China watch.

If they cant get something as simple and basic as concrete worked out, hell, u can make it yourself at home, then what hope have they got to concur the world, or even Taiwan ?

The reigning work ethic is to take the money now, forget the future. A friend has a oriental wife, and she is into making as much money as possible, through real estate or whatever. Build a house as cheap as possible, then flog it for as much as possible, even using 2nd hand materials and calling it new. no ethics at all.

The latest rip off from China was some 18650 size lithium battery's labelled as having a 20,000 milliamp hour rating ! Tested they went to 1,800 MAh. They are subject to the physical limitations of this world just like the rest of us.

Does anyone else see videos of China, or any other inner city for that matter, and think how those in it are going to fare WTSHTF ?





Committees keep minutes and lose hours.

Just as we saw when covid first hit, the government will just weld the doors shut in their buildings and let them starve.

Those solar powerbanks come to mind. I bought one, tested it, took it back and got a refund. Actual mAh was around 20% of the nameplate value. That's not bad manufacturing, it's fraud.

With the concrete, China will often use beach sand instead of river sand. Beach sand has a very different shape to river sand and does not bind properly -> stuff falls down in China all the time. Bridges, buildings etc.

Beach sand has sodium - sea salts and high levels of sulphur - not good for concrete.  Seen some of it in WA - Just crumbles.  

I ended up going to Jaycar. Bought the powertech jumpstater. It is an emergency torch, can jumpstart your car and has USB charging for your phone. I ran a small fan off it for 20hrs and it still had charge left. 
Cost about $200 from memory. Good bit of kit. Only drawback is that it requires 12V or 240V to charge it, so a USB my 5V portable solar panel won't work with it. Still well worth it though. 

The simple solution to that is to get a fold out solar panel. The input on the unit can take up to 24 volts dc in, so a open circuit voltage of a solar panel at 18 v is perfect, and it will charge at a reasonable 5 amps max, so 5 hrs to full charge in full sun, not to bad.

I prefer Jaycar to Altronics, they just seem to have better quality gear. I read once somewhere that Jaycar have staff scour the planet for gear, then visit the factories to check the quality and sometimes have mods done especially for them.

A lot of the faults in electronic gear that is thrown away is dry soldered joints. The Chinese especially seem to resist using enough solder to properly 'wet' the joint and the result is it fails after a few heat and cold cycles from thermal failure. Resoldering all the connections quite often restores the item to full working condition. Soldering is one skill you must learn to do for after the collapse.




Courage atrophies due to lack of use.

To be clear though, China itself will not 'collapse'. The CCP has too much control and is happy to kill as many of its citizens as it takes to stay in power. The economy, yeah it's in for a long downward path though and Australia will suffer from this. And to be honest, those who have profitted by sending our industries and our rocks to a murderous dictatorship deserve every financial hit coming their way. It's the rest of us that get dragged down with it that is the issue.

Beijing may be planning a military operation in a surprising location

www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/chilling-detail-in-china-satellite-photo-reveals-beijing-may-be-planning-a-military-operation-in-a-surprising-location/news-story/5dc3f05b059b3c700929c6e9b8eb97d2

They've been salami-slicing into Indian space for quite a while now, I've actually been a bit surprised by the amount of restraint shown on both sides given there's regular skirmishes between ground troops at the border. But China as always doesn't stop. They let each side get a bit of a bloodied nose but still inch forward.