Quotulatiousness

April 8, 2022

Chinese C96 “Wauser” Broomhandle

Filed under: China, History, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Nov 2016

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The C96 Mauser was a very popular handgun in China in the 1920s and 30s, which naturally led to a substantial number of domestically-produced copies of it. These ran the full range of quality, from dangerous to excellent. This particular example falls into the middle, appearing to be a pretty fair mechanical copy of the C96 action. However, it does exhibit classic Chinese misspelled markings — the workers who made these guns often did not actually read English (or German), and made best-guess attempts at copying the markings on authentic firearms. The result was sometimes something like the Wauser.

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April 2, 2022

QotD: The pre-modern farming household

Filed under: China, Economics, Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Looking at our peasant household, what we generally have are large families on small farms. The households in these farms were not generally nuclear households, but extended ones. Pre-Han Chinese documents assume a household to include three generations: two elderly parents, their son, his wife, and their four children (eight individuals total). Ptolemaic and Roman census data reveal a bewildering array of composite families, including multi-generational homes, but also households composed of multiple nuclear families of siblings (so a man, his wife, his brother and then brother’s wife and their children, for instance), and so on. Normal family units tended to be around eight individuals, but with wide variation (for comparison, the average household size in the United States for a family is 3.14).

At the same time that households were large (by modern standards), the farms they tilled were, by modern standards, very small. The normal size of a Roman household small farm is generally estimated between 5 and 8 iugera (a Roman measurement of land, roughly 3 to 5 acres); in pre-Han Northern China (where wheat and millet, not rice, were the staple crops), the figure was “one hundred mu (4.764 acres)” – essentially the same. In Languedoc, a study of Saint-Thibery in 1460 showed 118 households (out of 189) on farms of less than 20 setérée (12 acres or so; the setérée appears to be an inexact unit of measurement); 96 of them were on less than 10 setérée (about 6 acres). So while there is a lot of variation, by and large it seems like the largest cluster of household farms tend to be around 3 to 8 acres or so; 5 acre farms are a good “average” small farm.

This coincidence of normal farm size and family size is not an accident, but essentially represents multi-generational family units occupying the smallest possible farms which could support them. The pressures that produce this result are not hard to grasp: families with multiple children and a farm large enough to split between them might do so, while families without enough land to split are likely to cluster around the farm they have. Pre-modern societies typically have only limited opportunities for wage labor (which are often lower status and worse in conditions than peasant farming!), so if the extended family unit can cluster on a single farm too small to split up, it will (with exception for the occasional adventurous type who sets off for high-risk occupations like soldier or bandit).

Now to be clear that doesn’t mean the farm sizes are uniform, because they aren’t. There is tremendous variation and obviously the difference between a 10 acre small farm and a 5 acre small farm is half of the farm. Moreover, in most of the communities you will have significant gaps between the poor peasants (whose farms are often very small, even by these measures), the average peasant farmer, and “rich peasants” who might have a somewhat (but often not massively so) larger farm and access to more farming capital (particularly draft animals). […] Nevertheless, what I want to stress is that these fairly small – 3-8 acres of so – farms with an extended family unit on it make up the vast majority of farming households and most of the rural population, even if they do not control most of the land (for instance in that Languedoc village, more than half of the land was held by households with more than 20 setérée a piece, so a handful of those “rich peasants” with larger accumulations effectively dominated the village’s landholding […]).

This is our workforce and we’re going to spend this entire essay talking about them. Why? Because these folks – these farmers – make up the majority of the population of basically all agrarian societies in the pre-modern period. And when I say “the majority” I mean the vast majority, on the order of 80-90% in many cases.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!”, A collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2020-07-24.

March 23, 2022

What did Genghis Khan eat?

Filed under: Asia, China, Food, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

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Published 30 Nov 2021

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March 14, 2022

Legends Summarized: Journey To The West (Part IX)

Filed under: Books, China, History, Humour, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

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Published 26 Nov 2021

Journey to the West Kai, episode 6: Two Weddings And An Asskicking

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February 27, 2022

“Putin finally called our bluff. The question to me is when and if Xi will decide to do the same”

Filed under: China, History, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Andrew Sullivan on what Winston Churchill referred to as “the historic life-interests of Russia”, the inability (and unwillingness) of the western nations to do more than send hopes and prayers to Ukraine, and the parallels between the Russia-Ukraine situation and the China-Taiwan potential conflict:

Taiwan relief map.
Library of Congress Geography & Map Division via Wikimedia Commons.

… in one crucial sense, Putin has already won a victory. A nuclear-armed great power has invaded and occupied a neighboring country in Europe, and there is nothing anyone else has been able to do to stop it. Many in the West assumed Putin wouldn’t go that far — surmising that international law, universal condemnation, economic sanctions, and the lack of any serious threat from Ukraine to Russia would restrain him. But he has called our bluff. He has even hinted at Russia’s nuclear capacity to intimidate other states from intervening. And so we have a precedent. Ukraine is a Russian possession. A fact on the ground. All we have been able to do is watch.

All of which brings us to what seems to me to be the larger dimension of this clash: how it will resonate in Beijing and Taiwan. With apologies to Mitt Romney, China is easily the greater geostrategic challenge. And the parallels with Russia are as striking as they are unnerving. China sees Taiwan as part of its national identity in a similar way to how Russia sees Ukraine as part of its. And we are committed to the defense of Taiwan the way we have committed to the defense of Ukraine: kinda, but not really. In the face of this underlying Western ambiguity, the fall of Kiev is news that Xi will be watching closely.

The parallels are not exact, but nonetheless striking. Taiwan is next door to and deeply entangled with China in its history and culture, just as Ukraine is uniquely entangled with Russia. Seeing Taiwan and China (like Ukraine and Russia) as simply random sovereign states with a right to self-determination under international law is correct, so far as it goes. It’s also moral — as majorities of both Ukrainians and especially Taiwanese want independence and have constructed nascent democracies in the wake of autocracy.

But the nationalist passion Russia feels about Ukraine and China feels about Taiwan is real, visceral, and hard for outsiders to understand intuitively. The sense of a rogue region that somehow got away from the homeland is vivid among Russian and Chinese nationalists. This kind of understanding — claiming a “sphere of influence” — is now deemed reactionary by the West’s foreign policy elites, as, perhaps, it should be. But that doesn’t mean that everyone, especially China and Russia, have actually moved past it. Even Americans have very different emotional responses to perceived threats in our own hemisphere compared with the rest of the world. So this is also a culture clash of sorts — globalism and the nation state vs nationalism and spheres of influence.

I’m not saying that this belief in a sphere of influence is a universal view in Russia or China — or that it is justifiable. I’m just saying it is real. And I’m not excusing Putin or Xi from taking a particularly zealous view of this irredentist nationalism, which they both do, for their own personal and political advantage. I’m just noting how national pride deeply informs them, that resentment of the West consumes them, that a sense of historical grievance spurs them on — and that they are not outliers among their compatriots. It is crazy to underestimate the power of this kind of revanchist nationalism — among rulers and ruled. And I fear we underestimated it in the case of Putin.

This means, as Barack Obama once insisted, that Russia will always care much more about Ukraine than we do; and China will always care much more about Taiwan than we do. In those cases, the last thing we should do is promise support that we do not seriously — truly seriously — intend to provide. The vague pledge by the Western powers not to rule out future NATO membership for Ukraine was the worst of all worlds: poking the bear, with no serious intention of fighting it.

The fall of Afghanistan was a margin call … and Ukraine is the point where airy western “guarantees” will have to be backed up with actual force. But western leaders have grown very comfortable in a world where gestures were taken seriously and few if any such gestures actually had to be followed-through with meaningful action. And now, the geopolitical pantomime is over and we’re back in a world where gestures are seen as signs of weakness and do nothing to deter adventurism.

February 25, 2022

Total War NOW – WAH 053 – February 1943, Pt. 2

Filed under: China, Europe, France, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Feb 2022

Germany declares total (unconditional war) putting its economy on a full war footing over three years into the war. Given the unconditional war they are already waging, and the resistance and opposition they now face, it’s unclear what it shall mean.
(more…)

February 1, 2022

Ancient Nian Gao | Lunar New Year Cake

Filed under: China, Food, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

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January 27, 2022

What is this “Mass Formation Psychosis” thing that so many are suddenly fascinated with?

Filed under: China, History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I started seeing the phrase “Mass Formation Psychosis” popping up a lot recently, but I hadn’t bothered looking into it until quite recently. In an effort to figure out what it’s supposed to be and why people are talking about it, I did the lazy thing I usually do and had a quick wander through some of the blogs I follow to gather up their respective takes on it. Here’s one from earlier in the week from Severian at Founding Questions:

In the depths of the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong decided that China must overtake at least Great Britain, if not the US, in steel production (this was back when the US actually made shit, you understand, so … you know, like a hundred years ago). But since that was impossible with China’s existing steel mills, Mao hit on a solution: He’d just have the peasants do it! Right in the backyards of their collective farms.

No, I’m not kidding. They really did that. The “steel” produced was worthless, of course, and indeed the whole zany scheme probably contributed to the Great Famine, as peasants ended up throwing farm implements, cooking pots, anything and everything that could be melted down into their backyard furnaces. Yeah, they’d need them for the harvest, but the harvest was a month or two away, and the commissar and his pistol demanding more more more! steel was right now.

And that’s the great thing about a totalitarian dictatorship (if you’re the dictator) — if your madcap caper runs aground on reality’s rocks, you can simply declare victory and move on. What backyard blast furnaces? Never heard of them … and neither have you, comrade, if you know what’s good for you. Problem solved.

But … what if, for some bizarre reason, Mao’s slaves had just kept throwing things into their backyard furnace? If Mao had come down personally from the Forbidden City and said “Yeah, we’re good here, save your hoes and scythes and woks and whatnot,” but they still they persisted?

That’s the situation in which Tapioca Joe and the Juggalos find themselves vis a vis Covid.

Severian linked to Robert Stacy McCain’s call for making today “Everybody Blog About Mass Formation Psychosis Day”, which in turn linked to this Substack post from Robert Malone.

As many of you know, I have spent time researching and speaking about mass psychosis theory. Most of what I have learned has come from Dr. Mattias Desmet, who realized that this form of mass hypnosis, of the madness of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about 20-30% of the population in the western world becoming entranced with the Noble Lies and dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness of the genetic vaccines, and both propagated and enforced by politicians, science bureaucrats, pharmaceutical companies and legacy media.

What one observes with the mass hypnosis is that a large fraction of the population is completely unable to process new scientific data and facts demonstrating that they have been misled about the effectiveness and adverse impacts of mandatory mask use, lockdowns, and genetic vaccines that cause people’s bodies to make large amounts of biologically active coronavirus Spike protein.

These hypnotized by this process are unable to recognize the lies and misrepresentations they are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and actively attack anyone who has the temerity to share information with them which contradicts the propaganda that they have come to embrace. And for those whose families and social networks have been torn apart by this process, and who find that close relatives and friends have ghosted them because they question the officially endorsed “truth” and are actually following the scientific literature, this can be a source of deep anguish, sorrow and psychological pain.

January 22, 2022

World War Zero – The Russo Japanese War

Filed under: China, History, Japan, Military, Pacific, Russia — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Great War
Published 21 Jan 2022

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The Russo-Japanese War is nicknamed World War Zero – it was a clash between two world powers that foreshadowed war on an industrial scale as seen just 10 years later again. Gigantic land battles like the Battle of Mukden showed the true cost in manpower and materiel when modern armies clashed and the naval side of the war showed the strategic importance of modern navies.

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» BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akiyama Saneyuki, Gundan (Tokyo: Jitsugyō no Nihonsha, 1917)

Atsuo Yokoyama; Toshikatsu Nishikawa & Ichō Konsōshiamu, Heishitachi ga mita Nichi-Ro sensō, (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 2012)

Corbett, Julian S., Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905, Volume I, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015)

Corbett, Julian S., Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905, Volume II, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2015)

Деникин А. И. Путь русского офицера. (Нью-Йорк: Изд. им. А. Чехова, 1953)

Forczyk, Robert, Russian Battleship vs Japanese Battleship: Yellow Sea 1904-05, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2009)

Hamby, Joel E, “Striking the Balance: Strategy and Force in the Russo-Japanese War” Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 30, No. 3 (2004)

Hosokawa Gentarō, Byōinsen Kōsai Maru kenbunroku (Tokyo: Hakubunkan Shinsha, 1993)

Ivanov, A & Jowett P, The Russo-Japanese War 1904-05, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2004)

Jacob, Frank, The Russo-Japanese War and its Shaping of the Twentieth Century, (London: Routledge, 2017)

Jukes, Geoffrey, The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2014)

Kowner, Rotem (ed), Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5, Volume 1: Centennial Perspectives, (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2007)

Lynch, George & Palmer, Frederick, In Many Wars By Many War Correspondnets, (Tokyo: Tokyo Printing Co. 1904)

Mozawa Yusaku, Aru hohei no Nichi-Ro Sensō jūgun nikki (Tokyo: Sōshisha, 2005)

Murakami Hyōe, Konoe Rentai ki (Tokyo: Akita Shoten, 1967)

Paine, S. C. M., The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Steinberg, John W; Meaning, Bruce W; Schimmelpennick van der Oye, David; Wolff, David & Yokote, Shinji (eds.), The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective: World War Zero, (Leiden: Brill, 2005)

Stille, Mark, The Imperial Japanese Navy of the Russo-Japanese War, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing Ltd, 2016)

Takagi Suiu, Jinsei hachimenkan (Tokyo: Teikoku Kyōiku Kenkyūkai, 1927)

van Dijk, Kees, Pacific Strife: The Great Powers and Their Political and Economic Rivalries in Asia and the Western Pacific, 1870-1914, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015)

Warner, Denis & Warner, Peggy, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905, (London: Angus & Robertson, 1974)

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“China’s statistics remain in the hands of officials who carefully do everything possible to make sure China’s image remains unblemished”

Filed under: China, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’ve been a disbeliever in official Chinese statistics for many years — one of the first repeat topics on the blog in 2004 was the unreliable nature of Chinese government statistics on economic growth. As a result, I find it very easy to believe that the Chinese statistics on deaths due to the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic are unreliable, as John Horvat explains:

Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Wikimedia Commons.

As the latest wave of COVID cases surges in the West, all is quiet in the East. It has always been quiet. Millions have died from the coronavirus epidemic as it sweeps the world. However, few consider it strange that the nation where the virus first appeared amid an entirely unprotected public of 1.3 billion people should record a mere 4,636 fatalities over the past three years.

China’s statistics remain in the hands of officials who carefully do everything possible to make sure China’s image remains unblemished. They claim that low numbers are due to the communist nation’s brutal “zero tolerance” policies. China is presented as a model for the West.

Some voices are appearing that dispute this claim. One expert says the fatality figures are likely closer to 1.7 million. This figure would put China in the same camp as the rest of the world. It would also point to the failure of the world’s strictest lockdown and explain the recent shutdowns of whole cities and regions due to the virus, which supposedly kills no one in China.

[…]

Communist parties have always used statistics as a tool and weapon to advance their agenda. Officials feel free to change the numbers to reflect well upon the state, which controls everything. Truth is whatever furthers the fortunes of the party. If statistics must be changed as a result, there is no problem. Hence the notorious unreliability of communist statistics.

The problem is complicated by anxious officials who must report good news to party leaders or face the consequences of their failures, including death. Zero tolerance numbers may be statistically impossible and even absurd, but most officials prefer their survival over inconvenient truths.

Also disturbing is the complicity of Western media that repeat the cooked numbers of communist regimes. Few dare to question impossible figures or “follow the science” when leftist prestige is involved. During the long Cold War, the West presented the Soviet Union as the second-largest economy. When the Berlin Wall fell, the actual size of the economy was found to be significantly less.

Even in a centrally planned socialist state, incentives matter. In the west, failing to meet expected standards may get you fired (unless you work for the government), but in authoritarian states like China it can get you shot or exiled to a remote labour camp for years or decades. The top statisticians know that the numbers they work on are … massaged … at every stage even before they are aggregated for regional or national reporting, but there is literally no point in telling the truth and there is much to be gained by “scenario-ing them rosily” because your bosses will only accept good news regardless of reality.

January 14, 2022

People who tell “noble lies” are still liars who should not be trusted

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, China, Government, Health, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Matt Ridley considers why so many scientists went along with the disinformation campaign to obscure or discredit the lab-leak theory on the origins of the Wuhan Coronavirus:

Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Wikimedia Commons.

In August 2007 there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth virus on a farm in Surrey. It was a few miles from the world’s leading reference laboratory for identifying outbreaks of foot and mouth. Nobody thought this was a coincidence and sure enough a leaking pipe at the laboratory was soon found to be the source: a drainage contractor had worked at the lab and then at the farm.
In December 2019 there was an outbreak in China of a novel bat-borne SARS-like coronavirus a few miles from the world’s leading laboratory for collecting, studying and manipulating novel bat-borne SARS-like coronaviruses. We were assured by leading scientists in China, the US and the UK that this really was a coincidence, even when the nine closest relatives of the new virus turned up in the freezer of the laboratory in question, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Now we know what those leading scientists really thought. Emails exchanged between them after a conference call on 1 February 2020, and only now forced into the public domain by Republicans in the US Congress, show that they not only thought the virus might have leaked from a lab, but they also went much further in private. They thought the genome sequence of the new virus showed a strong likelihood of having been deliberately manipulated or accidentally mutated in the lab. Yet later they drafted an article for a scientific journal arguing that the suggestion not just of a manipulated virus, but even of an accidental spill, could be confidently dismissed and was a crackpot conspiracy theory.

Jeremy Farrar – who organised the call on 1 February with Patrick Vallance, Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci and a Who’s Who of virology – had already spilled a few of the beans in his book, Spike, published last year. He wrote that at the start of February 2020 he thought there was a 50 per cent chance the virus was engineered, while Kristian Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute was at 60-70 per cent and Eddie Holmes of Sydney University put it at 80 per cent. But some time after the call they all changed their mind. Why? They have never troubled us with an answer.

Now, however, we have an email from Farrar, sent on Sunday 2 February to Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, and Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It recounts the overnight thoughts of two other virologists Farrar had consulted, Robert Garry of Tulane University and Michael Farzan of the Scripps Research Institute, as well as Farrar’s own thoughts. Even after the call, their concern centred on a feature of the SARS-CoV-2 genome that had never been seen in any other SARS-like coronavirus before: the insertion (compared with the closest related virus in bats) of a 12-letter genetic sequence that creates a thing called a furin cleavage site, which makes the virus much more infectious.

The Revenge Bombing of Germany – WAH 050 – January 1943, Pt. 1

Filed under: Britain, China, Europe, Germany, History, India, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 13 Jan 2022

While Nazi Germany keeps on escalating its War Against Humanity, the United Nations alliance decides that they will escalate their war on Germany.
(more…)

January 6, 2022

Chinese Spymasters – The New Warlords? – WW2 – Spies & Ties 12

Filed under: Britain, China, History, Japan, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 5 Jan 2022

During World War Two, China was ripped up by many different warring parties, all of which were also playing spy games with crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses.
(more…)

December 31, 2021

Let the Hunger Games Begin – WAH 049 – December 1942, Pt. 2

Filed under: China, Europe, Germany, History, India, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 30 Dec 2021

The world learns more details of the War Against Humanity in Occupied Poland, while in China and India starvation looms.
(more…)

December 19, 2021

QotD: Sun Tzu’s Art of War reworked for the 21st Century by General Mark Milley

Filed under: Books, China, Humour, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

… here at The Babylon Bee, we’re legit journalists, so we’ve got the exclusive scoop. Here are some excerpts from the upcoming revision of The Art of War:

    “If you think you might attack an enemy, pick up the phone and give ’em a heads up. It’s only fair.”

    “You have to be careful not to surprise your enemy. They really don’t like it.”

    “Treason is not treason if it is the lesser of two treasons.”

    “Know thy pronouns, and know thy enemy’s pronouns.”

    “The supreme art of war is to surrender to your enemy without fighting.”

    “All war is white rage.”

    “If you surrender, you can never lose.”

    “If thy commanding officer sends mean tweets, thou need not follow orders or the chain of command.”

    “The enemy of my friend is my friend.”

    “Keep your friends close and your enemies on speed dial.”

    “You can not betray the one to which you were never loyal.”

    “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for China.”

    “When retreating, leave most of thy armaments behind so you know what you’ll be up against next time.”

    “Chinese bros before American hoes.”

    “He who turns on bad orange man gets big book deal.”

“General Milley Is Releasing A Revised Version Of The Art Of War — And We’ve Got Exclusive Excerpts”, BabylonBee, 2021-09-17.

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