If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.
The fear of the "Red Sun Rising".
The fear that Japan was going to own most of the valuable real estate in America.
The forcing of Japanese car companies to onshore to protect American jobs.
Blaming of Japanese industrial policy as being unfair competition.
It was the collapse of the Japanese growth engine in the mid 90's that finally ended the American panic.
The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power.
Whenever powers rise to threaten that duality there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington.
Wait, how did the UK get in there? Especially in this post-brexit century...
Correction: If it accepts the stationing of U.S. troops and succumbs to U.S. financial policies, it's not a big deal
Japan and Germany have paid a huge price to demonstrate their friendship to the U.S. That was not 'just fine'
The situation has waxed and waned but in general West Germany and Japan at the government level have been pretty happy to have US troops stationed there while facing off against the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China. The Ukrainians and the Baltics would love to have some US troops stationed there right now.
you are not mature enough to discuss such topic if you believe the US will be happy to be taken over by some democratic friends.
My perception is that Japan, after some great success, went through a normal semi-inevitable asset bubble, but their response was uniquely Japanese. Rather than letting firms and the social contract of lifetime employment (particularly for older workers) go bankrupt, their firms and country decided to absorb the losses for a generation and stagnate.
Economically it was a very suboptimal approach but socially/morally I'm less confident it was the wrong call.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the...
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese...
No it was not. The US had taken whole bunch of steps to prevent this from happening and those steps were anything but "let's free market decide" and "compete on merits".
It is a real problem for any country or block. As soon as it looks like it threatens leading position of the US all the gloves come of. Obviously not specific to the US. Any other country would do the same given a chance.
Albeit US cannot speak as US-centric paranoia/"exceptionalism" may do the same thing...and the electorate voted to self destruct the government despite US economy being the strongest in decades.
The vast majority of its people do not share in that success and have seen a declining standard of life relative to prior generations whereas in China, the opposite is quite demonstrably true, despite increasingly similar concentrations of wealth and political power.
> Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first...
> U.S. homelessness rose 18 percent in 2024, continuing multi-year upward trend
> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18...
> analysis of government data estimates that people in the United States owe at least $220 billion in medical debt.
https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-m...
And why is this a problem?
What is wrong with renting for life, exactly? I’m seeing more and more people own rental properties, but do not own their primary residence by choice.
As a free person I want to own my place. I have better ways to spend my money rather than feeding some asshole
https://www.kiplinger.com/real-estate/buying-a-home/renting-...
>"In 21 U.S. metros, the monthly cost of owning is at least 50% more expensive"
I am not in the US. 21 metros do not constitute country. When I bought house in major metro (Toronto) it was $200,000. So please do not feed me this pathetic propaganda.
To add to the irony there are also self-made landlords who do similar work on similar scale on their own! They are usually available for defects and damages day and night.
Back when the people owned the non profits they build and fixed everything asap on the cheap. It might even be better than owning the home directly.
Nobody wants to be your serf until they're 38, bozo.
Ways forward are a) continued denial (status quo), b) YIMBYs defeat NIMBYs, c) change policy (incentivize renting) or d) <insert radical policy proposal here>.
You may think that expensive gasoline and cartons of eggs are a meme, but the reality is that the economy has become pretty damn Shite(tm) for the commons. Costs of living are objectively higher than they were just a couple years ago and incomes haven't kept pace either.
The stock market is having the time of its life (and as a small time investor I find that nice) but it's completely detached from the economy.
Yes, he won by a landslide and the biggest factor was the bad economy.
Anyone who thinks 49.9% of the vote (vs 48.4%) is a landslide will quickly find them in negative approval ratings if they think that gives them much political capital (if trump focuses and spending rather than earning capital, that is, which he definitely will).
Recall that GWB declared a mandate (to reverse all progressive social programs since the New Deal) when he squeaked out a victory over Kerry.
2024 election: Trump 49.7% 77.3 million (312 electoral), Harris 48.4% 75 million (226 electoral). Republicans control of House (but lost 1 seat) and control of Senate (gained 4 seats).
1972 election: Nixon 60.7% 47.2 million (520 electoral), McGovern 37.5% 29.2 million (17 electoral). Democrats control of House (but lost 13 seats) and control of Senate (gained 2 seats).
1984 election: Reagan 58.8% 54.5 million (525 electoral), Mondale 40.6% 37.6 million (13 electoral). Democrats control of House (but lost 16 seats). Republicans control of Senate (but lost 2 seats).
Source: many Wikipedia links
That's not what "landslide victory" means.
In fact Trump's electoral total was scarcely different from Biden's in 2016, and his popular vote margin was far narrower. Historically speaking, both of these are much closer to dead heats than they are to what are generally considered to be landslide victories (like Clinton's wins in 92-96, and Reagan's in 84-88).
You're only saying it's a "landslide" because Trump keeps saying that in his speeches.
But as usual he's either simply lying, or has no idea what he's talking about.
Maybe in western media depictions it would seem so, but eg china invests more and more in europe over the years. Moreover, BRICS are roughly half of world's population. Perceptions of what "the world" or "international relationships" mean are sometimes distorted in the west.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of...
Whether China can beat NATO in a head to head military contest is one question, but separate from whether they can take Taiwan, for example.
The "rest of the world" is not limited by NATO. And China is not fighting "the rest of the world". It trades with it, invests and does all kinds of other things. But sure keeping one's head in a sand is a nice position.
China does have a current advantage on lithium battery and rare earth materials - dumb technologies that US and allies can replicate fairly quickly, less than a year. EUV and 3nm and below on the other hand, will take decades, since it involves a number of different and deep technologies controlled by dozens of companies. China has thrown $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines.
> 80% GDP
China's demographics will more than HALF to 500M by 2100, if not earlier, while US grows to close to 400M by then. Someone actually theorizes that China's population is already only 800M right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR5F_8dSjOw
Also, a lot of that GDP is debatable in 2024, when real estate prices have dropped by more than 50% in tier 2 and below cities, and deflation has raged on.
Building EVs and supporting infrastructure is a lot more complicated than just having a bunch of blueprints.
Personally, I am not sure yet whether I like this or not. I can see good arguments for and against.
I wish it would be an honest open policy instead of the current vice grip of on the one hand passing aggressive phase out timelines of ICE through regulation, and on the other doing nothing to prepare a grid for mass EV adoption.
I can see why it wouldn't pass a democratic vote, but I also think chances of this passing under the covers are fairly slim as any time one of their roadmapped phases comes near they usually have to postpone them to appease the public.
Laugh in Northvolt
> $150B on it since 2014, and has only come up with low yield/unprofitable 7nm via existing DUV machines
Considering that there are less than 5 countries on Earth that can fab 7nm semiconductors, that aint bad.
- Battery Startup Opens Chicago Plant as US Seeks to Curb Reliance on China https://www.nanograf.com/media/battery-startup-opens-chicago...
- Our own YC: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/energy
- China’s startup scene is dead as investors pull out—’Today, we are like lepers’ https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-startup-scene-dead-inve...
Northvolt isnt lacking funding (pedantically they are, else they wouldnt be bankrupt) or clients, but know-how for scaling putting aside some conspiracy theories about Chinese equipments. Turns out scaling isnt easy.
vanadium redox flow isnt very big yet even for Energy Storage System
Side note: The tendency US and Westernin general to depend on Wunderwaffe tech (Vanadium Redox! Solid State Battery!) is quite amusing.
> China’s startup scene is dead as investors pull out
Turns out Emperor Pooh dislike get-rich-quick startup mentality and yet another useless apps. He wouldnt mind hard tech bro like Ren Zhengfei or Wang Chuanfu though.
P.S. Watch the robotic space, things might get interesting in a year or two.
Japan too. It's a sign of helplessness and desperation, as much as I would prefer not to see that. They procrastinated and now see themselves behind.
Can other economies copy that part? I know a bunch of people who'd like to be able to afford more houses & more groceries at the same time. I'd like that, I can't realistically afford a house in the city I live in without a 50% price drop.
I'm sure China has a lot of problems, but key goods getting cheaper is not one of them. What I'm guessing you meant to say is that retirees were led to put too much of their savings into the housing market and are discovering there is a glut. Which is tragic for them. But prices dropping is a good thing; the unachievable ideal is a utopia where everything is free, ie, 100% deflation.
Here are some good posts on why nobody wants deflation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/uzq5bu/why_is...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/mbsxyl/can_so...
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/yotf0c/i_dont...
also coincidentally and recently, China’s Xi Jinping asked ‘What’s so bad about deflation?’ amid economic slowdown https://fortune.com/2024/12/29/china-economy-deflation-xi-ji...
And there is an unemployment problem too, obviously.
'CCP is a secret and authoritarian regime that wields immense power' vs 'Some random reporter with English firstname and Chinese lastname know what Xi said before he go to bed'
Have you ever wondered if there's a tiny possibility that the media and the reporter *might* be lying?
...
The lack of spending then further contributes to falling prices, job cuts, businesses closing, etc. It's really not a situation any economy _wants_.
That said, I empathize with your sentiment.
Food, energy, transportation, education, etc.
How long are you going to delay getting a new car simply because cars are getting cheaper and better? Once you probe the theory beyond the surface, it collapses. Yes, a deflationary economy will see less cash velocity than a ZIRP economy with cheap cash sloshing around. But, at the end of the day, humans MUST spend resources today to live to see their savings worth more.
One man's debt is another mans income.
The reason we narrowly avoided full blown deflation in 2008 is because they bailed out the banks. If they didn't we would have had 1929 style depression these last 15 years.
Consider the computer industry. Prices have been falling pretty much across my entire life. Supply-demand suggests that people will keep buying new computers as the price drops and that is exactly what is happening. Demand for compute has never been higher. There is no waiting for improvements, if anything there is a mad rush to buy hardware that everyone knows is about to be obsoleted. It isn't even an irrational rush, the people buying that obsolete hardware often make good money (eg, bitcoin miners in the heyday).
Basic supply demand says as price drops demand increases. Basic life experience says as prices drop I can afford more and better stuff. Observation of real industries suggests - as we would intuit - that industries with regular price drops are actually healthy and great to be in for consumers in the small and the large. Theory suggests that everyone ignores nominal price fluctuations and focuses on real changes so systemic deflation is irrelevant. None of this supports the idea that deflation is bad.
Pretty sure the anti-deflation crowd are just wrong. They have no evidence or argument [0] as far as I can tell, and all the theory is stacked against them. China surely has problems. Deflation is not a problem. It is just a metric.
[0] EDIT Well I suppose they do have an argument, but it involves people randomly going crazy and choosing to live in poverty and discomfort because it gets easier to buy goods. Which is not an argument I really take seriously.
It is rather unlikely that giving people an option that they already have is going to cause a problem. One major benefit of money is that people can hoard it and there is no cost in the real economy because all the resources are still there and prices can just adjust to the amount of cash in circulation.
> here was a small deflationary bump in American history around the 1930s that helps to illustrate what can happen in a deflationary spiral.
The US came out of the 1930s with an economy that was capable of overcoming almost literally the entire world. Again, the evidence that deflation was some sort of major problem is questionable, it seems to have been associated with the creation of one of the most dynamic economies in the history of history.
And the idea that we have this one clear lesson from one instance back in the 30s is just weird and unbelievable. That isn't how history or complex systems work.
While the share of services in the US GDP is more than 3/4. What will you do with all these expensive NY lawyers when push comes to shove? Sue China's drones?
Germany and Italy, to take but two examples of large Western economies, haven't had native above-replacement TFR since ~1970.
Even in the US, TFR is well below replacement right now, and in fact is basically comparable to China's TFR from 2010-2017.
> https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr035.pdf
US population growth is sort of immigration-dependent, which, let's put it this way, isn't an unalloyed good thing.
What metric do you have in mind here? It looks like Japan’s population has dropped ~2% from peak in the last 25 years. China is projected to lose ~8% in the next 25.
Or if we look at percent of population over 65, Japan is at ~30% today. China is projected to jump from <20% to 40% by 2050.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1359964/world-population...
Yeah, Japan is at 29.6% today. China is at ~15% right now and is estimated to be at 26% by 2050.
That's not China in your link. It's Hong Kong, which has an older-skewing population.
I'm not convinced. I don't think that population decline is necessarily worse than changing the cultural and ethnic makeup of your country. If anything, I think that a much stronger case can be made for the other perspective.
Anyway, fact is, things aren't that bad in China. We can see what China's demographic future looks like, because nations like Germany and Japan are forerunners in that regard.
It can bear the burden of developing and producing things like solar panels or batteries or AI because of the sheer size of the population, but that doesn’t work if the population itself is the problem.
Besides, with ~1.4B people, China has a very deep population reservoir. Even with a catastrophically low birthrate in 2023, there were more than 9M births. That's about as much, in that year, as the US, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, England, Mexico, Canada, and Spain combined. (3.5M+.8M+.23M+.7M+.7M+.56M+1.8M+.35M+.32M)
The Economist crowd loves to prophesy doom, but really the facts are not unambiguous and China's position is not uniquely bad in any respect. If anything, it still has a lot going for it.
You are deeply, deeply misunderstanding the problem.
Maybe when Western-oriented, China would have been able to escape the middle-income tier despite their demographic trends. But with the dual gut punch of being excised from Western technology and an economy that will be in a tar pit due to growth crashes (real estate bubble for example), no chance in hell.
Don't get me wrong. It's amazing how many people China has lifted out of poverty. And yes, they do take "100 steps forward" for every "2 steps forward, 1 step back" that the West does. But this is because they came from very low, where there is no ossified infrastructure and plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick.
For example, being in Shanghai and having nothing but quiet streets because virtually every motor vehicle is electrified feels like being in the future. The same goes for massive amounts of high-speed rail being built per year. But this is possible because A) there is no legacy infrastructure and B) the state can just crush you without any recourse.
It is quite well-known that the more free a nation is, the more it prospers. Make of that what you will.
It’s harder for me to come up with a simpler metric for “Belt and Road” / IMF style control-through-capital.
But, I think it will happen. After visiting China and seeing how much consistent progress both in infrastructure from the government and in daily life from the economy, my impression is US government makes 2 steps forward 1 step back in the same time it takes China to take 100 steps forward.
The US does have several large overseas bases but 90% of this list is are indefensible logistics hubs and not a meaningful projection of force.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...
Most of these bases are co-located with NATO or other allies for good reason, the US doesn't have to do everything itself wrt air defense, locating an airlift wing with a fighter wing.
But then it's a lower bar than people imagine, for China to buy similar friendship.
China is building up a lot of soft power with infrastructure projects all over the world - most of them are aimed at improving trade - ports, rail lines and the like. In the next decade or 2, they can reasonably make requests to place a few PLA/PLAA personnel and equipment on bases in strategic places, bases they may have been built using Chinese money.
If a country or coalition decided to attack all of those bases at once it would give the US the high ground to respond. Nazis tried a blitzkrieg and that didn't turn out well. As someone squarely against the bullshit of Trump, I would not be happy if he was in power at the time. But I do not doubt for a second that the US population in general would respond as readily as they did after 9/11 (but hopefully not as readily as in Iraq).
We just saw how the "dipshit in power" aspect works with Netanyahu in Gaza -- a disproportionate and tragic response. The only caveat is Trump is an extremely stupid dipshit, so I genuinely hope it doesn't turn out that way and everyone keeps their powder dry until Trump is out of office.
China's buildup of soft power is good for them, and I commend them for it. Fortunately, I believe soft power is a defensive power at its core, and I don't think it translates to offensive power. To confuse the two would be a mistake.
Thank you for the opportunity to get a lot off my chest this New Year's Eve. I hope it wasn't too offensive, because I believe you responded intelligently and in good faith, and thank you for that.
Many of the US military bases are communication centers or barracks on training bases. They serve important roles but are not "defensible" in many contexts.
Who am I even propagandizing for in this context?
Except in today's world, being a military power is increasingly less relevant after a certain point, while economic supremacy is increasingly gaining prominence. While the West is content with self-platitudes for their "democracy", China has been building strong relationships with a number of countries looking to implement the "China-model", a capitalist but largely regressive nation that relies on surveillance and stringent media control. China is already licensing out their technology to a number of interested countries, some of which include Western countries looking to emulate Chinese autocracy themselves. On the other hand, countries are looking at the incoming US govt with pretty much strong uncertainty as to what their relationship with America will be like.
Not to mention, as automated warfare becomes increasingly more relevant, guess where these countries are buying their drones from? Hint hint, it's not the US with their overpriced toys.
Number of irrelevant countries. US's allies are Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, etc. 80% of the world's wealth. and 95% of the world's top technologies.
> guess where these countries are buying their drones from
Soon, not China. China Is Cutting Off Drone Supplies Critical to Ukraine War Effort [1]. China is reportedly making drones for Russia instead, according to multiple intelligence officials.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-09/china-is-...
Team China is not as tight as team USA, but has a number of strings it can pull with its members. These are countries that, while not prosperous themselves, provide the raw material for most of the West's industries. A lot of critical resources are often only found in these countries. Not to mention, they have often aligned against USA gang in most cases, at the UN, while also aligning with China. Look at how many countries have signed public declarations stating that the Uighur camps in China don't exist/don't repress Uighurs.
On the second point, the article only states that China is cutting Ukrainian drone supplies to supply Russia instead - that's exactly the danger the West should be worried about. China also supplies an increasing number of armaments to partner countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria and Egypt. Needless to say, China is currently the world's largest exporter of military UAVs.
According to the World Economic Forum[1], the USA plus the whole EU make up 29% of the world's GDP-PPP, while the BRICS countries come up at 37.3%.
You also included Japan, Australia, South Korea, Canada and Taiwan, but I find it hard to believe they would make up a very significant part of the difference.
[1] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/11/brics-summit-geopoli....
https://itif.org/publications/2024/09/16/china-is-rapidly-be...
China leads in Computers and Electronics, Machinery and Equipment, Motor Vehicles, Basic Metals, Fabricated Metals, Electrical Equipment.
The US leads in IT and Information Services, Pharmaceuticals, and Other Transportation.
It’s not about to happen. It already happened, and it is largely due to hubris that the US doesn’t talk about it.
A big country would never overreact to national security threats. We have the TSA to protect us from that :)
I think the real lesson here is that if you enough government power, there is no need to be competent. The feedback loop is destroyed so you can just do whatever random stupid thing you want until your country collapses like the USSR.
In 2024, this isn't fact, it's just baseless conspiracy.
All evidence has ended up pointing to bush meat contamination.
This creates a bit of a catch-22, no? There's no basis to claim it was a lab leak because the lab in question won't cooperate with establishing whether there's a basis for the idea.
It'd be one thing if the proper amount of research was done and made public and we could see that there was no conspiracy. As is, there's a lab located in Wuhan studying coronaviruses that pinky promises that they didn't start COVID-19, while the WHO director is on record saying that the lab blocked the WHO investigation that might have exonerated them.
I think it's prudent to forgive people for whom "this is a baseless conspiracy theory" isn't a sufficient explanation.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-ch...
https://doi.org/10.1136%2Fbmj.n1890
https://apnews.com/article/health-china-coronavirus-pandemic...
There was no shortage of data that was consistent with the bush meat market outbreak.
It would be one thing if the outbreak started in a theatre or a mall, or some other place which did not regularly traffic in exotic diseases. It's another thing when it started at the only non-lab active reservoir in the city.
Given the preponderance of evidence and probability, the lab leak theory is a baseless conspiracy at this point. It stretches credulity to think that of all the places the lab leaked, it leaked to the one place in town which was itself a dangerous source of cross-species disease transmission.
If there was no such wet market in town, and if the outbreak didn't center in it, the lab leak would have been a far more probable hypothesis. But that's not the world we live in.
I'm not even saying that it's right, it just confuses me to hear you so fervently insist that there's no basis for the idea when the WHO director himself says that there is and that the investigation was inconclusive.
We on this forum of all people should know that you can present partial data that shows completely different conclusions what the full data would show.
Why is a wet market a more convincing explanation than a lab whose explicit mission is studying coronaviruses, one which has been publicly called out for being uncooperative with the ensuing investigation?
Absence of data isn't a free pass that lets you fill in whatever blanks you want, to fit whatever improbable theory you want. Especially when a plausible, probable, data supported alternative exists.
At the moment, given what we know and don't know, it is dramatically more likely that it was a bush meat outbreak, and confidently and without quantification, asserting the contrary (as the ancestor post did) is nonsense.
Its correct to say that it might have been a lab leak. It's not in good faith to say that it was, or was probably a lab leak. Because that's not where the preponderance of evidence currently rests.
> Why is a wet market a more convincing explanation than a lab whose explicit mission is studying coronaviruses, one which has been publicly called out for being uncooperative with the ensuing investigation?
It's possible that the widespread belief in this explanation is a failure in science communication and there's a good reason for this, but it's not a failure in critical thinking on the part of those who are skeptical of the official story. The official story has an enormous unexplained hole. I've yet to see anyone effectively communicate why the intuitively more probable answer is the less probable one.
I think it's simply the consequences of politically motivated reasoning. (At least, for people who have spent much time thinking about it.)
> I've yet to see anyone effectively communicate why the intuitively more probable answer is the less probable one.
I just communicated why the market leak theory is both more intuitive, and more probable.
There were two possible sources for the virus in the city, and hundreds of thousands of non-sources for it. The first detected source of it was the market.
If the first outbreak of it were in the lab, (but was hidden), probability and intuition indicates that the next place it would have shown up at would have been some randomly selected place of the city, which has nothing to do with viruses. A mall. A theatre. A ball game.
The fact that of all the possibilities, it showed up in the one particular place that is also a prime suspect for it's own viral outbreak means that the most obvious explanation (market leak) is likely the correct one.
When a swine flu outbreak is traced to a particular stall in a factory farm, we don't conclude (without further evidence) that actually it was caused by a university miles away.
No, you didn't, you stated that it was.
The rest of your post makes sense as an explanation. Maybe lead with that next time instead of condescendingly telling people that they're politically motivated, stupid, or whatever else you meant to imply by calling it a conspiracy theory.
COVID-19, at least in the US, has been an enormous failure in science communication, and being condescending towards those who already feel alienated by the terrible communication isn't going to help.
> In 2024, this isn't fact, it's just baseless conspiracy.
> All evidence has ended up pointing to bush meat contamination.
This isn't science communication, it's a condescending rebuke.
That said, I'm done here. Thanks for clarifying in the end, and happy new year!
You’re assuming “it was tracked to there” = “it originated there” but that’s a big leap.
If the market were one of multiple second-generation infection spreader sites, we'd have had significantly faster growth in the rate of infections.
With the power of hindsight, the rate of spread of COVID is well-understood, and the timelines of people getting sick is consistent with one initial outbreak site. There just aren't any known cases where someone came down with COVID on day 1 of the outbreak, without also having gone to that market.
The location bias hypothesis would work if they looked at all patrons of the market, and checked if they got sick. That's not what they did, though, because they didn't have a list of all the patrons of the market. It doesn't have a guestbook.
They looked for people who got sick, and asked them where they went before they fell sick. And all of them turned out to have gone to the market - and not on the same day.
I did some searching and it seems that you are perhaps basing your conclusions on this article/the studies it points to? - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
> A geospatial analysis reports that 155 early COVID-19 cases from Hubei Province, China, in December, 2019, significantly clustered around a food market in Wuhan, China.
However, I couldn't find details on how these 155 cases were selected or what exactly "significantly clustered" means. 155 is a small sample, so the details are important.
Also important is whether the data on these cases was provided by government sources. If so, I would question how reliable or representative that data is.
Also Baltimore changed his mind.
Of course, the same can probably be said about the large population centers in China too. More people concentrated in one area tends to mean more poverty in that area and all the things that come with it.
Most of these folks are illiterate oldies that would pass away in a few years anyway.