Yu Jing Fluff - Perception, Reality, Desire

Going further down the O/T hole.

The USA has a specific problem with China and the South China Sea. When one starts building fortified islands in international waters there's going to be a problem. The USA is not alone in the concern with Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Taiwan joining in. China isn't as nice and cuddly as they look (like every other country).

 

Not when all the Keisotsu lack cubes...

Sure you can. You wait till this batch of oligarchs piss away their funding and get another 10xGDP in debt (in about 5 generations), and buy them out again.

It's basically how Yu Jing bought Japan in the first place.

This is (Space) China, planning for 50-100 years from now is normal today. Crud, even Japan plans for 50 years out! Not like the US or Europe where they only seem to plan to the next election...

Means that there's going to be a lot of work done to prevent a Japan-Nomads alliance or even trade agreements.

Though I note that it's rather ironic that is exactly the same problem that Japan had during WW2. Too much distance between territory and not enough Navy to cover it.

For submarine operations, Blind Man's Bluff. (That book got some major security investigations launched, BTW, it's probably more accurate than I should admit)

For general talking about what happened, volunteer at a Veteran's Hospital and talk to the old codgers (or not so old, since we're talking about guys in their 60s now). Friend of mine told me the Bosun's Mate on his supply ship got in trouble for welding steel teeth onto the side of the hull while they were in the Med and Black Sea, Soviet Navy was playing bumper boats. Another Friend told me about scaring the crap out of the Czech army one day in the mid-80s, when his entire Armored Regiment called "tally-ho" and came charging over the hill towards the Czech border and a Czech division in camp, only to break off right before the border.

There are several books about the BRIXMIS, and at least one is called BRIXMIS. I haven't read any of them, though, so don't have a recommendation.

The fighting was all gangs, and there just so happened to be a hostile takeover bid for the powerplant at the same time.

164 separate instances of gang violence, if I wanted to explain it that way. (You don't want to know how many fatalities there are in Chicago, IL, USA every day, let alone in a couple weeks time. Admittedly, Chicago is about the most violent city in the entire world. I'm pretty sure Baghdad was less dangerous during the invasion.)

That's the point of Infinity-scale operations, it's "just gang violence" and if things get out of hand in Paradiso you can blame the Aliens without risking getting into a shooting war.

Probably Aleph came down and said, "You cannot allow this to escalate further."

The same China that burns more coal than the entirety of Europe and the US combined?

Though I admit that Three Gorges does make a crazy amount of power, that's all power for southern China. All the coal plants are up north. Electricity doesn't travel very far very well. Not more than about 1500 miles.

Wind and Solar is nice when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. It does not supply 'baseline load' like factories, grocery stores, and hospitals. The facilities that have to run 24/7 (to include your home refrigerator). Your options to provide baseline load are Coal, Oil, Nuclear, Hydro, or Geothermal. Coal and Oil generate greenhouse gasses (and coal actively releases radiation to the environment!). Hydroelectric kills entire river ecosystems. Geothermal causes freaking earthquakes. People freak the hell out when you say nuclear, but it's the only option that doesn't do any of those immediate issues.

 

So, the USA and it's local client states?

But anyway, importantly the international waters in question are right off China's coast and consist of their primary sea trade route access.

China started fortifying the region only after the USA and it's local client states started putting warships there, on China's border, and explicitly and openly "playing war games" about totally blockading China's access to that very major trade route.

The South China sea thing is a mess. But don't let anyone tell you it is a mess because of any other reason than the USA.

And then imagine the reaction if China sent it's war fleets right next to US waters and practicing total military blockades of US waters.

 

How would you guys apply these arguments to the other planets?

Heck, on Paradiso its not just PanO doing the blockading, but Haqq is too (tho interestingly, Haqq also attacks JSA air units that try to break the blockade in the other direction).

 

Yes. That China. I know. Crazy right? But complex issues be complex.

Also your comments about "base load" (a dead give away you've been reading denialist propaganda by the way) and nuclear make it very clear you are wildly out of date if not utterly misinformed on these issues.

Coal power lingers, because power plants have life spans, but it is a effectively a dead and unneeded technology ask the actual investors, basically no one wants to put money into that dead end anymore. Nuclear can never be our base load technology, generation 4 reactors have proven to be nothing but very expensive vaporware for far too long now and the world supply of Uranium is too small to make it viable for any realistic time frame.

But lets not get far into that. Lets suffice it to say when it comes to both the tech and the industrial capacity China is the leading source, and leading user of Solar and batteries (along side basically everything else). Something my nation could have been until our very western democratic government deliberately sabotaged the local industry against the majority will of the people back when we had the best solar tech. And they have an actual very convincing and thoroughly backed plan to transition meaningfully away from coal. Something my nation, and from what I recall yours, is trying the hardest to do the opposite of, against the majority will of our populations. Oh and the Paris agreement only happened because of China. And China is on the cutting edge of law reform to prevent and punish pollution. And China is in the process of a massive crack down on air pollution. And China is in the process of a massive project to improve it's water ways. And hell, rather a lot of things actually.

 

International waters are international waters only so long as others insist that they are. Not doing freedom of navigation exercises gives approval of annexation of international waters.
Also 2000 NM isn’t “just off the coast”
Edit: actually more like 800 NM, forgive the overestimate.

 

@Eldritch You come off like someone who's drinking the PRC kool-aid.

 

@psychoticstorm Any rebuttal to @Devrailis 's points?

 

You really need to read some non-Chinese sources, dude.

25% of all maritime traffic passes through the South China Sea. That's all traffic, world-wide. Your shirts made in India? Passed through the SCS if you live in North or South America, If you live in Europe it went west through the Suez and into the Med. Your computer was made in China (at least parts of it were), and those parts or completed computers went through the SCS on their way to Europe (and technically through Japanese waters to get to the US).

Vietnam is pissed off about China pouring concrete all over islands that feed Hanoi. See also the Philippines. And Malaysia, Sultanate of Brunei, even freaking Cambodia and Thailand. Those islands are in various nations Economic Exclusion Zones (EEZ), which extend 200 Nautical Miles (~400km) from the coastline of every country. Yes, in some places the EEZs overlap, and the South China Sea is one of them. But once the various nations agree on where those EEZ boundaries are, that's a place your country gets to use exclusively (hence the name). The US is generally gifted with countries that are willing to talk about where the edges of our EEZs end up, but the nations surrounding the SCS aren't quite so willing to make a dividing line.

China's Nine-Dashed Line goes to within 50km of the coasts of every other country bordering the South China Sea. That's close enough to see from 65 feet/20m above the beach.



The US flies a plane or sails a warship through the SCS to tell China "This water is INTERNATIONAL WATERS. Or do you want to start a fight with the US to claim otherwise?"

There's also the Senkaku Islands (170km from Taiwan and Japanese territory, 330km from nearest mainland China)
Taiwan wanted access to the fishing grounds of the Senkaku/Daiyoutai islands (quite literally, "Good Fishing Islands" and the Japanese do a lot of fishing there, too). Taiwan dropped their territorial claim with Japan when Japan agreed to allow Taiwanese boats to fish there.

There's a report dating from 1976 that there is likely petroleum under the seabed around those islands. China did not press their territorial claim of those islands until after that report was published. So I find their territorial claim a bit suspect.


And keep in mind, I have freely admitted to wanting to live in the earlier portrayal of Yu Jing, even over PanO, despite being libertarian politically, which means that I really don't like it when a government tells me what to do.

Well, if you're enforcing a no-fly zone, that technically means EVERYONE not patrolling doesn't get to fly. Besides, at least on Paradiso Haqq is trying to stop the two sides from fighting, making it more like a de-militarized zone.

Don't have the book yet, so I can't testify about anything else.


Had to like @Devrailis post for the calm analysis, because I sure as hell don't like what he's reporting.

This makes me not want to live in YJ anymore.

Still don't want to live in PanO. You should not have to pay significant amounts of money for things that are necessary for functioning in society, like the ability to see temporary road construction signs! And it's bad enough in the US with the various lobbies pushing for different bills. Can't imagine how nasty it is in a place where the corporations really do run the damn country!

Nomads? I'm a little broken to handle sustained Zero Gee ops, and Bakunin is a bit too ... anarchistic for my tastes. Leaves Tunguska, and I'm not a banker or electronic security expert.

Haqq? Well, I'm not too keen on paying Jizaya on top of other taxes because I won't convert (yes, that's still a thing). Though I will admit that I might be convertable (I'd dearly like to be able to read the founder's words, but if someone at CB could write them we'd be looking at the founding of the religion, not a passing mention in a game's background setting materials! lol )

Leaves Ariadna. I'd be a bit old to consider for the initial colonization (I'd be ~60+ then), but I am used to living out in the sticks and can play an instrument or two (important things when the power goes out on you!). Plus I know how to make steel, have done a little of my own gunsmithing (mostly just replacing parts, and you learn how to do that much just doing a total disassembly). My messed-up back makes it hard to do a lot of the heavy lifting you'd need to do on a frontier, though.

So that's that. No really good fits for me.


Hell, I'm not sure I want to play this game anymore. Not if that's what CB is going to do to their setting. Hell, even the Shasvasti were relatable aliens, before a HUMAN fuckup made them want all humans dead (not unreasonably so, if you know the Shas history!). Morats are ... rather hostile, and they're close enough to the Human Sphere in tech that we'd fight a LOT. Probably so much that we'd have to make it a matter of Humans or Morats. But the Shas? Hell, we could have offered them living-space on Human-settled worlds, and fought with them against the Morats. Exrah were the worst of the Robber Baron capitalists, but if you knew that going in you could still do deals with them. Hell, the Exrah Concordat was nuked by the EI for doing deals with human companies!




@Hecaton : @psychoticstorm isn't the background writer for CB. You want @Interruptor .

 

First, thanks @Devrailis for the extra data.

As for the Narrative, Worldbuilding and Rules that were mentioned on a previous post, I'd say that the Narrative was the weakest of the three and the Worldbuilding was the strongest. Uprising manages (unsurprisingly) to take both down... and the JSA secession, while expected adn wanted by a lot of JSA players, takes Rules down aswell... So, I'd say it was a poor experience, from my point of view.
And sadly, everything I feared it would be.

Gangs move in, violence explodes, scandals surface, prices drop, acquisition by legal means is feasible... gangs stop and the property regains value.
Or if it's a strategic critical asset for the war effort against the CA, proves that the current management is unable to deliver, so a new one is needed...

Most of what happened could be attributed to "Blue on Blue" (friendly forces fighting against themselves) because of the paranoia the Speculo killers and other Shasvastii infiltrators bring. Then you add "no trail left, it must have been the CA", and "I prefer to take revenge with my own hands rather than telling daddy", and...
As long as they don't endanger long-term strategical assets, Aleph and O-12 might be forced to turn a blind eye against this stuff, because, well... it's like sanctioning PanO's Wall of Steel: O12 had to do it to prevent a full scale war between PanO and YJ, but that doesn't mean PanO gets a free pass.

Infinity cannot be a setting so alien that paralelisms can be drawn between what happens there and what happens nowadays, because then you have no reference, nor a need to have anything resembling the current world. Or, said another way, you can't present a "like today, but with more tech and bigger scale" and then go full Star Trek's Starfleet philosophy, it creates, as mentioned, dissonance and breaks the suspension of disbelief.

Shrugging and accepting it means you don't really want to talk about this, just defend your investment (emotional, financial, whatever) at all costs, like a true believer (or even a non-violent fanatic) would when faced with the most basic and logical of questions, refusing to hear any argument at all.

I'd say the main difference is knowledge. Nowadays we have lots of data, publicly available, about all corners of the world (another thing entirely is that we are not saturated with data, meaning that we don't look for/notice those things); for example we have even videos of North Korea, despite being forbidden to take them.

Incidentally, that's my reasoning behind the "the Sphere's public opinion was directed by the governments", since there is enough newscasts in a day that YJ's ones would be more sound in the background otherwise.

I was referring to "military immediate annexation", but... that goes to the next question I made: why should YJ take in the Japan nation again? I mean, it's not like the dream of a united Asia will go on, there is too much bad blood now, and no faction would take the Japan nation inside themselves and keep the Kuge, Emperor, and adoctrinations going on, since we know how that goes in the long run... and the Kuge won't sold Japan again if that means they not only won't get anything from it, but will lose everything.

The same China that generates so much smog you can make bricks from filtering the air with little effort, yeah. Which means they are trying to clean the atmosphere around their overcontaminated cities, not because of the good of the planet, but because dead citizens are not productive, and sick ones are a drag for the economy.
Another thing entirely is Madrid, with its pollution measuring machines placed in the middle of the green lung of the city (and a previous major tried to install those OUTSIDE the city borders XD).

Paradiso is another beast entirely. Because of the CA's threat and the Shasvastii infiltrations, the standard protocols might be "do not let ANYBODY cross your assigned sector, no matter what, unless you get data that cannot be tampered with instructions. Hell, you can't even trust your partners, because of the Impersonators, but at least Haqquislam has more experience and knowledge about how they work.

I mean, I read Campaign Paradiso back in the day, and several Dire Foes. It gets to a (ridiculous) point in which you are expecting two Fiday or two Speculo to cross swords, realize they are on the same side, and go kill the Lt who was the only real trooper of his faction... The Maglev scenario's fluff had at least two impersonators, and I think a third one was mentioned in the closing paragraph...


EDIT;

No, he wants psychoticstorm to try and say, again, "but you need to wait until you read the book, it's so good!", or "wait and see, the next book will right things".

 

@Section9 I meant because @psychoticstorm had been defending the portrayal of Yu Jing in the fluff.

 

Do Japanese schoolgirls have cubes?

 

Well... Aragotos had, so... I'd say so :p

 

@Section9 US+EU is roughly half as populous as China. Their CO2 emissions are on same level per capita as the EU. The biggest CO2 pollutants in the world are US, CA, Bahrain and Kuwait with Qatar and Trinidad & Tobago going off the charts. There is some to be said about China's need to modernize and industrialize their nation, but switching emission development towards the Western downward pointing trend before even getting close to US levels speaks volumes about commitment when they at the same time work to challenge the US as world economic leader.

Still, their emission data is above EU average and still delta going the wrong direction by comparison. Just don't pollute EU's data with US data :p

 

You can make all the excuses you like over the south China sea.

But again, I already asked the question.

What if China practiced naval blockades of the USA? Right next to the USA.

According to you that's totally fine right?

 

Well if you insist the shooting incident were done after the uprising ended, not before or during and ISS was never portrayed as easygoing towards betrayers of the state empire the article is of course written for the Bourak population by Haqqislamiste sources.

You can view the whole incident as two Imperial agents shooting a civilian and getting away from it, or the whole story of Imperial agents doing a security sweep after a forward outpost was attacked by Tatenokai with resulting deaths, been separated by angry mobs of civilians one group fired in the air to disperse them resulting in a big mob of civilians stampeding towards another group who shot at the crowd that was rapidly approaching them, how they managed to kill only one is a miracle.

The article mentions of 700 something deaths in a population of several millions (several hundred?) in an area under martial law (so no civil laws exist) with active terrorist activity that still kills troops, given the nature of the article wanting to make ISS look bad, it just reports people reported missing, they could be tatenokai agents in those 700 deaths, that been said even the article accepts 65 cases have been investigated and one agent actually apprehended, more than what I would expect.

As I said the uprising is open to interpretation of the reader, want to make Yu Jing look bad read the book as is without noticing who writes what part and for what target audience, preferably ignore the context, want to justify their actions dissect the article and make extract the information you want from it.

Iron wall was enacted two weeks after uprising started (under panO and general public pressure and presumably by then authorised by O-12), no troops were deployed by PanO except on Dawn iirc and no retaliation or accusations was done by PanO for Yu Jing attacking their air base on Dawn, PanO did not shoot any retreating aircraft or aircraft designated for evacuating Yu Jing troops and did not act on any other airspace that was not adjusted to their own and had Japanese civilians (and troops).

A few things now, there are no real personalities in the Uprising story outside Sun Tze and even he has short passages, all of the dire foes missions are tied in to the uprising mostly making the "fate" part that led to the uprising story. The Haqqislam part can be explained because the uprising takes part exactly during/ post red veil and Hassassins are full in damaging Yu Jing companies because they covered up the PanO company that destroyed their companies contracts by hiring Ikari to blow up their medical supply ships.

In general hostility to Yu Jing was done by exploiting PanO broadcasting,exploiting PanO population and by PanO corporations playing dirty and greedy, towards Haqqislam and using Yu Jing corporations to cover them up, em #blame PanO?

 

@Hecaton See, @psychoticstorm came through for you. You shouldn’t have been worried that he wouldn’t justify it somehow. He ALWAYS does.

 

What blockade?
I’m beginning to suspect you are a PRC plant.