Josey Wales

Thanks feedback anyway guys, I'm happy many of you read my post.
From what I have seen, the central party has surprisingly little control of the vast majority of China, though its grip has really tightened in many respects. I came here in 2012 just after Xi came to power. As the years have gone by, the anti-corruption drive that he instigated has picked off thousands of corrupt officials, and conveniently those who belonged to regional power bases that could be a threat. You have Guangzhou, the capital of the province I live in, Guangdong, which is the main manufacturing hub, Chongqing, the capital of Sichuan in the sort of middle west (actually the middle of China but really the last proper Han-Chinese province before you get into the autonomous regions like Tibet, etc), Shanghai, Beijing of course, Tianjin (major port city next to BJ), Xi'an in the centre and then DongBei - literally EastNorth (North-East to English speakers, better known as Manchuria to westerners) where you have the heavy industry areas of Heilongjiang and Jilin. Each of these areas produces powerful people with large support bases, and they have run with their own interpretations of the rules from BJ for a long time.
The downfall of some serious players over the last few years has made for some seriously pop-corn worthy TV, with in-court broadcasts of big boys getting their due. Just go to wikipedia and read up about Bo XiLai - Xi's major rival for the throne. If you want a good laugh read up about his wife's trial for the murder of Neil Hayworth (not a laughing matter) and the obvious double who appeared in court in her place (the funny bit) who looks nothing like her.
The culmination was when Xi was made President for life. That was the endgame - he could never have done that had he still powerful rivals to defeat.
These days, his picture is on billboards everywhere. Every TV report starts with a report on Xi, and every news website carries stories about what he's doing on their front pages. And everyone thinks he's the bees knees because he cleaned up the corruption.
How much real power he still has over different areas is debatable. You tend to know the central party has been getting ignored when suddenly they send some head honcho from BJ to replace someone in some town or city somewhere, usually due to some public outcry over some scandal. 
 
BTW, as nightmarish as this may sound, life is actually pretty good here. I wouldn't live here if it was bad, and I'm not in some sort of weird bubble like you get with expat communities in places like Thailand or the Philippines, where the small salaries they sometimes make are still enough to let them live the high life compared to locals. My income is pretty much the average middle class professional income. Life here is just like any other major western city, probably even more developed in many respects, with high property prices and all the other joys increased wealth brings to an area. 
 
Actually, not to blow your trumpet, but pretty much everything you have said is pretty spot on. But that's just my opinion.
 
I'd like to answer some of the other points others have made but its 20 past midnight here and I'm off to bed. Thanks again for the feedback guys and I'll go through some more points tomorrow, before I go back to work on Monday haha.

I don't know anything about that trade, but having been taken to a rural "wet market" where dogs and other non-identifiables are being BBQ'd, live animals wandering around getting slaughtered in unhygenic circumstances etc., it was easy to believe that nasty things could come out of that sort of environment.

There is one more thing I'll add on to these posts as I'm sat at my computer,
so Part Five,
 
The idea that the government is playing some long term geopolitical game.
This has to be one of the most repeated descriptions of Chinese governance that I've seen/heard in the west, to the point where its been picked up by the state media here and is repeated as though that were the case all along. Its total rubbish, and ties in perfectly with their propaganda about China being older and wiser than these 'new' powers in the west. Total drivel. 
Yes, Deng XiaoPing had a public policy for China to "bide its time". Yes, the government does make plans and targets for decades in the future. Of course, with no annoying and pesky elections and risk of losing power to some other group for 5 years, such plans can be made. But so does every other country in the world. Governments make plans all the time for actions that will be taken well beyond the current administrations tenure. Its normal.
Whenever there is some kind of international incident, the response from the government is often pretty slow (until very recently that is, as in the last few years we've had a new group of aggressive spokespeople giving daily press briefings - Zhao Li Jian is one of them, the guy promoting the conspiracy theory that the US army brought the virus to Wuhan). Often responses are given in cryptic idioms, usually 4-character 成语 Cheng yu, which imply that the speaker is well read and clever in their speech. (Some Cheng Yu refer to classical stories. Imagine giving some Bible chapter reference as an idiom, and you're in the right area). The problem is that Cheng Yu can often be bent to mean anything. Mao ZeDong loved to spout them all the time, so did Deng, but most of all, Xi JinPing says them all the time. Just watch a speech and listen to the amount of idioms peppering his output that could mean literally anything, but regarded as a wonderful pearls of wisdom by the media. 
The slow response is not due to some master checkmate move being planned. Its nearly always due to the fact that they don't know what to do. When in doubt, do nothing. Not exactly genius. Despite this the amount of gaffes the Chinese pull is pretty staggering when you pay attention. Recently in the province of Guangdong, where I live, a province-wide roundup of Africans took place and enforced quarantine, even though immigration was halted well over a month ago now and before that anyone coming into the country had to stay in two weeks quarantine anyway. Unfortunately, the racist perception that Africans make up a large body of illegal immigrants unaccounted for who might be some reservoir of the disease (and taking into account the propaganda drive that the Virus is not from China, was only detected here by the excellent Doctors, and comes from 'foreigners'), meant that suddenly the provincial government decided to round them all up - going to their homes and ordering them to a local quarantine hotel where they had to pay to stay, but not bothering to quarantine their Chinese or non-African family members in the same apartment building. This insane policy has backfired and China is eating humble pie at the moment as African governments have demanded an explanation, with the governments of Nigeria and Kenya summoning the Chinese ambassadors. All Africans have been released and since been visited with bouquets of flowers and bags of oranges - I'm not joking you can look this up.
China fumbles the ball all the time. Part of the problem is that those people in power and in the arms of government are products of the education system here, which I won't go into as these posts have gone well off track from the epidemic topic. 
 
Suffice it to say that this idea that they are the puppet masters behind some long term calculated plan is pretty funny when you actually live here and see how things function.
 

Back to the people starving bit - I don't know about this situation so I can't explain what happened, but for those stuck in their apartments in quarantine, a volunteer delivery service for food was established, and given the deserved praise from the public similar to the praise that the NHS in my country and the healthcare services in other countries are getting. 
 
All this defending China haha man I sound like some kind of shill. Seriously though, there are so many wrong perceptions in the west.
 
Chinese are people too. They aren't all communist robots who have no emotion to people dying around them. They do have some totally skewed world views, are really, really nationalistic, view their country as the pinnacle of civilisation, and the centre of the world (the Chinese name for China, 中国, literally means 'Middle Country'), but they still do care. Local police aren't stone faced Stasi waiting to kidnap people off the street, they are just regular people like anyone doing a job.

Just listening to the first few minutes of that reminds me why I never read or watch American news media. So many loaded statements. Just like the Chinese media haha.
'People being bundled into police vans to be taken god knows where' - Ummm probably either to the local police station or taken home, but not before having their ears chewed for breaking quarantine. The 'god knows where' bit is just tapped on the end, as though those people were never seen again.
As for infected people being locked in their homes and left to starve - while I have no doubt that happened, it wasn't exactly policy. More like that person fell through the net. Everyone had a choice if they tested positive for the test - go to the quarantine centre or choose to stay at home, but if you stay at home you must agree not to leave your apartment (most people live in apartments). A paper tag was placed over the door - loose enough to allow the door to open to allow food deliveries, but the deal was if that seal is broken, then you gotta go to the quarantine centre, whether you like it or not.
These measures are awful, but they aren't quite the picture that is painted. Infected people aren't being sent to a field and shot in the back of the head after being picked up by the gestapo.
You may have seen in the news the videos of people being properly barred in their homes, with a metal bar welded over their door. This kind of stuff did go off and its completely disgusting, but the reaction among the public here (this was not some secret that leaked to the west, it was shown on primetime news as evidence that the government is taking care of the situation) was pretty supportive. I don't agree with this, but many people here do as its for the collective good.

Part Three
 
Another example of Mainland Chinese views on democracy - look at the public perception of Taiwan.
 
Most people here agree Taiwan has a great economy, and enjoys freedoms unparalleled in the rest of China. Are Chinese jealous, demanding that the Republic of China Government be brought back over to rule in place of the PRC? Hell no. Many people think Taiwan should be forcibly retaken and the leaders tried as traitors. Taiwan independence? Forget it. Cai Yingwen is portrayed as a mere puppet of the USA and Japan, who should be executed for her treachery for ignoring the  '1992 consensus'. 
Is this because the Chinese are brainwashed? Most likely, but its interesting to see some of the most nationalistic people are those that have actually travelled around and even lived abroad. As the Hong Kong democracy protests were swinging around last year, clashes between Hong Kongers and mainlanders outside of China were reported in nearly every western country. "Lenin walls", set up by pro-democracy supporters, were torn down by angry mainlanders even in my own home city. 
Despite having access to all the freedom-loving western world and its media, many people still have these strong nationalistic views.
The chances of the leadership being blamed when the economy goes downhill, especially when this will be accompanied in the news by trade war quotes from Trump, and the world economy in general goes downhill, are zip. Not going to happen. The biggest threat to Xi JinPing is the now small chance (after his huge anit-corruption drive wiping out his opponents) of a factional challenge. Not gonna happen. Bo Xilai is in prison. Xi has been made president for life.

Just to add on a part two
 
The perception that mass unemployment will start a chain reaction of events resulting in the overthrow and possibly even murder of leaders is pretty far from reality. Your average Chinese person in the street does not look at America, or western countries, with envious eyes at our political system, and yearn for the chance to have a government that they can have voting participation in. What Chinese people think of their government is polar opposite of what westerners think. You cannot underestimate the effect of non-stop nationalistic propaganda on how people here view the world. Many, many people have an us-vs-them mentality, especially against the west, and in particular against the USA. The CCP is widely seen as the movement of the people that has successfully lifted a billion people out of poverty, despite the evil bullying tactics of the western countries who secretly want to control and dominate China. This isn't some fringe rubbish, this is what MOST people think. I can count on one hand the amount of people I've met openly critical of the system they have in place, despite living here for nearly a decade.
If you want to see what Chinese think about democracy, have a look at their reaction to the Hong Kong protests. They are universally regarded as traitors by the vast majority of people. 
Mass unemployment in China will never be blamed on the system they have in place - it can and it certainly will be entirely blamed on foreign countries bullying China. It cannot be understated how much China and society here truly blames the west for all its perceived ills. Most people are so sure about western countries and their evil plans because as far as they are concerned, within what is to them 'recent' history, the 8 nation alliance tried to cut China into pieces. As I'm sat here typing this there is a drama on the TV in my living room right now about this very topic. It is drummed into everyone from a young age, along with the daily dose of anti Japanese propaganda. Turn on any TV at any time of any day in China and you will find a goofy ww2 drama depicting 'Japanese Devils' raping yet another village, while the noble inhabitants fight back with their farming tools, kung fu and red flags.
Tiananmen Square is always portrayed as a mass movement for democracy in the west. Perhaps the leaders in the square on the megaphones were shouting democratic slogans, and trying to use the opportunity to really make changes for democratic reform, but I have met and spoken to people who were there, who are quite open about their participation, and who have all uniformly told me that most people were trying to change the corruption that was endemic. In many people's perceptions, those changes came. That may sound crazy but thats the experience I have had from people I've met.
 
If I could compare this to an analogous example, its a bit like assuming that most Americans secretly want to throw the US constitution away and change their basic system of government, that most Americans agree that the growth and power of the US economy has prevailed in spite of, not because of the system of governance, and that once the economy goes to sh*t they will overthrow their leaders and adopt a more China-like style of governance.
 
Just to make it clear here - these views are not my own. I am simply pointing out what many people think here in China, as far as my experience goes.
 

Hey all, 
Came to check up on this forum on the off chance that my fantasy Combat Mission: OPLAN 5029 was going to be announced and we'd finally get to see the PLA in action in this series.
I don't normally post here, I *think* my last post was about 9-10 years ago, but after reading through this thread and seeing some strong opinions and predictions about China, I thought I'd throw in my two cents, as Americans like to say.
I've lived in China for 8 years, speak Mandarin up to HSK level 4-5, and work in manufacturing. I've sat through this whole COVID-19 epidemic, since it first broke here and then spread across the world.
Some of the perceptions about the government here and how they go about their business are pretty laughable, and some are on point, but mostly everyone is viewing society here totally through a western lens, though that's hardly limited to this forum.
 
There seems to be a perception that
1. The virus killed far more people here than is being admitted, even orders of magnitude greater, and that its being covered up to prevent some sort of mass revolt.
2. Society here just needs 'a kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down'; that once the economy goes belly up, there will be some sort of mass revolt.
3. The evil CPC will do absolutely anything to maintain that grip on power, including the mass murder of their own citizens.
4. People are suppressed and given the chance, they will overthrow the tyrannical regime and install a flourishing democracy.
5. My favourite - China has a long view on geopolitics - LOL.
 
The virus could wreck the economy here - there are already warning signs. I've been inundated with offers from factories who have bought PPE manufacturing equipment en masse in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. One insole manufacturer I know has totally collapsed and is relying completely on manufacturing KN95 masks, but due to the recent horror stories of faulty equipment creating yet another gaffe for China, as of two weeks ago only those suppliers on a whitelist can export items marked as medical supplies, regardless of whether or not their factory has all of the ISO standards, FDA registration, EU CE certification, etc. Everyone is scrambling to get on the list. 
China has a mountain of unregulated 'black' financial institutions, massive SME debt, and the situation looks grim to say the least. I read a news article here that had the People's Bank of China warning there is a small chance of depression. That's big news, when they admit something like that, it means the risk is pretty real.
The virus news broke just before the spring festival, which if you don't know is THE major holiday for Chinese and results in the largest human migration in the world every January/February. I was heading up to my wife's family in another city when the news was breaking. While I was there the nationwide lockdown came into place, though for different provinces the rules were slightly different.
Many people in the west seem to think that because China has a huge population and an untrustworthy Government, then by default they simply must have been ravaged and are lying about it. 
Firstly, the virus did affect an area with a large population - the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. Hubei itself has a population about the same as the UK. But it didn't appear everywhere at once, infecting droves of people. It appeared in one place and was noticed by local doctors. China's healthcare system is pretty turd in many ways compared to the west, but its not total rubbish (unless you are talking about traditional chinese medicine, but thats a rant for another day). We all know the story about the doctors that were arrested and accused of spreading rumours on social media. To understand this you have to step back and not straw man every action taken as indicative of the evil government. They were not silenced by the ruling elite, but rather the local police station/government who were following the rules laid out. Pretty stupid and draconian rules obviously, but from their point of view its the same as the rules Captain Crozier apparently broke leading to his dismissal.
Once the actual realisation came through that the doctors were right, action was taken pretty rapidly, though not as fast as we now know could have been taken. Did the government deliberately withhold info from the WHO and the West, allowing the virus to spread so their evil plan could be hatched? Probably not. More likely they didn't realise the scale this was going to be and so nuking their own economy by locking down the country was probably not what came to mind when they had 50 or so people with some weird new type of flu.
When they did fire the pistol though, they did it properly. Remember that this is not the first time that they have had an epidemic, even within the last 20 years. The leading Doctor, the 'hero' of SARS, Zhong Nan Shan, quickly came on TV telling the public and government what to do. Everything was shut down. Existing checkpoints at the entrances to residential areas and roads where manned with people checking everyones temperature. Contact tracing was heavily utilised so that everyone who came into contact with an infected person was contacted and tested. Did China use armed force to suppress people? Yes, but no more than American Police use armed force to suppress rule breakers every day. 
They got on top of things pretty quickly. Are the numbers accurate? Lmao of course not, but mostly for many of the same reasons numbers in good-guy western countries are not accurate. Of course, there IS the possibility that scores more people died, and there are hints here on social media that the numbers are higher - one truck driver admitting in a local news street-interview he'd been delivering about 3000 urns a day for two weeks to a local crematorium in preparation for the Qing Ming festival (the annual festival for honouring the dead). This awkward gaffe was quickly wiped off of Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, but not before millions saw it. Where the masses enraged, demanding the overthrow of the tyrannical regime? No. Most people shrugged it off as pretty normal - of course the official figures are inaccurate.
 
This is quickly turning into a huge post that most people won't bother reading so I'll leave it here for now and if anyone has any questions, they can ask in the forum, and I'll respond.

Err it has been known for a very long time that amphibians like frogs are good indicators of the damage we are doing via pollution.  Alex Jones hopping onto the bandwagon and maybe for once getting something right is a kin to a broken clock.  And no I won't watch the video.  I'd rather smear feces up my nose and snort real hard than listen to that gas bag.
I spend my time reading stuff from educational institutions and the like, you know where people actually study science.
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/960

Does it really? Hmmm China makes money from supplying the world with goods used by humans.  Hmm let's shut down the whole world economy and put our own population out of work, get them really mad at the leadership and ferment political change....
That sounds like a cunning plan Baldric would come up with! 
 

The stock CM sound effects are not that great, but they do their job. That's where mods come in however. CM allows you to modify any visual (2D) or sound asset. The High Quality Sounds mod is available for every title and provides excellent sound replacements for literally every gameplay-related sound in the game. They're pretty consistent in terms of style, volume, and about as realistic as you can get with a simple audio file.

DUCK!

It has been a long wait.  I'm impatient myself and have a scenario on hold for this release.  I imagine for players who are East Front fanatics the wait must be especially frustrating.  I think it sounds like we are getting very close.  Also sounds like we might be getting additional vehicles out of the additional wait ......... Was it a schimwagen (however that is spelled) that they were teasing?  Just a bit longer and we can all finally be happy on the EAST FRONT!! 
PS - If you want to kill some time I have an (independent) CMRT scenario that is in Beta testing..................       

Not exactly a good ambassador for the Netherlands, is he.
The BIG PICTURE for you guys is BFC remains solvent and prospering sufficiently to keep putting out the products they want to put out. In the '80s the struggling Harley Davidson landed a contract to cast artillery shell bodies for the Pentagon, which allowed the company to remain alive for another 40 years. BFC is getting business. That's a good thing. They're not about to go the way of Brøderbund and THQ.

Oh dear. Despite Steve and Elvis being polite and helpful. a certain someone still spits his dummy out.

So the British Ministry of Defense is subsidizing me playing w my toy soliders & tanks?  And all I have to do for this is wait a little longer for the new release?  I am considering this a win for all of us CM gamers.  So maybe I'll not throw temper tantrums and wet  my pants over not getting my toy immediately.

Fire superiority is indeed important.. its the crucial element in micro-tactics success actually... however not taking advantage of cover is asking for trouble and will make closing with the enemy a little tough. You often don't have fire superiority in most cases and will need to create micro-situations where you can create them in order to attrit the enemy's combat power.
Maneuver and Firepower - can't bring your firepower to bear if you can't maneuver... can't maneuver if you are outclassed by fire.  Using cover to get where you need to in order to ensure local fire superiority is paramount and is the basis of all small arms tactics from the Russo-Japanese War to the present.  Ignore the lessons learned, like the major powers did in the opening stages of the First World War, and it will cost you dearly.
Being smart about maneuver and protecting your units with cover so you can gain local fire superiority is not only good-tactics, it is common sense.
All in my opinion of course... nothing personal, take it for what its worth.
Bil

Howdy folks
The other day I realized that I had an almost complete mod set of commercial buildings that I´d never finished and released. So now I have brushed up the files and made it sort of ready for release. Mind you: The mod set is not as finished as I would like it to be - that is the reason why I didnt release it, when I made it three or four years ago. But I dont think I will ever get the time to fully complete it - so I have decided to release it as it is, rather than just letting it sit idle on my hard drive. 
I am going to make it temporarily available from Dropbox - but hopefully it will be on CMMODS IV soon and then I´ll remove them again.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/f2tl7i0ntkw5r3u/AADyULTXZ40Ms5CDuaQ7B6b7a?dl=0

Here´s a bit of info on it:
Umlauts Commercial Buildings
This set of mods contains modded commercial buildings for CM Normandy.
I have added murals to the gables of some of the buildings and some extra storefronts.
According to my research they should all be typical of Normandy in 1944 – but I could be
wrong.
The mod set contains quite a few extra commercial buildings, compared to the base game:
Buildings 100: Base game = 2 sets – this mod = 3 sets
Buildings 101: Base game = 2 sets – this mod = 15 sets
Buildings 102: Base game = 2 sets – this mod = 2 sets
Buildings 103: Base game = 2 sets – this mod = 13 sets

Mirrored gables
Unfortunately, the game reuses the gable BMP´s for both gables of a house, so if a
commercial building isn´t accached to another buildong, then one of the murals will always
be inverted.
I have tried to fix this by adding two different versions of each gable – with the inverted
part on both sides. This means that you can place two commercial buildings next to each
other and cycle through the building layout (shift-left click), until the inverted gables are
hidden where the buildings meet.
Choosing the preferred layout
I highy recommend that you cycle through the building layout (shift-left click) of each
building to choose the one with the preferred layout. If you leave it to the game, the
building layouts are assigned ramdomly – and you will probably see a lot of inverted
gables and indentical buildings next to each other.
When you cycle through the layouts, remember that there are up to 15 different layouts for
some types. And if you click and nothing seems to change – then it is probably only the
layout of the gable that has changed, while the rest of the building stays the same.
Damage:
I have altered the damage files of the game to suit my tastes. The buildings with damage
showing the brick work through the plaster are modded to fit these damage files. To apply
damage, press shift-alt-leftclick.
Please remember that I do not consider this mod set completely finished. But I dont think I
will find the time to finish it anytime soon – if ever – so I´ve decided to release it as it is.
Enjoy
 
 

This thread and @Bulletpoint's topic has struck a chord with something I witnessed recently in the Red Thunder scenario 'Getting Ugly'. As is usually my style I explain it best in a vid;
https://youtu.be/IpgBxu8xhkE
To me it seems like there is an issue unless someone is able to offer an alternative plausible explanation. Cheers.

What do you want when you already have the dakka? MORE DAKKA!

 
(You know just in case one jams)
 
 

Two grenades pass in mid flight during a grenade chucking contest. 
 
 

AIR RAID!!! 

😎  Congo ......................

A man after my own heart. When it comes to keeping things civil with brute force, I do have just a bit of previous.

One of the important things the West learned about the Soviets was that they would use ANY unprotected avenue of approach to penetrate NATO defenses. Now, most thought in terms of trails and such, but here's an example which illustrates precisely how clever they could be. BT-7 command tank crosses a destroyed (or maybe unfinished) bridge.


Regards,
John Kettler