I fail to understand why I keep getting kicked/banned from leftist communities. All I did in that community was talk about the BRI, share my reading list, and fascinate about the guoxin-1: China’s first deep-sea fish farm that’s as large as an aircraft carrier. As well as talk to another person about how Chinese media could do a better job at outreach.
To these self-hating leftists, you can apparently only discuss China when they’re dunking on the West. But when you talk about the BRI, Moderate Prosperity, XJP’s New Era, or what have you: you get promptly done away with.
I now understand why none of the reading lists in Socialist groups don’t include anything recent or from the third world. These people are stuck in the past and only want to lever the actions of AES states to support their own moribund view of their world and their socialist causes.
I just wanted to make some friends on the left.
What’s up Western left? I didn’t even post anything (check REVeddit), to that subreddit and have already been banned.
Why can I only talk about anything China-related if it’s in relationship to the West? Are China and the CPC only a foil to Western leftists to promote their own form of socialism?
Does China’s success on its road to Socialism give Western leftists a inferiority complex? Do people that talk about Vietnam or other people from the global South experience the same treatment?
This is the video that got me introduced (SCMP). Then I’ve read this article (in Chinese, but you can translate it) after finding out which company made the vessel through the Baike Wiki.
It’s absolutely fascinating. This is all because China is trying to improve the health of its coastal waters and rivers, which until a few years ago were contaminated beyond what’s sustainable due to their quickly developing aquaculture industry. Now they’ve set quotas on how many fish can be farmed to protect the carrying capacity of their waters. As a result, they’ve started to import a lot more fish and fish prices have increased. Ventures like these are there to alleviate that.
The deep seas are like deserts: devoid of life. While fish farming introduces pollutants (fish excrement and left-over food) into the water that chokes up lakes/coasts/rivers, these extra nutrients cause algal blooms that kill the native fish. This issue is however entirely none existent in the deep seas as those places have such a deficit of nutrients that their pollutants will actually foster and improve the carrying capacity of the places wherever these large ships decide to anchor.
It’s a great thing to start thinking about. We are running out of food. This kind of new industry and more like it will be needed very soon. If it becomes cheap fast, wild fish might not even go extinct.
It will also lead to monoculture. Only one fish species will be farmed at large scale. And probably one business will control the entire industry, so it will have huge power over the food supply.
And the extra nutrients, they are fertiliser, at a time when the world is running out of fertiliser. They could be growing fish food with it, in tanks exposed to sunlight.
So much to think about.
Luckily we’re talking about China and not the USA. Let’s count our lucky stars that Capitalists don’t innovate to the extent that socialists do. Otherwise, they would’ve already automated and enslaved the human race.
We can produce fertilizers renewably by taking the resources for literal air and waste, the problem is that the cost of doing so is preventive. Just like we can mine e-waste for precious metals; we don’t. Because recycling, just like renewable energy in the form of solar/wind, is democratic in how scalable it is. I.e. it doesn’t allow for the monopolistic agglomeration of resources and thus the established capitalist class won’t invest in these new technologies on their own accord.
China wants to be resource independent so they’re investing in these new fields, but it will take some time before the fruits of their labour will show (economically viable) results. These technologies are essential if we want to afford everyone the same level of development the West enjoys.
I guess so. Thanks.
Just one thing. Fertiliser is a scarce non renewable resource. Not many realise that. I can find you a good explanation if you’re interested.
I thought nitrogen-based fertilizers were renewable?
The ammonia is used to make nitric acid, with which it is then mixed to produce nitrate fertilizers such as ammonium nitrate (AN). Ammonia may also be mixed with liquid carbon dioxide to create urea. Both these products can be further mixed together with water to form UAN (urea ammonium nitrate) solution.
I don’t see how any of these steps couldn’t be fabricated without the use of non-reneweable resources.
It’s phosphorous. I dug up an old article that explains the lot. It’s amazingly investing but nobody knows about this stuff. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/02/phosphorus-pollution-fertilizer/617937/
Well yeah. Still, phosphorus can theoretically be mined though from ocean water. The problem is that with current techniques, yeah; it’s not sustainable. Being able to mine it from out direct waste would be ten times better.
In no chemist. I don’t know if it can or not, even theoretically. Would need to do some research.
There’s a better way. The ship can filter the waste water for nutrients before releasing it into the sea.
You can mine any liquid through the use of bacteria that accumulate the specific element/compound you’re looking for.
Thanks for sharing. Sounds really innovative.
This is a brilliant idea! I love it! (except for the part that it’s a farm for consuming fish, but that’s another issue)
Just like how integrating into the capitalist system is a necessary evil, so is fish farming to protect our environment. I too can’t wait until we can put meat/fish-based protein on people’s plates without there ever having to sacrifice the life of a conscious being.
About that. Fish or meat based protein. Does it taste good? Will people eat it? Or will livestock eat it, is that the purpose? Of not, why is it better than existing sources of protein?
I mean there is lab-grown meat. Once lab-grown meat gets adopted we can slowly turn away from the idea of “meat” being derived from animals and further abstract it. E.g. we could take the genetic code that allows for the creation of an animal’s muscles, extract the most basic building blocks that create the texture and nutrients, change it, put that code into bacteria and literally have create a patty/slab of “meat” that has the form and thickness of a tortilla, but the flavour profile of whichever animals you can think of.
That all makes sense.
But in practice people always describe the flavour as being like tortilla too.
And we still need to figure out the environmental impact. We don’t know what it is, but it will certainly be far worse than meat.
Why the same form and thickness of tortilla? Is that a technical constraint?
The tortilla analogy was just to sketch an abstraction to what meat might become.
How would lab-grown meat (one that doesn’t make use of a biopsis) have a larger environmental impact? It’s literally a cell culture to connect to a nutrient drip.
I’m glad you asked!
Meats can be farmed in many ways. But in the best way (and it’s a fairly common way) they are raised on useless land, practically wild, consuming grass and water that is also abundant. Think of mountainsides or floodplains in country with a lot of rain.
It had no negative environmental impact, and a very small positive one. Not compare with three impact of any large scale chemical or industrial process. It is necessarily vast. Mining and transporting exotic materials, manpower or specialised robots, etc. All these have huge ecological footprint.
Without even knowing the details (because the industry doesn’t exist yet) it will certainly be an ecological disaster, compared against the best possible form of animal farming.
But that firm if animal farming needs to become the norm soon anyway.
Well, TECHNICALLY we can do it already, or in some years, but people ain’t not enough willing…
Yeah … if there is one thing I know for sure it’s that any attempt at removing all meat from the Chinese diet is probably going to result in a colour revolution.
One day, comrade… One day we will learn and separate traditions from lack of empathy… I can’t say anything, maybe, since I live where they torture bulls to death for “sport” and throw goats from a bell tower…