The researchers conclude that the EU should use its strong bargaining power due to the single market to induce the Chinese government to abandon the most harmful subsidies.

This is their advice? Make the technology for the green transition more expensive rather than enact your own subsidies?

Capitalists are going to burn this planet.

Wy’east?

We won’t be abandoning the tropics. The people who live there will be. And, based on current prevailing attitudes of temperate democracies, those fleeing the uninhabitable zones will be told to simply pound sand. It will be genocide by omission.

The democracy I live under now keeps ignoring or delaying action on climate change in favor of things that are less important than the comfortable survival of our species. If it’s trying to convince me it’s worth saving it’s doing a bad job.

My ideological concerns are secondary to my ecological concerns.

China’s solar panel industry isn’t a monopoly, much like their auto industry.

The internal competition is part of the reason both are so cheap.

I’m asking you what you think would be different if China was the largest global superpower?

If this is some great fear we’re all supposed to have to the point that we’ll forestall making progress on decarbonizing then it should be easy to clearly articulate what we’re afraid of happening.

What’s there to defend? We need more solar panels. The cheaper they are the better.

See above where I said I do not give a shit about how many jobs are preserved on my rapidly warming planet.

The Opium Wars involved armed conflict on Chinese soil. That’s the sort of thing nukes deter.

If you’ll notice he also increased tariffs on solar panels at the same time.

Did worse than that to, like, China in the 19th c. But I thought you were talking about like France and Spain.

they’d treat us like we (the British empire) treated lesser foreign powers

How’s that? Disadvantageous trade agreements? You already have those.

What would “direct power” look like? China invades Canada, a country defended by US nukes, with the PLA? There’s a reason Iran and North Korea are still around despite open animus from the US.

My point is largely that these nebulous fears of “Chinese hegemony” are just that–nebulous. Asking people to drill down into what they’re really afraid of either reveals the status quo or impossible scenarios.

Yeah but I’m still not clear on what the fear is exactly.

Like how do you envision it changing your life having China “in charge” vs the US?

Control it how? The US is as close as anyone has come to being a global hegemon and even then they can only do so much to nuclear states.

What could it mean? What’s the “nightmare scenario” here? The US has had a significant trade deficit with China for decades.

Kneecapping decarbonization efforts in the name of “jobs” and “the economy” is just straight up Republican policy. I do not care how many jobs are preserved on my rapidly warming planet.

Because game devs have to pay their rent.

If they go off to form their own studio, they probably have to take out a business loan to pay themselves for the time being. Interest rates are high right now, and rent and food are both expensive. It’s a huge gamble to make a game and put it out on the assumption you’ll be able to pay back 6%+ interest on whatever you took out. Games are not a reliable money maker. Especially from new studios.

Even if you get some sort of deal with a publisher to fund your first endeavor, there will still be strings attached to that, and publishers are pretty tight with the purse strings right now.

Which means really the only viable option, assuming you’re not already independently wealthy, is that you have to work another job to work on the game in the meantime, which means it will take even longer to come out.

It’s an opinion piece. This isn’t reporting. It says “Commentary” up at the top of the article.

I think you can “trust” when someone tells you that their opinion is actually their opinion. That’s the only question of “trust” here.

There’s an op-ed in the NYT right now titled At the Met Gala, Celebrities Are Nearly Nude. Are We Not Aroused? Do you trust that?

That’s not what capitalism means, dawg.

This report, funded by the UK government, takes the forced labor as a given. Their “research” is essentially, “we couldn’t trace supply lines, so we assume all green tech is tied to Xinjiang, and that anything made in Xinjiang has forced labor in the chain”. In fact the “report” is actually “investor advice”, and not purporting to be factual reporting of any kind.

I’m sure all the people who “worked” on this are enjoying their six figure e-mail jobs.