2045. A Swift Slow Death

Recently, we have seen, to put it mildly, not the best state of affairs in China. Every month there is already a precarious and stupid situation, which, it would seem, can be corrected, especially since China has a budget and power, although slightly reduced, but still very large.

The strangest thing is that, it would seem, the problems in such an influential figure on the world stage as China should have caused at least some reaction in the world, but it did not follow either after the mass withdrawal of enterprises or after the protests. Only on March 24, the President of Brazil announced that he would discuss the situation in China with other leaders, but still the other 194 states remained silent.

On the evening of March 27, the website of the Brazilian government published a statement on the so-called "Dubai 35" summit on April 4, in which global problems, including Chinese, will be discussed. Although on March 28, "Dubai 35" was carefully replaced by " Format Casablanca".

Many experts criticized the very belated reaction to the extremely painful and dangerous Chinese problem for the global economy. Indeed, the organization of the summit took place very spontaneously, which is negligent for such an important event.

However, other experts included conspiracy theories and considered excessive spontaneity too "on display", and the summit had long been planned and negotiated. We can partially agree, because the guests at the summit are far from the last level, and they do not have such a free schedule for unplanned meetings on a large scale.

On April 4, at 11:00 local time, the King of Morocco personally arrived at Casablanca Airport. The king greeted the arriving guests, who arrived at the same time in twos and threes, and the leaders of Belgium, Iran, Poland and Mexico managed to arrive four at the same time.

In total, on Format Casablanca arrived:

According to the plan, the guests wait for the others, and then go to the hall where the welcoming ceremony is held; only after that the participants proceed to the discussion.

While waiting, the participants were distinguished by the absence of pronounced hostility among themselves, but many behaved quite seriously, without any friendly conversations. The only more or less noticeable hostility slipped between the President of Iran and the Prime Minister of Israel, and even then only because of attempts to avoid meetings with each other (the organizers apparently made an effort to do this).

After waiting for the last one, the US president, whose administration announced "some complications" of Joe Biden's health and, in this regard, a slight delay.

The welcoming ceremony was not distinguished by pomp, and soon the participants began to discuss global problems, primarily the Chinese crisis.

The meeting was to take place in three stages:

1. The participants negotiate among themselves (the only exceptions were Israel, with which Iran, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Egypt did not negotiate for clear reasons, Russia, which refused to negotiate with the Netherlands because of the "Hague precedent" and Britain, which refused to negotiate with India and France (probably because of support the second independence of Scotland).

2.Participants and delegates hold a joint meeting and discuss solutions to problems. It is planned to devote more than 7-8 hours to this, which is quite short.

3. Participants prepare a joint declaration with their opinion on economic problems

The long hours of negotiations, covered by the world media in as much detail as possible, ended by late evening. Finally, the long-awaited declaration was announced. Long speeches about climate change, rising tensions and global threats were, one might say, an interlude. The whole world was worried about only one thing — the Chinese question. Finally, the topic reached it:

"Our world is striving for progress and prosperity with rapid steps...[ ]... However, another extremely serious problem has stood in the way of universal prosperity — the crisis in China. One of the global world powers is now in decline, harmful to the global economy and order....

The blame for this situation lies with the Chinese government, which has undermined global confidence in itself and its market, and in addition, is committing illegal, cruel actions against both its neighbors and its people, ignoring world law and property rights.... [ ]... In this regard, we must take appropriate measures, and what measures we take will depend on our future prosperity.

First of all, we must limit the access of the Chinese market to the world in order not to allow the crisis to spread to other countries and put pressure on them. This is especially true for goods produced in illegally occupied Taiwan....[ ]... No products manufactured in Taiwan and sold through the intermediary of China [ed. Recall that China has banned the sale of products manufactured in Taiwan without mediation, knowledge and payment to the Mainland government], until China withdraws the military administration from the island....[ ].... No product protected by a patent, but produced without licenses, should be sold.... raw materials from China, whether steel or coal, should not go beyond China's borders... goods from Hong Kong and Macau also cannot be sold if they were in any way connected with mainland China...

All finances, assets and capital of everything related to the oppression of human rights in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the genocide of the Uighurs cannot be used by China....[ ]...The interaction of other countries with China should be limited to the utmost minimum...."

One thing became clear in their declaration: the states of the world decided to severely isolate China. One thing became clear in their declaration: the states of the world decided to severely isolate China. Moreover, it is interesting that the declaration focuses not on the economic crisis, but on the occupation of Taiwan, although the focus should have been on the first issue. Isn't all this just a reason to act, and if it's true, doesn't this look like an adventure, and an extremely disastrous one at that?

As soon as the declaration was published and read, the Chinese government reacted to it immediately and very sharply:

" Washington and his court dogs cowardly conspired behind the back of our country and decided to strangle us, but they will not succeed. Our country will stand and defeat the enemies!"

After a short amount of time, the ambassadors of the United States, Russia, Japan and Brazil were summoned to the Chinese Foreign Ministry; after that, they demanded the embassies of Morocco, Latvia, Poland, the Philippines, Denmark, Estonia and Mexico in almost full force (except 5) to leave the country within 72 hours.

Almost immediately, the markets collapsed: shares of Chinese companies collapsed by impressive amounts, from which almost all companies experienced a terrible domino effect.

The Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong exchanges have stopped trading indefinitely;

At 20:30 local time, the last cargo of steel was shipped from China. Manufacturers sounded the alarm, China was smelting half of the world's steel. Because of this, manufacturers had to urgently look for new suppliers.

I had to contact Japanese, Russian and Indian factories. American companies have tried to order steel in their country.

Days later, by April 14, steel mills and mills in Kawasaki, Cherepovets, Jamshedpur, Fukuyama and Stary Oskol were operating smoothly, exceeding the norms, yes, it brings huge income, but not every plant is able to withstand overload.

At first, Japanese steelmakers did not worry about this, since their high—quality and expensive steel and modern production facilities occupied their niche and the only thing they were doing was future expansion in the coming months, since the incomes of entrepreneurs were insanely large.

Indian factories could not withstand overloads, since demand, and accordingly volumes for medium-quality steel, are much higher, which is why it was worth taking measures to improve the efficiency of the workshops in the first place. However, there was not enough money for the near future, and it was necessary to cover this by increasing the number of workers, to which the chairman Amit Shah joyfully declared:

 "Our Indian state is flourishing — thousands of its children have found decent jobs. Go ahead, Bharat!"

The Russian steel industry has revealed all the festering places. Giant old mills were not able to fully service, so new steel mills had to be urgently rebuilt, however, this did not save the situation — the planta barely stood up to competition.

Iron ore prices have skyrocketed from $124/tonne to $487/tonne. The steelworkers of the world howled in horror, steel prices, and so because of the shortage of steel from China, which had grown by an order of magnitude, finally rose. Steel prices per tonne have risen sharply:

• Mexico — $710

• United States — $790

• South Korea — $830

• Spain — $880

• United Kingdom — $1080

• Turkey — $1220

• Japan — $1740

Japanese steelmakers accused ore producers of "cartel collusion", but they still had to continue buying ores from Australia and Russia for crazy prices. The price jump was easily borne by the mills of the ore exporting countries: Russia, India, Brazil, Ukraine and South Africa, whose steel prices changed only as an error.

Under the general growth, prices for ores that did not have time to grow jumped: Moorish and Swedish ore quickly reached other producers.

Finally, the affairs of India and Russia went uphill: soaring steel prices helped steelmakers beat competitors, incredibly profitable orders were concluded. However, not everything is so simple.

Following steel, prices for machinery, equipment and machine tools also increased. The Russian government, which announced the purchase of new steel technologies from Japan and South Korea, has also experienced its own price problems: already cheap contracts have become much more expensive.

Things got so bad that the European Parliament and Japan lifted the embargo on Ukrainian steel. The whole of Europe began to actively accept steel, which Ukraine regarded as the "true revive of Ukrainian industry". Russian, Indian and Brazilian steel soon settled down the  situation — cheap Russian, Indian and Brazilian steel began to fill the deficit en masse, as a result of which machine prices settled down, and soon the cartel, which, as it turns out, really was (Russian, Indian, Ukrainian, Brazilian and Australian producers overestimated ore prices by prior agreement) did not he could keep prices above market prices for a long time and lowered them.

Surprisingly, the crisis in many other industries was avoided — either the dependence on the Chinese market was not so high, or entrepreneurs prepared for the situation. Those companies that managed to move production from China to other countries in a short time managed to avoid the crisis especially well, as we remember. Moreover, the crisis only continued to push this process: even more industries were redirected to other parts of the world.

EUROPE:

1.Qualified manpower

2. Finding the main think tanks, company offices

— Redirecting high-quality factories

RUSSIA:

1. Cheap but highly qualified manpower, but a small amount of it

2. Resource wealth

3. Cheapness of natural resources

— Redirection of large automated plants

INDIA/BANGLADESH:

1.Cheap manpower, lots of qualified

2. Large population

3. Cheap resources

— Redirection of large-scale mass production

India and Bangladesh account for 46% of the total number of postponed productions

ASEAN:

1.A large number of cheap labor

2. Market prospects

- Redirection of large-scale mass production

Every day, the Chinese leadership became more and more furious, and the discontent of the population grew. The society could no longer manage with single pickets.

Mainland China began to warm up, with small but regular protests (of course, suppressed by the authorities). Hong Kong and Taiwan were already ablaze: tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets, and the protests were so irrepressible that the police gave up trying to delay: there simply weren't enough police officers. There were active rumors about the possible introduction of the army.

The Chinese government decided to urgently look for the culprits, and did not slow down. Soon, May, 3rd, Diao Xianbu blamed Xi Jinping personally for the situation and demanded that the traitor be "punished."The Chinese Supreme Court soon recognized Xi Jinping and his entourage as treasonous and sentenced them to responsibility.     Soon, Xi Jinping secretly left the country and was granted asylum by North Korea; businessmen close to Xi, as well as the former foreign minister Wang Yi, were granted asylum by Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry speaker Maria Zakharova called these actions "insane" and said that "only the current leadership is a traitor to China."

The Chinese government, accordingly, demanded the extradition of the "criminals", which both Russia and the DPRK rejected. In response, China recognized Sergey Lavrov and Maria Zakharova as persona non grata, and broke off diplomatic relations with the DPRK.

In fact, China voluntarily left itself without a strategic ally, and completely deprived itself of hopes for restoring relations with the former. This could not but cause joy in the United States. The American government rejoiced: it tore the Russia-China-North Korea-Iran axis to shreds, and in the most remarkable outcome. However, they had no idea about a completely different one...

On May 4, confidential calls between Oreshkin and Narendra Modi took place, which were not disclosed in the press. It apparently expressed India's support for Russia in the conflict with China. Modi later contacted Brazilian President Lula da Silva. The last two-hour call took place with the President of Egypt.

On May 5, President Vladimir Putin's adviser met with Xi Jinping at a dacha in Siberia — a symbol of great location. During this meeting of non-leaders of their states, Putin expressed full support for Xi, saying that "what Diao is doing is insane." In response, the Chinese government has put Vladimir Putin on the wanted list for "crimes against children in Ukraine"

Meanwhile, the protests in Hong Kong and Taiwan were only gaining momentum. The world-famous "umbrellas" lit up again, the police categorically refused to go to the protest sites, instead starting arrests and interrogations of relatives of protesters, which only aggravated the situation.  The people understood that from now on both passive and even loyal citizens would be repressed, and joined in. As a result, the head of the Hong Kong administration decided to request the deployment of troops from the Mainland to restore order. However, the administration notified and removed him from office, which is why the request for troops was not sent. The police were ordered to stop the arrests.

The people on the streets rejoiced — it was perceived as a victory. However, the Chinese government stated that "order and stable order in Hong Kong will be restored, and traitors will be punished." What the Chinese leadership has prepared, we can only imagine....