BRICS: Laying the Foundations of the Next Empire?

It all seems to depend on the leaders of these individual nations even if they depend on the masses for their support, if there is a "true" democracy.

The same video could be applied to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements system.

It's been done around the world by the West for a very long time so I suppose it is going East for a bit of balancing now.
 
I'm not sure yet, how this new development, might affect BRICS - if at all? Is it a counter-competitive move by a South American group? Or is it's sole purpose, to act like a strong arm of the United States, to over-throw Venezuelans Maduro?

A group of South American leaders signed a declaration on Friday to create a bloc they say is open to any country, regardless of ideology, to collaborate on solving regional problems.

South American presidents announce creation of new regional bloc
Guyana’s Ambassador George Talbot, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, Colombia's President Ivan Duque, Peru's President Martin Vizcarra, Paraguay's President Mario Abdo Benitez, Chile's President Sebastian Pinera and Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno attend the Prosur summit, at the presidential palace La Moneda, in Santiago, Chile March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido

Guyana’s Ambassador George Talbot, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina's President Mauricio Macri, Colombia's President Ivan Duque, Peru's President Martin Vizcarra, Paraguay's President Mario Abdo Benitez, Chile's President Sebastian Pinera and Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno attend the Prosur summit, at the presidential palace La Moneda, in Santiago, Chile March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Rodrigo Garrido

Presidents from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru attended the summit in the Chilean capital of Santiago. Chile and Colombia had led the push for the new ‘Prosur’ political grouping after criticism that a previous bloc, Unasur, failed to take action on crisis-stricken Venezuela.

“This will be a forum with a firm and clear commitment to democracy, freedom and a respect for human rights,” said Chilean President Sebastian Pinera following the signing ceremony.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was not among the leaders invited to meet in Santiago on Friday.

Some leaders have criticized the organizers for leaving out Maduro and instead inviting Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognized by many countries as head of state after he assumed the interim presidency in January. Guaido did not send a representative to the summit.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, a close ally of Maduro, and Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez also did not attend.


Unasur was created in 2008 when leftist populism advocated by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez was at its strongest in South America. But in recent years, the bloc has been paralyzed by divisions as center-right governments have risen to power.
 
The history of South American blocs have shown them to be more show than effective in doing anything and this one will probably not be any different (or maybe they will get things done this time, who knows?).

Article fails to say that Bolivia and Uruguay did send their vice chancellors as observers, that Suriname was also represented and that Guaido’s personal invitation was to be as a guest not as a member of Prosur which he later declined or as Chile’s President claims in the conversation: "Pero después dijimos que no queríamos 'venezuelizar' Prosur”.

Before the meeting, Bolsonaro arrived the day prior for direct talks and agreements with the Chilean President over energy integration, infrastructure, transport, cybersecurity, among other areas.

My take is that Chile’s future megaport and giant Brasil will be the two most important poles in the future Martime Silk Road in regards to South America and especially the Southern Cone of South America no matter what party leads each country and they know it and that stability and pragmatism will make sure it occurs without problems.
 
Article fails to say that Bolivia and Uruguay did send their vice chancellors as observers, that Suriname was also represented and that Guaido’s personal invitation was to be as a guest not as a member of Prosur which he later declined or as Chile’s President claims in the conversation: "Pero después dijimos que no queríamos 'venezuelizar' Prosur”.

Thanks for providing corrections and an update, on_strike_usaexpat. Very much appreciated! :-)

My take is that Chile’s future megaport and giant Brasil will be the two most important poles in the future Martime Silk Road in regards to South America and especially the Southern Cone of South America no matter what party leads each country and they know it and that stability and pragmatism will make sure it occurs without problems.

China's President Xi Jinping just signed some deals with Italy. I would imagine, Italy will become another future Seaport in the Belt and Road infrastructure?

Italy signs deals worth 2.5 billion euros with China
Italy signed a preliminary accord with China on Saturday that makes it the first country of the Group of Seven industrialized nation to join the Chinese Belt and Road infrastructure project.

Around 30 parallel deals were signed
on the sidelines of the visit to Rome by Chinese President Xi Jinping, including 10 with Italian companies and others with ministries and public bodies. (Includes list of deals.)
 
There's also this development which needs to be taken into consideration, along with BRICS and the Belt and Road infrastructure and the new Prosur Political grouping? My limited understanding is that these groupings, along with other's, will eventually form the foundations toward a "democratic polycentric world order"?

March 19, 2019 - Asia-Pacific becoming new center of political and economic power — Russian ambassador

Asia-Pacific becoming new center of political and economic power — Russian ambassador

The Asia-Pacific is becoming a new center of economic and political power, Russian Ambassador to China Andrey Denisov said in an address to the 13th regional conference "Russian Diasporas for Cooperation" in Shanghai.

"The Asia-Pacific is becoming a new center of economic and political influence. Russia has lately been very active in developing relations with countries in the region, emphasizing economic cooperation. In the conditions of comprehensive participation of our country in processes unfolding in the Asia Pacific, our compatriots' knowledge and expert assessment become especially important," Denisov said.

The conference that was first held in Beijing 12 years ago, now hosts representatives of Russian diasporas from 11 countries, including China, India, Iran, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan.


February 27, 2019 - Russia, India, China should coordinate efforts to ensure safety of Asia-Pacific — Lavrov

Russia, India, China should coordinate efforts to ensure safety of Asia-Pacific — Lavrov

Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing need to continue coordinating their efforts to ensure global and regional security, including in the Asia-Pacific region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Ahead of meeting with his Indian and Chinese counterparts, Sushma Swaraj and Wang Yi, Lavrov said that the Russia-India-China format remains an important platform in the search for solutions to numerous challenges and threats.

"Our cooperation is based on the solid foundation of the international law. We are firmly committed to the UN Charter’s principles of sovereign equality of states, non-interference into domestic affairs, peaceful settlement of disputes. We are also committed to the values of equal and indivisible security," Lavrov said.

"The ongoing process of creating a more fair and democratic polycentric world order requires us to closely coordinate our efforts and to forge consolidated stances,"
the Russian foreign minister continued. "It is important to keep promoting positive and unifying international agenda, directed at ensuring global and regional stability and security, at achieving goals of sustainable development, at improving the framework of inter-state relations, including in the Asia-Pacific region".
 
Something that worries me about the shift in power from the west to the east is what a ponerized east will be like vs a ponerized west.
I watched this video, released by BBC, about China's 'thought transformation' camps were people who are deemed of having "extreme" thoughts are taken to be transformed to fit with the norm. It's a little disturbing to say the least.

If you consider China's social credit system, their conformity to digital surveillance, and the one world order that are apparently running the show... I have a hard time imagining china's influence being any better if it becomes the new US. Mind you things are very complicated, especially when you shake things up with meteors and such, so a 'wait and see' approach is probably best.
 
Something that worries me about the shift in power from the west to the east is what a ponerized east will be like vs a ponerized west.
I watched this video, released by BBC, about China's 'thought transformation' camps were people who are deemed of having "extreme" thoughts are taken to be transformed to fit with the norm. It's a little disturbing to say the least.

If you consider China's social credit system, their conformity to digital surveillance, and the one world order that are apparently running the show... I have a hard time imagining china's influence being any better if it becomes the new US. Mind you things are very complicated, especially when you shake things up with meteors and such, so a 'wait and see' approach is probably best.

Zar,

I think you raise a valid concern that we don't just think everything about the methods of China will somehow be an improvement over our Western ways. That was a sobering video in terms of a method to change thinking and behavior. It does make me think of the difficulty former criminals and psychopaths had in changing their "thinking errors" as described in Inside the Criminal Mind by Samenow.

I think we on this forum are becoming aware that an STO approach should take the "help when asked approach" but these people are being much more than just persuaded and helped by free will it seems.

It also reminded me of the way we tried a very similar method on Native American Indian children here in Pennsylvania between 1879 and 1918.

How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ Through Assimilation

“Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”

That was the mindset under which the U.S. government forced tens of thousands of Native American children to attend “assimilation” boarding schools in the late 19th century. Decades later, those words—delivered in a speech by U.S. cavalry captain Richard Henry Pratt, who opened the first such school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania—have come to symbolize the brutality of the boarding school system.

The history of this forced assimilation is far from settled. On August 7, 2017, the U.S. Army began exhuming the graves of three children from the Northern Arapaho tribe who had died at Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the 1880s. The children’s names were Little Chief, Horse, and Little Plume—names they were forbidden to use at the school.

Childrens Pictures.jpg

Yufna Soldier Wolf, center, of the Northern Arapaho, with tribal elders, Mark Soldier Wolf and Crawford White Sr., holds pictures of Little Plume, Horse and Little Chief. The three Arapaho children died about 135 years ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania, the Carlisle Indian School, where they were buried.
Charles Fox/The Philadelphia Inquirer/AP Photo
Students at Carlisle and the roughly 150 other such schools that the government opened were susceptible to deadly infections like tuberculosis and the flu. During Carlisle’s operation between 1879 and 1918, nearly 200 other children were buried in the same cemetery as the Northern Arapaho boys, according to The Washington Post.

Carlisle and other boarding schools were part of a long history of U.S. attempts to either kill, remove, or assimilate Native Americans. In 1830, the U.S. forced Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi to make room for U.S. expansion with the the Indian Removal Act. But a few decades later, the U.S. worried it was running out of places to relocate the country’s original inhabitants.


“As white population grew in the United States and people settled further west towards the Mississippi in the late 1800s, there was increasing pressure on the recently removed groups to give up some of their new land,” according to the Minnesota Historical Society. Since there was no more Western territory to push them towards, the U.S. decided to remove Native Americans by assimilating them. In 1885, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hiram Price explained the logic: “it is cheaper to give them education than to fight them.”

The Carlisle Indian School

1_Native American_assimilation school_Carlisle Indian_3a51829u

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GALLERY
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As part of this federal push for assimilation, boarding schools forbid Native American children from using their own languages and names, as well as from practicing their religion and culture. They were given new Anglo-American names, clothes, and haircuts, and told they must abandon their way of life because it was inferior to white people’s.

Though the schools left a devastating legacy, they failed to eradicate Native American cultures as they’d hoped. Later, the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the U.S. win World War II would reflect on the strange irony this forced assimilation had played in their lives.

“As adults, [the Code Talkers] found it puzzling that the same government that had tried to take away their languages in schools later gave them a critical role speaking their languages in military service,” recounts the National Museum of the American Indian.

In addition to the Northern Arapaho in Wyoming, the Rosebud Sioux of South Dakota and native people of Alaska are also seeking the return of children’s remains from Carlisle, reports Philly.com. Yet if the results of Northern Arapaho’s search are any example, this may prove to be quite difficult.

Yufna Soldier.jpg

Yufna Soldier Wolf wipes away tears while kneeling at the grave of her great-grandfather, Chief Sharp Nose of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, at the family cemetery on the Wind River Reservation near Riverton, Wyoming.
Dan Cepeda/The Casper Star-Tribune/AP Photo

On August 14, 2017, the Army sent the remains of Little Chief and Horse back to their relatives on the Wind River Reservation. The Northern Arapaho will bury them on August 18, 2017. Little Plume, however, was not sent back because he wasn’t found. In what was supposed to be his coffin, archaeologists instead discovered the bones of two others who couldn’t have been Little Plume because their ages didn’t match his.

Researchers aren’t sure who those two people are or where Little Plume could be, and the Northern Arapaho haven’t stated whether they’ll continue to search for him. For now, the Army has reburied the two people found in his coffin, and Little Plume remains one of Carlisle’s many missing children.
 
Something that worries me about the shift in power from the west to the east is what a ponerized east will be like vs a ponerized west.
I watched this video, released by BBC, about China's 'thought transformation' camps were people who are deemed of having "extreme" thoughts are taken to be transformed to fit with the norm. It's a little disturbing to say the least.

I watched it, and it seemed quite suspicious. Most of the iffiest aspects were just speculations by the BBC journalist. They weren't shown. Even the "suspicious" fact that people weren't getting out was proven wrong later.

The school part was exactly as I remember China. You can just walk by any school and hear children repeat word after word, sing and dance, like the people in the video. And it's not just children: the same goes for universities. I was shocked when I first arrived and my students (in their second year of University -19-20 y.o.) tried to repeat what I was saying, or write an essay with practically the same words as everyone else. It took a while to convince them NOT to do that. That's a topic for another discussion (I do think they are overworked and "programmed", but not in the way the video portrayed).

Notice how this "prison" was not only about the wonders of the Chinese government, praising the system, etc. They were also singing and talking in their native language. They were dressing in their ethnic costumes, etc.

As for the "radical thoughts" they were trying to remove, there's too little in the video to say anything. But overall, it seems way milder than what they do in European prisons, and waaaaaayyy milder than the methods used by the US. So, I am left with the feeling that it's mostly propaganda. They ARE probably doing evil stuff, but that video is no proof, IMO. I heard worse stories, but once again, not much compared to, any CIA experiment that we know of.

If you consider China's social credit system, their conformity to digital surveillance, and the one world order that are apparently running the show... I have a hard time imagining china's influence being any better if it becomes the new US. Mind you things are very complicated, especially when you shake things up with meteors and such, so a 'wait and see' approach is probably best.

Yes, it's hard to imagine. Even with what I wrote above, I don't think any future with one country at the top would be good. Even China and Russia, once the current leaders go... :umm:
 
I haven't watched the BBC programme but my Mum's partner messaged me yesterday after having watched it and proceeded to tell me he didn't realise how bad China was, that it thinks it's the "master race" and so on. I reckon that was the response it was intended to illcit. Thankfully he's pretty open minded - if a tad reactionary! - so i sent him some thoughts and an article. The BBC is notorious for being the propaganda arm of the British government and hit pieces are part of the regular programming.

Whilst i agree nowhere is paradise and, in the end, any regime with a lot of power will likely, eventually, succumb to ponerization and be a hell for its citizens (especially if it has hi-tech surveillance), as it is, China is probably lower on my list of countries to be concerned about.

As for the social credit system, i think that they may be attempting to recreate what naturally occurs in a village setting; people earn their reputation by their deeds. The problem is that with large cities and an increasingly mobile population knowing your neighbour is less likely, and so in comes something like China's social credits system, made possible by the latest tech. I get the feeling that's what some in China are attempting to do, and perhaps it also reflects how they perceive society should be structured - although i couldn't say for sure.

In regards to the programme, i sent my mum's partner the following article which, as i understand it, goes some way to explain the back story and the situation China is facing. In short, there's a Muslim population that the Chinese state is attempting to integrate into society in an attempt to stave off any sabotage. We know that deep state actors weaponize minority populations and so, understandably, this is one of the concerns. Another seems to be that, when times become more difficult, a lack of integration, especially when the other culture is very different, any issues can become much more problematic, much easier and escalate much faster than if there's a feeling of loyalty and affinity to the country and local community. If we look at what's happening in Europe, it's currently experiencing a problem similar to that which the Chinese are attempt to prevent.

So, as noted in the article below, there's good reason for China being so 'proactive', and these camps are probably not as bad as they're being made out to be, for the majority of people, because that would actually be counter-productive:


The truth about China's Uighur 're-education' facilities

There's no question that suspected Uighur radicals are being preemptively detained in re-education facilities before they ever have a chance to commit acts of terror, which is being portrayed by the Western Mainstream Media as a criminal act of "cultural genocide" against this ethno-religious minority, but the truth of the matter is that the situation isn't as black and white as Beijing or its many detractors might make it out to be.

The world's been wondering what's really going on with the Xinjiang's Uighur all year long ever since the Western Mainstream Media made it a point to give plenty of attention to their situation, which is being portrayed as the communist government's "cultural genocide" of this ethno-religious minority. According to the prevailing narrative, China is "overreacting" to the latent terrorist threat in this region by locking up "as many Uighurs as it can" in newly constructed detention facilities far away from the prying eyes of the public where detainees are then forced to undergo "rigorous brainwashing" for months at a time until the authorities deem them "secular enough" to be safely released back into society. This would amount to a severe violation of the Uighurs' human rights if it was true, but there's actually a lot more to it than what the West is saying.

Hybrid War Motivations & Weaponized Double Standards

Before getting into the specifics of what's going on and why this is such a sizzling news story, it needs to be objectively recognized that there are ulterior geostrategic motives for propagating the aforementioned storyline, the most obvious of which is the intention of Western intelligence agencies to provoke the international Muslim community ("Ummah") into committing militant acts in support of their co-confessionals in Xinjiang. This could take the form of either trying to travel to the autonomous region to wage jihad or sabotaging Chinese projects in their home countries. Ultimately, the end goal is to turn the Ummah against China and in doing so sabotage the mainland portion of its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which travels through a host of Muslim-majority countries. Moreover, it shouldn't be forgotten that Xinjiang is BRI's mainland hub, hence why stability there is so important for Beijing.

Another point to keep in mind before proceeding is that China's critics are very disingenuous because they ordinarily don't care about the living standards of Muslims elsewhere in the world unless there's a politically convenient reason to do so. In this case, people who are normally afraid of Islam or have even come to hate it all of a sudden show sympathy towards the Uighurs, but this seemingly inexplicable development is due to them believing that these people don't pose a security threat to their own but are rather a latent one to the Chinese, which they regard as being the main strategic threat to the West for geopolitical and economic reasons. Accordingly, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", so it logically follows that they have an interest in propagating this Hybrid War narrative to incite worldwide Muslim animosity against China.

Shortcomings And Speculation

Having put the Uighur topic into its proper infowar context, it's now time to talk about what's happening in Xinjiang. To cut to the chase, the Chinese are indeed implementing an ambitious socio-cultural reengineering initiative with far-reaching consequences that simultaneously aims to deradicalize the Uighurs alongside more effectively integrating and assimilating them into the People's Republic. The general opacity surrounding internal developments in China, especially those related to national security concerns such as this one, naturally cultivates a conspiratorial environment that fosters external speculation about the true state of affairs there. This is expectedly the case when it comes to claims that members of an ethno-religious minority are being "arbitrarily" picked up off the streets and shipped to remote re-education facilities in the desert for indefinite periods of time, during which they're supposedly subjected to "forced secularization" practices such as eating pork and other actions forbidden by their religion.

It's impossible to know exactly what goes on in these re-education centers and there's always the possibility that some abuses have happened, but it would be extremely counterproductive if China systematically carried out the actions that it's been accused of by the Mainstream Media because of how self-defeating it would be for the country's soft power abroad, to say nothing of the chance that it could backfire by entrenching extremist views, which in and of itself suggests that these allegations are largely untrue. China publicly acknowledged that radically inclined or outright indoctrinated individuals were undergoing government-provided re-education and also being taught valuable job skills as well, which is sensible enough because the state has the right to take preemptive action against at-risk citizens for the benefit of everyone else's safety, even if it does so in a dramatic way designed to serve as a deterrent to others.

China's Re-Education Model vs. Muslim States' De-Radicalization One

Truth be told, what China's doing isn't all that different in principle from the deradicalization programs that many majority-Muslim countries carry out, and it might even be more effective in some respects. All states engage in various degrees of socio-cultural reengineering efforts for what they either say or imply is the collective interest (irrespective of whether it truly is or not), but the difference is that China's initiative is evidently more overt than the others' and has become a lightning rod for international attention because of the optics of the mostly atheist Han-majority government deradicalizing the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, which is where the accusations of "cultural genocide" stem from. This isn't so noticeable in majority-Muslim countries where there usually aren't any visible identity differences between the state and its subjects in the sense that it's Muslim-on-Muslim deradicalization that's taking place unlike in China's atheist-Han-on-Muslim-Uighur case.

Apart from the superficial contrast between the two models that implicitly tilts towards the Muslim states' soft power favor, there are other dissimilarities as well, albeit those that tend to suggest that the Chinese one is much more effective. De-radicalization is oftentimes ordered after an armed militant surrenders as part of a ceasefire agreement or general amnesty and is therefore reactive in most regards. China's initiatives, however, are proactive and aim to prevent the detainee from ever bearing arms against the state in the first place. Furthermore, China has to work extra hard to reintegrate these deradicalized individuals into society because they almost seem to have a preexisting cultural predisposition to remaining on its margins and consciously choose not to assimilate into the country's majority-Han culture, hence the self-interested incentive in teaching them Mandarin and the state's communist ideology. The government also teaches them valuable jobs skills so that they can work on Silk Road projects and tighten their economic integration into the country, thereby making them stakeholders in its success.

Muslim-majority states, meanwhile, usually don't do any of this because the detainees are (somewhat naively) assumed to naturally reassimilate into society upon release, though not necessarily reintegrate into it. It's taken for granted that they probably speak the same language as the majority of the country's citizens and obviously believe in the same religion, with the original problem being that they do so with a different intensity. This makes it so that these states don't have any need to teach deradicalizing individuals socio-cultural skills on the same level that the Chinese do, but the fundamental flaw to their approach is that they usually overlook just how important it is to invest in the detainees' future economic integrational prospects in order to sustain the social gains that they believe they achieved through their re-education. Think whatever else one will, that's one mistake that the Chinese don't make.

Constructive Criticisms & Positive Proposals

Reflecting on everything that was just discussed, a few valid criticisms of the Chinese approach come to mind. The first is that the country has practically no effective means of employing soft power and perception management except repeating the win-win slogan and defensively denying whatever claims are made against it. That has to change, and urgently, so China would do well to consider the proposal made by geopolitical analyst Adam Garrie to cooperate with Pakistan in jointly debunking the Western Mainstream Media's weaponized disinformation about Xinjiang. If successful, then this initiative could also be expanded to include other influential countries in the Ummah such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Another point is that the suspected Uighur radicals are detained against their will instead of voluntarily submitting to state-supported socio-cultural reengineering programs like billions of people do daily when they turn on their TVs.

This controversial component of the Chinese model could be partially improved upon by rolling out a trial program that incentivizes some at-risk Uighurs to voluntarily participate in these courses. They would be located in their hometowns and taught by their Muslim Uighur peers, likely program "alumni" themselves under government supervision, instead of being in a remote desert facility and taught by never-before-seen government employees who are probably more often than not atheist Han. The proposed program would logically be limited to those Uighurs who aren't deemed to be an imminent security risk and may or may not have on-site boarding. The successful completion of these socio-cultural reengineering courses would allow the "student" to "graduate" to its second phase where they'd learn all manner of job skills and then be guaranteed employment in a Silk Road-affiliated company in order to sustain the socio-economic achievements of this program.

Concluding Thoughts

The Western Mainstream Media's infowar on Xinjiang is an important part of its overall Hybrid War on BRI and builds off of the country's opacity to concoct conspiracy theories about the communist government "forcibly secularizing" its Muslim minority in "concentration camps". Like with all weaponized perception management campaigns, there's a kernel of truth to it all that makes everything partially believable to the passive information consumer, but China's failure to properly wield soft power instruments on the world stage has led to the most provocative but unverified accusations taking on a life of their own. China is indeed preemptively detaining suspected Uighur radicals and then putting them through socio-cultural re-education courses and job training programs in remote desert facilities, but it's not forcing them to eat pork or commit other "haram" acts. Beijing's anti-terror policies, however, could be improved upon if the country endeavors to debunk the fake news narratives about it.
 
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Indeed, itellsya! There is also the fact that China has the problem of "gigantism", as described by Lobaczewski. But once again, compared to what the US has done during his "Empire", I tend to think that it's not as bad. In fact, it makes it vulnerable to outside intervention, which is what I think they are trying to prevent. In spite of the rumors, I rarely saw a country where minorities were so accepted. To me they seem as integrated as they could, meaning that they all need to know Mandarin as a second language and in writing, for example, but because they really ARE different, they are left alone to do their thing as long as they respect the basic rules of the country.
 
Reminds of what Putin said during the Financial Times interview:


As for the party and the party state building in China, this is for the Chinese people to decide; we do not interfere. Today's Russia has its own principles and rules of life, and China with its 1.35 billion people has its own. You try to rule a country with such a population. This is not Luxembourg, with all due respect to this wonderful country. Therefore, it is necessary to give the Chinese people the opportunity to decide how to organise their lives.

Actually, the population is over 1.4 billion people.
 
BRICS summit in November to be another step towards consolidation of this format — Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov © Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 26, 2019 - The next BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit due to be held in the Brazilian capital city on November 13-14 will be another step towards strengthening this multilateral format, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday ahead of a meeting with his Brazilian counterpart Ernesto Araujo.

"We had a very open and sincere discussion that yielded a joint statement reiterating our commitment to the United Nations Charter. We have no doubts that the summit in November will be yet another step towards consolidation of this format," he said.

The Brazilian top diplomat, in turn, pledged that his country would spare no effort to ensure successful presidency in the association.

"We reached progress on many issues at this meeting and found understanding on the majority of topics. We value our relations with Russia. Brazil is now living through a period when we are trying to become a country more open to the world," Araujo said.


Russia to host BRICS summit in 2020
OSAKA /Japan/, June 28, 2019 - Russia will host the BRICS summit in the summer of 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday at a meeting with his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

"In November, we will have to work together in Brazil within BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa - TASS], and next summer we will hold another meeting of the group of five nations in Russia," Putin noted.

He also invited the South African leader to attend the Russia-Africa summit scheduled to be held in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on October 24.

"We count on your help, Mr. President, during preparations for that summit," Putin added.

He congratulated his counterpart on winning the election in South Africa and his re-election as president in May. The Russian leader assured that close cooperation between the two countries on the global stage would continue, while the experience of previous cooperation would develop in the future.
 
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