Tom-W1987

@badbadleroybrown: No mate. That’s what pinkbike state’s in their article, not what Push “admitted”. Unless you have a link to where they “admit” to that - and plenty of people are still running progressive air shock setups in progressive leverage rates - so it’s not al about the leverage ratio...and there is only so much you can do in terms of progressive leverage ratios in a bicycle chassis.

@jaame: Agreed. But don't think that the rest of the world is going to take your side if they see you as hypocrites. There is a reason why China and Russia are 1) Making considerable economic gains in the developing world at the expense of western influence 2) Able to sow anti-western discontent easily. That's because the west has a nasty history of not praciticing what it preaches, colonialism and exploitative trading practices - on the otherhand China is winnning the hearts and minds of many developing nations through huge infrastructure projects, hilariously more equitable trade deals and by not dropping 2000lb JDAMs on them for giggles. What we are reaping now is the result of a few hundred years of umitigated geoploitical stupidity and ignorance, carrying on right up to the present day, in the near and far east.

@Sshredder: Cuba (attempted) Vietnam El Salvador Panama Grenada Yugoslavia – Serbia Afghanistan Iraq

@jaame: And how is what China does worse than bombing all of the following countries since ww2? China 1945-46 Korea 1950-53 China 1950-53 Guatemala 1954 Indonesia 1958 Cuba 1959-60 Guatemala 1960 Belgian Congo 1964 Guatemala 1964 Dominican Republic 1965-66 Peru 1965 Laos 1964-73 Vietnam 1961-73 Cambodia 1969-70 Guatemala 1967-69 Lebanon 1982-84 Grenada 1983-84 Libya 1986 El Salvador 1981-92 Nicaragua 1981-90 Iran 1987-88 Libya 1989 Panama 1989-90 Iraq 1991 Kuwait 1991 Somalia 1992-94 Bosnia 1995 Iran 1998 Sudan 1998 Afghanistan 1998 Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999 Afghanistan 2001 Libya 2011 Are they worse because “they hate our freedoms?” - is it only bad or terrorism when dictatorships do it?

@jaame: How will the man on the street notice his way of life changing? Do you mean the Chinese are going to invade and install dictatorships? Or do you mean the cost of living for us goes up because other people are being lifted out of poverty? Or is it because the west will no longer be able to act as either colonialists or the “worlds policemen”? If it’s the latter, what gives you the right to carry on being much more effluent than the rest of the world?

@WAKIdesigns: They might get you seeing as you lot are good at fleeing from Finland whenever they turn up.

@jaame: China only accounts for 6.6 percent of UK imports - we do not give 95 percent of our money to the Chinese. You don’t sound like a snob, you sound like you think you’re McArthur, it’s the 1950s and the Reds and the Yellow peril are out to get you.

@WAKIdesigns: Once again, European co-operation and peaceful harmony was a post war blip - that is starting to come apart at the seams - as evidenced by Brexit, Austria, Poland, Hungary and the FN in France. For thousands of years before that, Europe was in a constant state of war. And if you think that Japan is some bastion of tolerance, you haven’t spent any time there. And you should try listening in to conversations in a British pub - they are no better, Brits are only better at hiding their prejudices. Your disparaging sentence about white savages tells me you just see them as a threat and are fitting your narrative to that view. I don’t really care about whether a Buddhist monk or “yogi” as you like to call him is or isn’t a selfish as a wall street banker - what I care about is geopolitics, conflict and cultural understanding.

@jaame: All superpowers and hyper powers attempt to exert control over their neighbours, out of fear of those that may engage them in great power competition may gain influence in those countries. America did so in Cuba and South America (the former was understandable after the missile crisis). American attempts to control the Far East are often seen in Asia in the same way that the PLAN rocking up in Mexico would be seen by Americans. Corruption and human rights abuses are an issue in China, they are also major issues in tin pot democracies like the Philippines. When you talk about whether we should accept the exporting of the Chinese model, what would you have us do? Restart the containment and domino theory that worked so well in Vietnam and was definitely not viewed as a colonialist continuation of French-Indochina by the locals?

@jaame: I’d also add that your comments on “good little Chinese boys and girls” and the CCP success only being based on its economic success fail to take Into account Confucian culture as well. You are also wilfully blind or ignorant of the way the west did and still does business. The Americans for example, when confronted with a Japan that didn’t want to open up to the world sailed gunboats into Tokyo bay. Their trade model is still based on having a large blue water navy that acts like a protection racket.