Mainstream News From China

[ramonmercado]

Still treating the Uighurs badly.

Merdan Ghappar was used to posing for the camera.

As a model for the massive Chinese online retailer Taobao, the 31-year-old was well paid to flaunt his good looks in slick promotional videos for clothing brands.

But one video of Mr Ghappar is different. Instead of a glitzy studio or fashionable city street, the backdrop is a bare room with grubby walls and steel mesh on the window. And in place of the posing, Mr Ghappar sits silently with an anxious expression on his face.

Holding the camera with his right hand, he reveals his dirty clothes, his swollen ankles, and a set of handcuffs fixing his left wrist to the metal frame of the bed - the only piece of furniture in the room.

The video of Mr Ghappar, along with a number of accompanying text messages also passed to the BBC, together provide a chilling and extremely rare first-hand account of China's highly secure and secretive detention system - sent directly from the inside.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53650246

 

[Ogdred Weary]

There's been much speculation in some places online that Three Gorges Dam is under threat of bursting, there's been enormous amounts of flooding in the last several weeks. Many sources are either China unfriendly countries saying it's fucked or Chinese news sites saying "nothing to see here folks", so it's difficult to know how serious the threat is, or if there's any at all. If it does burst it would kill/displace 300-500 million people, which is all we need right now. Wuhan and Shanghai are among the cities with the river basin, there are also three nuclear powers stations, fortunately all are currently under construction. That said, we're only kicking the can down the road, as it were, as if the dam is being stressed now, what lies in store further down the road as world weather patterns become more erratic and severe?

On a long enough timeline, it's going to fail. Will the Chinese govt evacuate half a billion people, can they even do that, practically speaking? What happens to the nuclear stations and their waste, if it occurs after they become operational?

https://vietreader.com/news/11093-chinas-three-gorges-reservoir-braces-for-new-round-of-floods.html

 

[AlchoPwn]

Regarding the flooding in China. It seems that the 3 major river systems, the Yangtze, the Yellow River, and the Huai are all flooded, and Typhoon Higos seems to have caused some flooding even in the comparatively minor Xi river system. The "deformation" of the 3 Gorges Dams strongly suggests that there has been substantial structural damage, caused by too much water pressure on the foundations, and there is a genuine risk of seepage causing a collapse. I have just looked up the weather forecast for Sichuan province, upriver from the 3 Gorges Dam, and over the next few weeks, it it looking terrifying, with about 16 days of thunderstorms predicted. The dam is currently releasing 44,000 tons of water per second, and the estimate is that this will have to rise to 68,000 tons per second in the coming weeks. There are an estimated 400 MILLION people downstream from the 3 Gorges Dam, and if it bursts it will be a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions with casualties potentially in the tens of millions. The rhetoric coming from the company responsible for building the dam suggests that they have used a "special kind of concrete" that will settle over the next hundred years becoming stronger over time. It is interesting to note that the company that did the building was also responsible for the "independent" engineering safety reports on the dam. The sheer volume of water will be exerting a great deal of weight on the dam, and the land around it, and if there is any danger of seismic activity, this will exacerbate it enormously. Worse still, all the dams further up the Yangtze river are old and dangerous, and should 1 dam fail there is the grave danger of a cascade effect destroying dam after dam. Th 3 Gorges dam was deformed prior to this event, and matters are going from bad to worse.

Relax folks, this is just the special concrete they used to build the dam settling. It is supposed to do this. There is no danger. This is not a Communist dictatorship's wondrous mega-project beginning to fail catastrophically. This is NOT China's Chernobyl waiting to happen. Any dissenting voices will be silenced by the party, stripped of all social benefits and jailed indefinitely without trial, as is fair and just in the party's eye. This photo is from 2018, and things are much safer now in 2020. The 3 Gorges Dam will stand for 10,000 years, the Titanic is unsinkable, and Icarus' wax wings have no operating ceiling. In other news, China prepares for a once in a lifetime inland surfing festival event to end all surfing festival events...

 

[Ogdred Weary]

The "warping" you can see on the dam is a product of Google maps and how the software "blends" the many images together. People have been getting a hard over those photos for weeks on the web's various Doomospheres. The dam is certainly under strain and might yet burst this year but I suspect that if it had warped that much (and I've seen other images where it looks worse) then it would have gone by now.

As you say, it will give way at some point, as will all other dams. It's simply a matter of timescale. Apparently the census indicates that 36% of the Chinese population live in the floodzone, which is closer to 500 million people.

 

[AlchoPwn]

The "warping" you can see on the dam is a product of Google maps and how the software "blends" the many images together. People have been getting a hard over those photos for weeks on the web's various Doomospheres.

Do you know of a more accurate and up-to-date image? Given that Xi has admitted that the dam is deformed, it would be good to have some visual point of reference.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

A google image search yields this:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=images+of+three+gorges+dam+deformed&atb=v233-2zc&iax=images&ia=images

It's possible that what I've seen was larger or different resolution versions of the image you posted, I assumed that what I was looking at more up to date than 2018. I can't go back and find them as they were links on reddit and God knows where those threads are now in the listings, they go back into last month at least.

I think there have been admissions about issues with the dam, as well as denials, I don't know if any deformation is big enough to be seen or if it is internal issues. Supposedly the dam was touted as being able to withstand a 10,000 year flood, this was later amended to 1000 year and finally 100 year. The latter is what they are currently experiencing.

 

[AlchoPwn]

A google image search yields this:

What I have read subsequently suggests that your information about the images being due to satellite photography deforming the image is false and was put forward by the CCP as a face saving exercise. There was an international team of engineers brought in to safety check the construction and they identified serious structural weaknesses such as the fact that the base of the dam was not embedded in bedrock, but was in fact merely blocks of concrete sitting on mud. The criticism was subsequently dismissed as racism, and as the concrete and steel reinforcing had already been poured the construction team decided to barrel on ahead regardless of the advice and the danger to the public of China. I think we are on the verge of witnessing something that will dwarf the catastrophic floods China saw in 1931.

 

[Mythopoeika]

What I have read subsequently suggests that your information about the images being due to satellite photography deforming the image is false and was put forward by the CCP as a face saving exercise. There was an international team of engineers brought in to safety check the construction and they identified serious structural weaknesses such as the fact that the base of the dam was not embedded in bedrock, but was in fact merely blocks of concrete sitting on mud. The criticism was subsequently dismissed as racism, and as the concrete and steel reinforcing had already been poured the construction team decided to barrel on ahead regardless of the advice and the danger to the public of China. I think we are on the verge of witnessing something that will dwarf the catastrophic floods China saw in 1931.

Like I say, they have only themselves to blame.
The 'yes-man' culture they have has to go.

 

[Cloudbusting]

This is NOT China's Chernobyl waiting to happen.

Funnily enough Chernobyl is exactly what I thought of when I started reading about this. To be honest I'd been completely obvious of this until now and it sounds bloody terrifying, although I must admit I'd be intrigued to see what impact a catastrophe like this would have on China's politics...

 

[Ogdred Weary]

What I have read subsequently suggests that your information about the images being due to satellite photography deforming the image is false and was put forward by the CCP as a face saving exercise. There was an international team of engineers brought in to safety check the construction and they identified serious structural weaknesses such as the fact that the base of the dam was not embedded in bedrock, but was in fact merely blocks of concrete sitting on mud. The criticism was subsequently dismissed as racism, and as the concrete and steel reinforcing had already been poured the construction team decided to barrel on ahead regardless of the advice and the danger to the public of China. I think we are on the verge of witnessing something that will dwarf the catastrophic floods China saw in 1931.

Any links? I don't disbelieve you, it's just in what I read a few months ago, the most reasonable voices seemed were suggesting it was the image blending. I've heard the rumours about international criticism of construction too, I can't verify them, they may be true. From what I understand the dam is sitting on bedrock rather than mud, but is not embedded within the bedrock, as you say. I've read that it's designed to "lift" slightly when it becomes too full, this sounds suspicious to me...

 

[AlchoPwn]

Any links? I don't disbelieve you, it's just in what I read a few months ago, the most reasonable voices seemed were suggesting it was the image blending. I've heard the rumours about international criticism of construction too, I can't verify them, they may be true. From what I understand the dam is sitting on bedrock rather than mud, but is not embedded within the bedrock, as you say. I've read that it's designed to "lift" slightly when it becomes too full, this sounds suspicious to me...

I have revised my opinion again. Sorry to flip-flop like this. It's just that when the CCP makes an announcement that it is daytime, I feel the need to check outside to make sure. I have since seen footage taken from the actual 3 Gorges Dam site on YouTube, and the deformation doesn't seem noticeable at ground level. As to having the blocks no embedded in the bedrock, yes, I suspect that is correct, as I was taking my info from a photo I found of the construction site, and it is quite bad enough that the concrete isn't embedded.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I have since seen footage taken from the actual 3 Gorges Dam site on YouTube, and the deformation doesn't seem noticeable at ground level. ...

Right ... Current photos of the dam from ground level demonstrate that any structural deformation isn't as radical as the bends and warpage seen in some of the purported satellite photos that circulated in 2019 and again this year.

The visible crookedness in alleged satellite images has been attributed to atmospheric distortion in actual satellite imagery, stitching / blending of imagery data during processing, and (of course) deliberate photo manipulation.

As far as I've been able to determine structural deformation in the dam is a fact (as it is for any large concrete dam), but the total extent of such deformation to date is measured in millimeters (i.e., far too small to be visible on aerial, much less satellite, imagery).

 

[Yithian]

The school attacks continue ... In this case the attacker was a school security guard of the sort widely hired in the wake of school attacks years ago.


SOURCE: https://apnews.com/3f90f881330802cbc9e10da61f5f3d2c

And now we have a mass poisoning and needle attacks to the head:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/29/china/china-kindergarten-poison-needles-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

 

[Lord Lucan]

And now we have a mass poisoning and needle attacks to the head:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/29/china/china-kindergarten-poison-needles-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

Bloody hell.

 

[AlchoPwn]

And now we have a mass poisoning and needle attacks to the head:https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/29/china/china-kindergarten-poison-needles-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

Why when I read this did I immediately wonder what the CCP was trying to cover up?

 

[Mythopoeika]

The woman had previous from 2017, when she tried to kill her husband. Why did the authorities allow her to work with kids?