Posted on 05/14/2026 5:56:49 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
High-level diplomatic arrivals unfolded at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People as U.S. President Donald Trump prepared to attend a state banquet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The moment captured top U.S. officials and business leaders, including Elon Musk, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth arriving ahead of the high-profile diplomatic dinner. The gathering highlights intense U.S.–China engagement amid trade talks, security tensions, and global economic uncertainty.
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Thanks for posting.

Musk in Beijing.
And the birth rate problem in China is now fixed
China’s falling birth rate is considered a severe and deepening national crisis, representing an existential challenge to its future economy and social structure. In 2025, deaths continued to outnumber births for the fourth consecutive year, plunging to a record low of 7.92 million births.
With a fertility rate hovering around 1.0–1.09 births per woman—well below the 2.1 replacement level—the population is both shrinking and rapidly aging, reducing the available workforce.
Xi murdered his way to power. Going to China during a war with China’s proxy Iran, was a stupid move. Xi, if he’s even still in charge, is a cornered rat, with a history of murder. Like going to Hannibal Lecter’s for dinner.
Grok
No, there is no credible evidence that Xi Jinping “murdered his way to power.” This phrasing is hyperbolic and not supported by available reporting on his career.
Your heroes Biden and Obama also met with Chinese leaders, who by definition are totalitarian thug murderers.
also, fun fact: Did you know what Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character?
Rulio not Rubio
Come on now lol
Global birthrate is collapsing for all light skinned human cultures. Poisoned by feminism, seditary lifestyle, and toxins in food and environment. Good news is that once the other cultures dominate with their massive birthrate, they will quickly inherit the same and die off in 100 years. Humanity will be just a scrap of itself. A gnarly, crude, and evil remnant. Maybe that’s God’s plan? Maybe that’s what we deserve as a civilization? WHo knows...
Interesting to see the cadre of young Chinese holding Chinese and American flags.
“Chinee” spelling.........lol.
Isn’t the name a bit of an oxymoron “the great hall of the people”. Not the regular Chinese people, that’s for sure!
Feminism and moral degeneracy have impacted the other Northeast Asian countries, and they have had declines. Japan has been below replacement rates at least since 2001. Yet Japan, unlike China, has not had the government mandates to restrict family growth. The collapse in Northeast Asian birth rates must have another factor beyond the cultural issues.
We can look at Russia, where the population has been stagnant since the end of the Soviet Union and the birth rate has been falling since the death of Stalin. The country has abandoned atheistic Communism in 1989 and returned to its Orthodox Christian roots. Yet comparing the birth rate in 1913, the last year before World War I and under peacetime Tsarist rule, which was 6.9 births per woman to that in 2025, with 1.4 births per woman, the return to Orthodoxy has not resulted in a return to higher birth rates despite 35 years of post-Communist rule.
While a sedentary lifestyle and toxins in food and environment are factors, they have less impact in Northeast Asia and Russia. Ultra-processed foods are a smaller proportion of the diet than in the West, especially the United States. Northeast Asian nations, excluding Mongolia, do not have as great an obesity issue, with the Northeast Asian nations running under 10% obese and under 30% overweight. Russia has a greater obesity rate, at about 25%, but lower than the American rate of 40%. Yet Northeast Asia and Russia, despite lacking the sedentary and ultra-processed food problems of the West, are still in birth rte freefall.
Then you have to consider that even in those African, Latin American, South Asian, and Middle Eastern nations with birth rates in excess of replacement rates, the rates are in decline. Mexico currently has a birth rate of 1.9 births per woman, and most of Latin America is below the 2.1 replacement rate. Sub-Saharan Africa still is well above replacement rate, but these rates are in decline and the more well off nations like Ghana and Kenya are experiencing declines above the norm for this area.
There is something else going on that is neither cultural nor diet and lifestyle related. I don't know what it is.
Communism......”for” the people......so they say.
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