This is a thread specifically for the war, not a general megathread (use the pinned /c/genzedong thread for that).
Please keep related news in this thread rather than making separate posts. Remember to include sources and avoid spreading rumours.
This is a thread specifically for the war, not a general megathread (use the pinned /c/genzedong thread for that).
Please keep related news in this thread rather than making separate posts. Remember to include sources and avoid spreading rumours.
Is Chinese factory activity slowing down though? Afaik their energy prices have remained pretty stable, so i can’t imagine that they would see much impact. And they make up basically the majority of “Asian factory activity”, everyone else is a footnote.
Maybe if demand collapses as a result of economic crisis in Europe…
as was mentioned by another reply no, so I wanted to go into why that is
if you run refineries at a surplus & practice self-sufficiency measures you aren’t affected by these supply shocks in the same way, plus you can apply price controls bc you’re not a hitler country. china & vietnam aren’t affected by this stuff in the same way unfortunately brothers laos & cambodia are not quite so robust in their implementation of these policies. petroVN can halt crude oil exports if needed, dung quat & nghi son refineries already cover abt 70% of domestic demand, china has price controls applied. the pm just ordered a new crude oil storage facility at nghi son. the ndrc told top refiners in march to suspend diesel & gasoline exports (petrochina, sinopec, cnooc, etc.) & cancel alrdy agreed shipments. supply disruption riskis low bc of ample reserves + alternatives like coal to chemicals. i understand not everyone is enthused abt the chinese coal industru but this is where having a mountain of the stuff lying around is amazing. still, arnd 44% of its imported oil comes from the middle east, so it’s definitely felt just there are shock absorbers in place, around the core of the society not just profit extraction mechanisms that end upnfailing in a societal breakdown anyways.
the situation in singapore, taiwan, japan, australia, new zealand, south korea, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc is much worse bc they’re (most of these examples, 4 more complex ofc) just oil outposts in the us financial network they have no self-sufficiency.
reuters is kicking viet nam and china under the table with this one tl;dr, by implying they have the same issues. i’m not being smug it would be beneficial if malaysia, indonesia, laos, & cambodia were more resilient. the crisis is waking a lot of sleepy ppl up so I am hopeful, but these cia narratives around the issue are very saturated.
also im not just rambling about petrovn etc bc they use the same strategies, they are deeply integrated in petrochem & it smoothly crosses over into renewables/fertilizer feedstock/hydrogen needed for steel
That’s very interesting that they have managed to build up such resilience to oil shocks. Admittedly i was thinking more along the lines of having a lot of renewables, and yes, coal, as alternatives. Strategic reserves and price controls too, but i see those as temporary measures. Export bans are a good idea. Also i am wondering how Russian oil and gas exports figure into the equation. If they redirect what they used to export to Europe to now flow to China, is that enough to replace Gulf oil for China?
yeah it’s huge to have a crisis like this happen when ev factories in China + VN are exploding (Vinfast’s vinES battery plant in ha tinh is making about 130.000 packs a year, DFC (USA) considering a p major loan in VF i wonder how much more " 🇨🇳decoupling" will go right to industries in VN deeply integrated w them & end up propelling agricultural development of a nation they tried to raze 💭). there’s CATL’s 60gwh plant in Shandong plus embedded lines in seres’ Chongqing factory churning out aito batteries. VW’s biggest shareholder Gotion (CN) started pilot full s. state battery production in Hefei,already road testing in passenger EVs. looking at the state of western automakers w new energy prices (HOLY FUCK) I expect foreign money to roll in), while Vinfast’s really the only vertically integrated one in VN, but that says a lot about how concentrated that industry & its growth is too lol. i don’t know enough about battery supply chains [⚠️ THIS IS NOT BATTERY/EV INDUSTRY INVESTMENT ADVICE BRUH ⚠️] crossed with car manufacturing, but it is a lot easier to get into EVs than ICE vehicles, fewer moving parts in a battery ofc. even hitler countries know how to do it (we’ll see, I want good things for nigeria but knowing what the backbone of this project is makes me skeptical). so any kind of efficiency improvements there will be massive, they don’t require major changes in fine-tuned equipment you just get a better battery (EV haters come at me I love trains too!!). I’ll cover those in another post it’s a tangent I think. if anyone shows up talking like a battery genius send them to me I need to know if I miss anything. going to skip the wider plastics industry too 👀 for now. tempting thermodynamic tangents. also jet fuel I wanna get into that, it’s all part of the WAR that started with COVID-19. the point is this kind of integration helps keep all the industries that are falling apart around ASEAN (& the world) intact. china just merges its state refiner Sinopec with CNAF so they control everything from refinery to airport truck that vertical integration lets them soak up price swings at the source before they happen. VN instead uses surgical tax cuts. most other asean nations rely on blanket subsidies / emergency reserves which burns budget cash + doesn’t target jet fuel specifically (the philippines declared a full energy emergency just to ration supply!)
so yeah china is too armored to wound VN patches it up too fast & e🔻eryone else bleeds. the reserves & price controls are pretty minimal vs having a massive urea plant at export capacity & bunch of good allies such as malaysia to trade with for LNG, Viet Nam & China both just struck new lng deals with Russia. viet nam’s domestic urea surplus (didn’t read this paper just the description btw I searched it while arguing on twitter) exports to Cambodia, SSouth KKKorea, Philippines, & even with middle east disruptions producers have no issue prioritizing domestic market whereas Hitler countries need to maintain their diplomatic leverage by making big sacrifices, rather than using it to back up their economy’s fundamentals with a few policy changes. to give you an idea of how insulated things are in terms of capacity rather than agility & discipline, Viet Nam’s fert exports grew like a third early 2026, Phu My plant went 25% over target. the agility is rly at play here tho, Viet Nam’s Russia LNG deal (Novatek) & block 12/11 gas contract with Zarubezhneft. China’s Russia LNG deal (Yamal project) & CNPC owns 20% of Yamal LNG with 15 ice-class tankers show that friendship pays off a lot more than whatever tf the euros are doing HAHAHA preparations are longstanding, now CN names Power of Siberia 2 preparatory construction work in the larest 5 yr plan. you don’t just wake up one day & start begging Japan for oil, if anything it’s reassuring to those companies that VN & China are maintaining normal ties, meanwhile the US is going BATSHIT insane & making multifold security demands of all its “allies”—if only someone had a pithy quote about the nature of being a US ally hmm)
what those reserves & price controls allow is keeping these industries balanced & competitive, ready to spread skilled labor capacity to other global south countries looking to get into evs (ties between VN and China are a good precursor to the strategies which will be used furrher in the development of African industries). looking at Africa’s adoption of scooters & stuff there will be many looking to China & Viet Nam for factories. in general vn relies a lot more on this kind of diplomatic trade stuff because it’s roughly years behind on industrial capacity (what the plans target, built around the core ecological civilization model which heavy industry feeds back into with renewable energy + feedstocks, agriculture mechanization, & eventually proper cybernetic planning beyond the dreams of OGAS), but that’s not fixed, some years come more quickly than others.
ahhh im never leaving firefox again i feel normal. productive forces. PRODUCTIVR FORCES. we’re staring down Covid 3. Obama 3. White Obama 2. Frightening stuff, I’m excited
According to the article, Chinese factory activity expanded so it is just like you said that they haven’t seen a negative impact:
Regarding the rest in Asia, it is a completely different story:
As for SK, it is an outlier:
Yeah, the rest of East Asia is going to be hit pretty hard by the oil crisis. I’m just saying I found it a bit odd to say that “Asian factory activity is slowing down” when the biggest Asian factory of all, China, is not slowing down. Sort of leaving out the most important part there.
Though in a global recession most likely even China will be affected because there will be less global demand.
Oh yeah, you are right about that. The title of the article is not very helpful.
Their energy prices are not stable. Chinese futures contracts are still subject to international market forces.
https://quote.eastmoney.com/qihuo/sc2605.html
Despite that, China’s manufacturing PMI is pretty good. Because it’s a planned economy.
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/manufacturing-pmi
Here’s a quick lesson on the way they use these terms.
If they can directly claim “China bad,” then they will ALWAYS say “China,” “CCP,” “Xi,” etc. A direct identification.
If they can’t directly claim “China bad” because it’s some other Asian country, but want to paint it AS “China bad,” then they use “Asian” country, factory, etc. Because most westerners, when thinking of Asia, think “China.”
They want to project the idea that China suffers along with the rest, but since it actually isn’t, they use a broad term that could include China.