I actually had to google Brent Spar. And I don't know how to understand your Greenpeace comment.

If the Chinese go comatose now there is a slim chance protesters will show up at the Olympics to be draged away and shot the day after. But that's not gonna happen, so I don't think there will be much room for any protests the Chinese don't want to happen.

I personally don't live in a happy rainbow country where a bunch of protesters can simply avoid a highly alert security force and change the oppinion of the world by proving how mean the chinese are.

China is getting nervous over sympathizers coming in from India/Nepal to Tibbet causing more problems. Nepal is beating them down but India might support them just to prove they can act too. China's military build up is missles and boats and is aimed at Formosa and Japan.

There is more of a risk of an accidental conflict with Japan. China is building its fleet. Chinese ships have 'drifted' into Japanese waters on a regular basis so Japan is responding by doing the last thing China wants. It is quietly rearming the Imperial navy, I'm sorry I mean the MSDF. this makes China more nervous and it is quietly escallating there. It is not helped by the Koreans who also probe Japanese waters and airspace.

The (North) Koreans also have this nice habit of snatching Japanese from their houses at night and torturing them for information every once in a while ... so, it's hard to blame Japan, really. Though they apparently are trying to slowly get rid of their laws limiting military action and armament ... ironically because of US pressure - who wrote that into their constitution in the first place.

A few comments.
First, I thought there was something in the terms of use about not posting political issues here. I'm not opposed, I just thought those were the rules.
second, the idea that China could simply stop trading with the US and that the US would crumble is totally ludicrous. It would at best be a murder suicide. China's main trading partner by far is the US; and even if it weren't as the US goes, so goes the world economy.
Third, "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world; indeed it often is the only thing that can."
Fourth, the situation in Tibet over the last couple decades reminds me of nothing more than the US expansion West into Indian Territory, Complete with Tibetans being second class citizens and a train to seal the deal.
Fifth the main complaint coming out of Tibet is that the Han are all moving in and getting all the benefits of economic development.
Sixth I know about Brent Spar, but I worked for GreenPeace for eight years including the time Brent Spar was going down (or not.) And I'll tell you that no one in GreenPeace is making oodles of money.
Seventh, China has fought several wars with Vietnam (four I believe) since the end of the Vietnam war. Not once did they bother shooting off aa nuke. I know this is different, but it is perfectly possible that a conflict would be limited to conventional forces. This is far more likely to be the case if the conflict is limited in scope to the border areas and India doesn't feel threatened in it's core. Remember India has many of it's own insurgencies fighting for inipendent Homelands, though those tend more to be in the Eastern part.
Finally, The Olympics won't be boycotted.

Not stop trading. Call in the money the US owes them. An important difference.


The grunts aren't. The top drawer? Less so.


And why should they? The US didn't nuke Iraq either. India, on the other hand, has nukes itself and wouldn't be shy to use them if it felt threatened enough.

I think I compared China to Atzlan, which could be enough SR relevence, so we might be safe for a few pages. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Again he is correct, if the US economy collapses due to the loans being called in, PRC loses its MAJOR trading partner, its economy dumps, alot of the world economy dumps, PRC goes back about 200 years in development, and gets nothing since the US economy goes belly up, the money owed to PRC is gone.

Yes a murder/suicide is a more correct term. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

As for Tibet in SR4, interesting what large amounts of magic power can do to mundane technology. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

WMS

yes i really liked the write up about Tibet in SoA. A land Enshrouded in protective magic.
The "Top Drawer" aren't making oodles of $ compared to other NGO's. Trust me, i left on rather unpleasant terms, and am not particularly interested in defending them in terms of pay, but I am more interested in the truth which is of course relative. Compared to the grunts like me, they make alot of money, compared to people in equitable jobs, they don't.
No,they don't have to stop trading with us, but even calling in the debt would have the same result. One thing to remember is that the Buan is pegged to the dollar (something that all those interventionist conservatives keep complaining about.) If they call in the debt, not only do they have alot less exports, but the value of their own money plummets. Economically, the health of both nations is so tightly intertwined as to be inseperable. The real danger is if they once PRC and other nations, like the Arabs, starts to switch their capitol reserves from $ to Euros.
Another thing to remember in Tibet, that I forgot to mention is that of the original nation of Tibet, only about a third of it is in what in today is called the Tibet Autonomous Area. The rest of the nation has been subsumed into other provinces of western China. Again fulfilling the analogy/parallels with the way the US took over Native American lands.
And since Frank started the whole post, I think it's "immune to normal rules" (new spirit power) . (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The big problem here is that we now have a monolithic Communist (ha!) China, and by 2070 and SoA China has borken up. A potential conflict now might create a torn up border but by 2070 there will be a much stronger india and a much weaker warlord on the other side of the border. Likewise their missles and navy are being built up and in the region of Tiawan but who knows who will get htem. now there is a reason to track this because someone's going to get all those mislses and warships. but the question is who? As china falls apart does someone try to get the military in his provence? Or does a whily admiral keep his fleet together and acts as a power broker going to the best bidder?

Conversly a fleet of warships sailing the chinese coast like ancient pirates reborn? not cool. heck, you pull the Red October line and as the PRC breaks up, the fleet defects to Tiawan.

I wouldn't bet on it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I think most of the PLA stayed with the provinces they were native to, though the fleet and the rather vast contingents in the Pearl River Delta would give the Guangdong Confed a notable edge over other splinterprovinces. Then again, their war with Taiwan seems to have been incredibly costly. A mercenary fleet, I could also see, contracting itself out to the highest-bidding province, though really, it'd be only either Taiwan or Gunagdong Confed, because everyone else is either dirt-poor or doesn't have a coastline, IIRC.

On a side note, today's China is neither communist (well, apart from the insignia and stuff) nor monolithic.

Ever since their description in SoA, I have wondered why the described India didn't smack around the entire world. Seriously all of the major nations in the world smaller than India are broken, but India remains whole and has the largest number of magicians on Earth. I really really think that it's a chink in verisimilitude for the setting that India hasn't also broken up into pieces.

-Frank

It is not actually possible to 'call in' US treasury bonds (which is what almost all of the dollar denoinated debt that china holds is). Just the holder of the bond on the date it vests gets paid X dollars. They are entirely within their rights to tell you to bugger off if you ask for it early and that is how it works. You could start flogging them all off, I guess, which would probably depress bond prices but.. alas?

Maybe it's because different parts broke off when the British pulled out. I think India got hit pretty hard by VITAS also just because they have magicians does not mean power or an interest. Think of the old fragger in the 2nd Indianna Jones movie. happy to sit in his village.

I may sound like an old timer here so forgive me. The books printed after 2000 show either an incredible recovery from the waves of VITAS or treat the disease like it wasn't so bad. There are lots of phrases like "its getting harder and harder to find undeveloped land". Most of the books do their best to fill holes in the old canon with updated reflections of the situation today. If the original books had described India as split, it would be split now. I know the old books were American centric, its likely a valid marketing strategy to empower a wider audience by patriotism. It worked on me when I was 14 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

As for the motivated magicians, yes. Like money stuffed in the mattress, its only good when you use it.

As for the conflict, it reminds me of Sino-Soviet border incidents my father would read to me while I grew up
"See <BlueMax's real name>, the commies can't even trust each other."
Not all posturing leads to war. Often, its just to keep the troops and media busy.

....and back in the 50s- 60s people here were expected to buy the notion you could survive an nuclear attack hiding under a desk or in a homemade shelter in your cellar. yeah, I remember those days. Gotta love propaganda.

[...was going to link to the original Duck & Cover film but it's 9 min long.]

...oh, and I think Fool wins this thread. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

thank you thank you thank you and for my next performance.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/talker.gif)
India probably didn't wipe the floor with all the other countries because they are dirt poor. yeah they ahve tons aand tons of magic, but that only does you any good militarily if you can train and organize the mages into a cohesive fighting machine. And that takes financing.
n Also, India is a lot more like China than you'd think. They both have a single ethnicity trying to impose its will on alot of other ethnicities within the confines of their "borders". I'd imagine that in the future described in SoA that tension would still be an important factor.... maybe that old guy in the village is an assam and doesn't particularly like the central gov.
BTW one good thing about nuclear winter, it'll cure global warming.

..as MP's Life of Brian teaches us...

...always look on the bright side of life. [whistle]
...always look on the light side of life. [whistle]... :mushroomcloud:

Sorry, KK is the new winner of the thread. Can't argue with MP.

Oh I know. The Indian Government was really happy that they had gotten the Naga to give up head hunting in the 1990s, but they found a bunch of headless corpses this year so it obviously didn't stick. In 1996 Phoolan Devi ran for parliament and won on the grounds that in her days as a bandit leader she had personally shot two dozen fools right in the face for being members of a rival bandit gang that had raped a bunch of people. The chief minister of Bihar was illiterate from 1997 until 2005. Northern India is totally Mad Max right now, no Awakening and mass hysteria required.

But the presentation in Shadows of Asia is coherent, centralized, and monolithic. That's very hard to square with India today and the presented non-Indocentric world of Shadowrun outside of South Asia.

-Frank

The actual idea is that Pakistan has a very limited number of nukes. Like China, indias billion+ population means after a nuclear exchange they will have more people alive than Pakistan even at a 1 to 1 exchange.

It's rude for newspapers to minimize people by calling them NPC's. Just cause they're not Shadowrunners doesn't meant they're not PC's!

...a large percentage of whom will be suffering from radiation exposure. May not kill them outright, but give it a few years.

Yes look at the radiation induced cancers/birth defects in Chernobyl aftermath.*shudders*

WMS