the CPC was pressured against the wall and forced to use the rare earth ban for leverage.

That’s a… pretty interesting claim, since at this stage China and the US are basically on equal footing, and we’ve already seen that China has done ample preparing for a potential trade war, with them basically being unaffected. If any side is the desperate one, it’s the US.

There’s an incredibly good history of the Chinese warlord era that leads up to this 1931-1937 period, Beiyang Junfa Shi, ‘History of the Beiyang Warlords’. Was written by a guy who studied the archives for half a century. Idk if it’s available in english though.

edit: found it on Anna’s but it’s in Chinese. I’m sure there’s plenty of translation software that might work, although it is quite a long read, so I wouldn’t go too much into it unless you’re really interested in this topic. https://annas-archive.org/md5/049b77615925905ac7790b909cbed0c2

Japan had already invaded China once in 1931, and Zhang Zhizhong was a hero but was literally demanded to stand down and lost reputation in the eyes of the population temporarily for this. This accusation is so incredibly stupid that I could not articulate how insanely dumb it is. I want to tear my eyes out with every line of this I read as my abdominal organs twist themselves into a knot at the sheer cringe. These authors have less understanding of 1930s Chinese politics than a historytuber sourcing non-cited from wikipedia and I sincerely hope they never write a book about this topic ever, ever again.

Heretics of Dune (Dune book 5). After the slow books 2-3 and contemplative 4, the bonkers action and bizarre concepts are really refreshing. It was also neat to get a deeper look into the world.

That’s what I personally think.

I think they’d be a lot less common, but I tend to feel personality is more influenced by upbringing.

My gf and I want 2, but that’s a long time from now, and I’m uncertain if we’ll be able to stay together for that long and not be pulled apart by circumstances.