

Halfhearted04 — Thu, 30 May 2024 16:56:23 +0800

Recently many companies have plant to or open their semiconductor and datacenter shop in Malaysia.
Since R.O.C. will soon be getting fucked and as a business is dumb not to have a plan B.
How you feel about Malaysia becoming a mini backup center for ROC Taiwan?
What Taiwan company you'll like to see in Malaysia ?

Senator Bernie Sanders articulate war on Gaza

Halfhearted04 — Wed, 22 May 2024 19:01:14 +0800

[YOUTUBE]pEDoCaYSwVw[/YOUTUBE]

halls empty

no one listening

share here for /k/

soo Bloomberg have gone insane

Halfhearted04 — Thu, 09 May 2024 11:29:37 +0800

top: gais, overcapacity gais
bottom: lol, nah. we are just making shit up as we go along.

Ace Attorney: ICJ

Halfhearted04 — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 03:00:13 +0800

[YOUTUBE]YjQbHoTudSE[/YOUTUBE]

once there is a dream of 1.5++ billion ccp

Halfhearted04 — Sun, 17 Dec 2023 15:34:36 +0800

[YOUTUBE]pzjpK2BYGCQ[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]ffd-deIFh14[/YOUTUBE]

garden of betrayal

Halfhearted04 — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 13:04:15 +0800

[YOUTUBE]D2ank8wgJok[/YOUTUBE]

Anjing

Halfhearted04 — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 21:29:46 +0800

[YOUTUBE]IsaVw7djZdo[/YOUTUBE]

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Tell me why

Halfhearted04 — Sat, 28 Oct 2023 23:38:52 +0800

Ain't nothin' but a heartache
[...]
Ain't nothin' but a mistake
[...]
I never wanna hear you say, yahudi want it that way.

[Twt]https://twitter.com/SpokespersonCHN/status/1718244547355099582[/twt]

United States Stand Alone

Halfhearted04 — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 22:54:34 +0800

Rohirriiiimmmmm!!...no no. i mean Yahudiiiiiiiiiiiiii

[twt]https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/1714649681521791305[/twt]
[twt]https://twitter.com/zoomerdissident/status/1714654861642326033[/twt]