iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Tobita Chow

matthew cunningham-cook @matthewccook5.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you’re not morgenthaupilled you’re not paying attention

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/h...

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Henry Morgenthau, Bretton Woods 1944: "Economic aggression can have no other offspring than war. It is as dangerous as it is futile. We know now that economic conflict must develop when nations endeavor separately to deal with economic ills which are international in scope."

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Trump is maintaining a superficial calm with China but fundamental tensions are continuing to grow under the surface, as is a sense of desperation among US natsec elites "Unless there is a real break within the Democratic Party... we can expect conflict to take off" @jwdwerner.bsky.social

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Karthik Sankaran @rajakorman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The US view on weaponized interdependence.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Kyle Chan on China and “AGI”: Chinese firms talk about it but in significantly different terms and it is not a focus of Beijing’s AI strategy www.highcapacity.org/p/does-china...

There’s an understandable tendency in Washington to project our own ideas and attitudes onto Beijing. If the US is racing to AGI, then surely China must be doing the same thing. But it’s useful to take a step back and see how much of an outlier the US is here. It seems like Beijing’s attitude toward AI as a powerful technology but not a fundamental break with history is more in line with how much of the rest of the world sees it.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Interesting time to be a Chinese Canadian American

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Ilias Alami @iliasalami.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Very excited to be delivering the 2026 Antipode RGS-IBG Lecture next week, “Imperial State Capitalism and the Long Arc of History”!

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Reposted by Tobita Chow

matthew cunningham-cook @matthewccook5.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

on the surface military tensions are lower than a long time, no US carriers in the pacific, THAAD out of SK + pullback on joint exercises, RFA defunded, Taiwan arms sale frozen--beneath the surface, however...

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I don't subscribe to doomerism about this at all but on the other hand I'm concerned that the superficial sense of stability since last October, combined with the constant barrage of more pressing Trump outrages, has encouraged a sense of complacency about US-China

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

It wouldn't take a full blown war for things to start getting very ugly, and under the surface of Trump's bromance with Xi the conditions for volatile reescalation in US-China conflict are festering asamnews.com/2026/08/26/r...

A right-wing political commentator is calling for the incarceration of Chinese Americans should the U.S. ever go to war with China.

“If there was a war between the Chinese and the Americans, and the Chinese landed in, like, Alaska and started coming through Canada, what — do think we should intern all the Chinese Americans we can find? Because it kind of seems like we should,” said Ian Crossland, the co-host of the Timcast IRL podcast, reports Media Matters for America.

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Jake Werner @jwdwerner.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I’m delighted to have contributed a chapter with Sandy Shan in this landmark book on the future of progressive foreign policy. In our chapter, Sandy and I lay out our vision for how the US–China relationship could be reshaped, making great power peace an engine for progressive global reform.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Maybe forcing other countries into an economic bloc against China is a bad and unworkable idea

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Reposted by Tobita Chow

Andres A. Chavez @andral404.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Reported ICE sightings also in Rogers Park, Humboldt Park, Stone Park and Logan Square.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Thank you for tagging me! I had heard that they were interested in my article but didn't know that this had actually happened

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Thanks @corrientecalida.com for picking up one of my articles and translating it into Spanish

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Don't get too excited--I won't name names but some of the left congressional candidates this year reject the labor theory of value

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

It wouldn't be the same wage in every place regardless of local economic conditions; attempting to implement that kind of standard would not actually raise wages but just cut off a ton of the global south. Better would be something like the Anker methodology www.globallivingwage.org/about/anker-...

globallivingwage.org

The Anker Methodology for Estimating a Living Wage - Global Living Wage Coalition

This methodology creates highly accurate, robust living wage estimates that are transparent, internationally comparable, and locally specific.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Again I think the right international economic / foreign policy agenda could relieve some tensions within the Dem base. And soothe anxieties among some sectors of capital (according to Grandin this is part of what FDR's "Good Neighbor" policy did for him in 36)

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Alongside this is a growing sense including among normie Dems that they need to clean house on foreign policy. Decent chances of a 28 POTUS influenced by someone like Duss

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

On overall path, Trump and the uselessness of Dem leadership is creating ideal conditions for progressives in elections. My guess is this only intensifies after the midterms

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

You're right, Israel/Iran definitely having an impact in Dem primaries and I suspect this will continue into 28. Also fracturing Trump's base. But not super confident about how relevant it will be to general election outcome in 28. And leaves a lot of Qs open

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Jake Werner @jwdwerner.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

On @ezraklein.bsky.social, @mattduss.bsky.social plants the flag: • Progressive FP’s precondition is to break with Biden personnel and their aim of reviving US hegemony • Its substance is solidarity: reform so different nationalities are not pitted against each other, so all workers enjoy security

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Technically we started 10 years ago before the official founding of JIG

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Those are two radically different tasks, wage standards are enforced thru bureaucracy within the (bourgeois) state

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

It has to be mostly the same as for a progressive populist agenda that mainly focuses on domestic issues, not a lot will be won over thru foreign policy / international economic policy, but the right approach can resolve tensions b/n e.g. young cosmopolitans and labor

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

"The US now appears to control all the major power blocs in Venezuela.... Venezuela’s new acting President has become the local enforcer of the US National Security Strategy and the Trump Corollary." phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bol...

phenomenalworld.org

Bolivarian Twilight | Luis Bonilla-Molina

The recolonization of Venezuela

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Reposted by Tobita Chow

Jeremy Wallace @jeremywallace.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

I'm thrilled to be writing GREEN GIANT for PublicAffairs.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

"In April, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, called on Peru’s next government to “take back” the Chinese-controlled port and said Washington would help."

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

"Peru’s June presidential runoff is drawing attention in China, where analysts are watching whether the next government will reshape ties with Beijing and place new pressure on Chancay, a Chinese-operated megaport" chinaglobalsouth.com/2026/05/29/p...

chinaglobalsouth.com

China Watches Peru Election for Impact on Chancay Port

Peru’s June presidential runoff is drawing attention in China, where analysts are watching whether the next government will reshape ties with Beijing and place new pressure on Chancay, a Chinese-opera...

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

"Accelerated patrimonialism rather than developmental coordination seems the more likely outcome."

These priorities speak volumes about the regime’s underlying logic. Danantara, the sovereign wealth fund designated as the central dynamo of Prabowo’s push for 8 per cent annual growth rates, has a mandate both to restructure Indonesia’s state-owned enterprises and to leverage them into an investment vehicle, consolidating diverse semi-autonomous conglomerates under a centralized managerial body which reports directly to the President. Its governance structure includes a steering committee manned by his predecessors, Jokowi and Yudhoyono, alongside an advisory board featuring Ray Dalio, Jeffrey Sachs and Thaksin Shinawatra. With potential assets claimed at nearly 15 quadrillion rupiah (around $900 billion), Danantara is already being described as the world’s seventh largest sovereign wealth fund. A number of models have been cited, ranging from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings to the China Investment Corporation and Malaysia’s Khazanah. Left unsaid is the degree to which those funds rest on disciplined party hierarchies, relatively strong planning agencies and enforceable constraints on capital—conditions nowhere to be seen in Indonesia’s oligarchic political economy, where state-owned enterprises have long been instruments for rent-seeking. Accelerated patrimonialism rather than developmental coordination seems the more likely outcome.

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

In the market's defense, Prabowo is a terrible person doing state capitalism very badly newleftreview.org/issues/ii157...

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Some nasty capital flight from the economy of the world's 4th most populous country Prabowo: “The markets are not understanding me” 😬

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

"Reclaiming the working-class character of the 1989 movements casts recent Chinese history in a new light and reshapes our understanding of the country’s current conjuncture." phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the...

phenomenalworld.org

The State and Its Workers | Yueran Zhang

China’s class politics after 1989

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

"The workers have arrived!" Beijing 1989

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Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

“Realizing a progressive hukou abolition would require immense political force to overcome resistance from privileged urbanites and capitalists addicted to super-exploited labor. That force cannot come from society, as social movements, and labor movements in particular, are anathema to the Party.”

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

earnest answer: a full 15 years of treating the use of DJI/consumer drones as an intelligence threat while trying to spin up $$$$ secure supply chain alternatives for cheap quadcopters meant the US fully missed how low low cost and mass production allows for innovation and iteration at scale

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

As Eli noted elsewhere the motif of gazing at the communist horizon is here being applied to tourist consumption It's too perfect

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Socialist realism with consumerist characteristics

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

This kind of makes sense but then again there is no shortage of intel from Ukraine. Shouldn’t they have at least recognized the problem during the Biden admin already?

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I'm no military expert but it seems that both the US and Israel have recently been caught by surprise by drone warfare and how is that possible

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Among other things Zhang's essay backs up Barker's brief comments on China in his essay in the same issue bsky.app/profile/tobi...

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Yueran Zhang's essay on the trajectory of China's working class since 1989 is also fantastic phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the...

phenomenalworld.org

The State and Its Workers | Yueran Zhang

China’s class politics after 1989

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

On the other hand I think she greatly overstates the progress that China has made towards hegemony, which I think she defines too thinly

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Tobita Chow @tobitac.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

But this very much depends on the domestic politics in the target country aligning behind strong demands. This is also key to the prospects for workers and labor unions

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