I assume you mean imports? In fact, whilst China is generally thought of as an exporting nation, it does also import a lot.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_imports


There's an interesting breakdown of Chinese imports by category here (including the treemap visual below): https://tradingeconomics.com/china/imports-by-category

There won't be an enforced monkeypox jab, because there won't be a monkeypox pandemic. The only people pushing this as a possibility are imbeciles who don't understand facts (or who can't be bothered to do any research).

On a related note, did you know that vaccination against smallpox was demonstrated through several observational studies to be about 85% effective in preventing monkeypox? Presumably you would also have been anti-smallpox jab in the time before it was eradicated (by jab)?

Here's a more simple-minded, and far more ambiguous and less reliable test:

 - Who has the swastika tattoos?

If 'Putin' doesn't have one, it won't stop him behaving like a modern-day Hitler.  And it's irrelevant whether or not a few random people in Ukraine have them.

Absurd and irrelevant seems to constitute 100% proof of something you want to believe.

Tell us how it feels to wake up and find out that you're posting nonsense, when you just wanted to come up with any argument at all to signal that you stand in opposition to those you call "the 'woke' crowd".  Your humiliation shows.  Here's a little tip:  When you find yourself in a hole, best to quit digging and look for a different method of getting out of it.

The biggest issue will no doubt be that if as expected the new manager gives the squad a huge overhaul, and brings in a lot of big name players for big money, then the board and the fans will want to see an immediate improvement in results. But of course if you are completely overhauling a team, it takes time for the new players to bed in, it takes time for everyone to gel together and start playing as a team instead of a bunch of individuals... and results can suffer until this happens. The biggest failure in modern football, particularly at the top level, is that managers are not given enough time for their changes to take effect. Clubs never seem to learn.

I was surprised to see Alcaraz struggle. Compare this with how Nadal, Djokovic and Medvedev are breezing through their matches without being even slightly troubled.
If Alcaraz has Korda next, then that could be a really tough match against another rising star. I wouldn't be too surprised after the last match if Alcaraz gets knocked out earlier than we were all expecting.

Smallpox has been eradicated, due to vaccination. That's why you no longer need to worry about smallpox.
Similarly, if you take the Covid vaccine, you don't need to worry about Covid so much.




Newspapers printing sensationalist crap is nothing new. If you want to know how effective the Covid vaccines are, then look at the data, not the newspapers.

Yes. It's been apparent for some years now that the era of double-digit Chinese growth has ended. The huge spike in early 2021 emphasises your point regarding bitcoin - it's far easier to grow from a low base, the massive early 2021 growth occurs only because the growth is year-on-year, so it's relative to the downturn at the start of the pandemic.

As there is some confusion in this thread, I should stress that the chart below is measuring the rate of change of GDP, not absolute GDP numbers. So with this in mind, any value above 0 is still growth, and China is still growing at a significant rate, just not as much as previously.


https://www.statista.com/chart/17747/china-quarterly-gdp-growth/


And as an aside, this also suggests that if we are trying to assess the long-term growth of something that has exploded exponentially, such as bitcoin, it makes more sense to do so on a logarithmic rather than a linear scale.


https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/

I think it will be a mixture. I'm sure some will withdraw, and equally others will play. Some will be tired and carrying injuries, others will be returning from injury and wanting to play to get some match practice in, some will want the money, some will avoid it because no ranking points, some will still want to play just because it's Wimbledon, some will play just because they're in England anyway playing other tournaments such as Queen's that do have ranking points... it will be a mixture.

I'm sure that initially, China was looking on with interest to see what the global reaction would be if Putin managed a very quick and relatively clean and bloodless takeover of Ukraine. They could then view this as a dry run of their own takeover of Taiwan. But obviously it didn't pan out that way, Russia made a disastrous blood-soaked bungling mess of their invasion, drawing global condemnation and achieving the status of international pariah.

Who knows how China views this? It's probably not going to encourage them, though.

It would get quite interesting though if Mercedes improved so they were fighting with RB, and Ferrari also improved slightly so they were on a par with RB rather than just behind. That could mean that on certain tracks Merc and Ferrari take the top four spots, with Verstappen only fifth (10 points), with the team's designated junior driver Perez in sixth. If Mercedes improve quickly, we still have much of a long season ahead of us, Hamilton or Russell could conceivably close the gap at 15 points a time. Highly unlikely, but possible if Merc do manage to improve significantly on top of their latest improvement, and do so within the next few races.

I think the issue is that the thread title can be misinterpreted very easily. I clicked on the title, preparing to disagree with the OP, but then saw that the argument was not that China would fall back into poverty, cease to be a superpower, etc... merely that its phenomenal level of growth would not continue. Which we'd probably all agree with. Thread title probably needs a tweak, though, to avoid confusion.

I've not heard it either, and coinlocket$ had to explain it to me a few pages ago. I'm not convinced it's illegal, and AFAIK no-one has complained... if the source is Sky Italy, maybe it's just some wishful thinking on the part of Ferrari?







Merc do seem to have improved their porpoising, yes. I ran a Google trend search, and the porposing does seem much reduced recently.
Seriously though, yes, they've made progress addressing this fundamental issue, and now believe they can proceed to unlock some of the potential of what everyone thinks is a fast car.

Players are now talking about skipping Wimbledon, Norrie has said he thinks a lot of top names will skip it, Osaka has said she personally might skip it. Both mentioned that without ranking points, it's basically an exhibition tournament.

I have to say I'm a bit surprised at first, but thinking about it this does make perfect sense. Players have a long and tiring season, now they've been given the chance of a free mid-season break with no points to worry about... time to freshen up and get ready for the hard court season.

Well, he'll be favourite for pole... and as we all know, whoever gets pole at Monaco is likely to win the race, unless they get caught out at a pit stop.

If Leclerc qualifies in pole at Monaco, I'm pretty sure there's nothing that could possibly go wrong and prevent him winning (or cause him to not even start the race for some reason, and end up with 0 points). There's no history here, right?


I think we all hate Monaco, once qualifying is done the race is simply a dull procession. I've said it before, if F1 want to try something different (as they are with sprint races), then Monaco would be the ideal place to it. They could forget about having the 'race' entirely, and just have something like a series of cycling-style time trials. Or just anything more innovative. Any suggestion at all would probably be better than the 'race'. What do you all think? How could they change Monaco to make it better?

A lot of nerves from both Liverpool and Man City, which is understandable. Of course you expect both of these teams to come back strongly in the second half. The thing is, if they both come back and score one goal, then Liverpool get three points and City one, and Liverpool are champions. This is the problem for City, they know that if Liverpool score, then they need two goals themselves.

True, but you don't want the big players to end up playing each other in the first round, you want to save it for the later stages of the tournament (especially if you're running the tournament). I'd also argue that tennis seedings are generally more accurate than football seedings, because their performances can more easily be compared, e.g. Djokovic and Nadal are playing the same set of opponents and same level of tournaments each year, in a way that say Poland and Colombia in football are not. Another point is that tennis matches come quickly after each other. Going back a few years, if you had Djokovic, Nadal, Federer and Murray all in the same half of the draw, then whoever got to the final would be exhausted and quite possibly lose to a lesser player who's had a much easier run-in.



ATP and WTA differ a bit, but ATP rankings are as below (from the Wikipedia page, easier to post as an image than text!). Getting through the qualification tournament will get you more points (e.g. 25 points for getting through the qualification tournament for a slam), but otherwise no, you don't get extra points. So for example a seeded player who loses in the first round of all four slams gets (4x10=) 40 points. If you're a lower ranked player, you'd have to get to R16 in two ATP250 tournaments to get  the same points haul. But I don't think this is unfair at all... the reason being that for top players, 10 or even 100 points here or there is largely irrelevant to their ranking, whereas if you're outside the top 100, even 10 points can be a big deal (e.g. compare Berrettini ranked 10 on 3,805 points, with Thiago Montiero ranked 100 on 651 points).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATP_rankings#Ranking_method

I think it's more him having the fastest car. Well, not as fast as Ferrari in qualifying, but faster over race distance. Sainz and Perez really need to step up, otherwise every race will be Leclerc in the fastest qualifying car getting pole, with Verstappen in second... and then Verstappen in the fastest race distance car overtaking him for the win, with Leclerc second. The thing that could make it interesting is one of these teams having a quality second driver who can give a tactical edge, but at the moment it isn't happening. At least Sainz got close to Max in qualifying this time, but you know that when the race starts he'll just fade slowly out of contention. Perez finishing amongst the Mercs and only just ahead of Bottas is a joke.


Their qualifying pace was nothing special, about the same as we've seen so far this year. But it does look like they might have made a step up on full race simulation runs. I think in previous races they've been losing around 0.5s a lap to the front teams. If they can cut that down to just 0.1s or 0.2s, it might be enough to cause some problems for the teams up front... and enable some overtaking in the pit window if not on the track.

As everyone expected, pole for Leclerc, but he cut it fine by ruining his first lap... nice final lap when the pressure was on.
As everyone expected, Verstappen second. More reliability questions for RB, too. Could be interesting.
As everyone (probably) expected, Mercedes still some way off the pace, at least in qualifying - let's see what they're like in the race.

It's fairly straightforward. It can get a bit messy with minor tournaments for lesser players, because only your best x (I forget how many) tournaments count towards your ranking. But generally, ranking can be summed up as:
- The further you get in a tournament, the more points you get.
- You get more points for bigger tournaments.
- Ranking points total is based on a rolling 12 months. Your ranking points at the start of May are your total points from May 2021 - Apr 2022; your ranking points at start of June 2022 are your total from June 2021 - May 2022, etc.

Yes, I think they care because seeding is based on your ranking.


It does affect everyone equally - no-one gets any points this year. It's just those that did better at Wimbledon last year will lose more ranking points when 2021 is dropped, because they won't get any points from doing well at Wimbledon this year to replace them. Djoko isn't being targeted, no.


Yes, Wimbledon has always been a bit arrogant with stupid etiquette rules, and thinking they can do what they like, which is what they did with the ban on Russians. It's coming back to bite them a bit now though.

Yes, Ferrari have the edge in qualifying, but can't match RB in race pace. Same again.

And I'm starting to be convinced that Merc are on the right path now, and could soon be up there. Having three teams fighting for wins sounds too good to be true... just hope it is true.

If it's just Leclerc and Max, and one messes up, you still know they'll finish second and not lose much... If this means a mistake can drop you down to fourth behind both Mercs, it gets a lot more interesting.