Bulletins and International News Discussion from November 3rd to November 9th, 2025 - The 47th ASEAN Summit + Trump and Xi's Deal

Image is sourced from this article depicting the 28th ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which took place at the same time as the 47th ASEAN Summit.

Last week concluded the 47th summit of ASEAN in Malaysia as well as a swathe of concurrent summits surrounding ASEAN. For those unfamiliar, formally, China is not a member of ASEAN, but is part of the ASEAN Plus Three (as part of the "Three", alongside Japan and Occupied Southern Korea). And while not really ASEAN, there is also a yet wider organization, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which tacks on Australia and New Zealand to the group of countries that are currently in ASEAN (which is the single largest trade bloc on the planet). At the summit, Timor-Leste was officially introduced into ASEAN, making it the 11th country to do and the first since Cambodia in 1999.

Many important figures throughout Asia, as well as Trump, Ramaphosa, and Lula, attended the event. As you can imagine, Trump's appearance was not exactly positive - signing four rather coerced bilateral deals there, including with Malaysia, which forced those countries to buy American goods in exchange for certain exemptions from Trump's high tariff regime. The US is currently in a bit of a panic due to China restricting access to rare earths, a critical component of many weapons technologies (and electronics in general) and is looking around for countries to help supply them. After the summit, the US and China signed a deal related to tariffs and rare earths, but it seems very unlikely that this is the end of the saga; the US politically, economically, and militarily cannot tolerate China's existence as a sovereign actor and will try to overcome them until the American Empire topples.

Meanwhile, China did as they ordinarily do, and urged higher regional integration and trade without high tariffs, as well as adherence to the Global Governance Initiative (which, as we here never tire of noting, is an interesting thing to try and encourage while the US only more feverishly violates the sovereignty of nations everywhere). One hopes they're supplying a bit more than just speeches to Venezuela, Cuba, and beyond, as the US prepares to start bombing.

Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
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::: spoiler Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

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BRICS payments system now connects to 185 countries
The BRICS-linked Cross-Border Interbank Payments System (CIPS) has expanded across 185 countries, allowing international payments in Chinese yuan without using the U.S. dollar, according to data from the New Development Bank (NDB).
Sry I don't know what this crypto-ass news source is, was just the first result that popped up.
I'd love to hear what our resident economics-heads like @xiaohongshu@hexbear.net and @FuckyWucky@hexbear.net think about this.
Interesting to see that the BRICS payment went from what was originally going to be a collaboration between the respective countries to now, instead, just using the Yuan. I suspect India, as always, was the weak link in the agreement but that's pure speculation on my part.
Death to America
- Obviously a common currency among BRICS would be disastrous, it'll be like the Eurozone but worse. The issue is it places a foreign currency above the country's own sovereign liabilities. In the current system, Indian Rupee, Chinese Yuan, Russian Ruble are at the top of the hierarchy within their respective countries, there have been times when foreign currencies have seen demand as a way to store savings but for actual consumption you need the domestic currencies. The currencies are also non-convertible (not in the capital control sense, but in the sense the Government doesn't promise anything), you can only purchase foreign currencies using indirect liquidity in the secondary market, the Central Bank/Government doesn't promise anything. If BRICS did a common currency, i.e. all the members replaced national currency with the BRICS one, the BRICS currency would become the top of the pyramid instead state's own money. Each member will be able to issue its own (sometimes widely accepted) liabilities as Greek banks were able to do but the member states can easily go insolvent if the BRICS Central Bank isn't willing to be the lender of last resort, BRICS Bank can also impose conditionalities on members before they get their loans (e.g. the Troika imposing austerity in Greece).
  CIPS is fine and good, but it's a system for clearing payments. It doesn't show where the underlying money is coming from. For example, take India, India exported $1.21B and imported $10.9B from China. So, where did the $9.6B come from? It came from a. it's trade surpluses with other countries (U.S, E.U. mainly) b. Remittances by migrant workers abroad (Gulf and Western nations) c. Capital Inflows (FDI, FPI from Western countries mainly). So, India is able to have a trade deficit with China because of its surplus with other countries. if other countries weren't willing to run capital/current account deficits with India, it simply wouldn't be able to purchase Dollar/Yuan it wants to import from China. CIPS cannot change that since its merely a payment system, not an unconditional lender.
  It is beneficial for net exporting countries to China, e.g. Russia, but most countries run a deficit with China, China on the whole is a net exporter and for every net exporter there must be net importer. For third world countries, obtaining Dollars is easy, you export your goods to the U.S. and get Dollars, same with the EU to a lesser extent. Obtaining Yuan is much more difficult, the way most countries do it is by giving Dollars to Chinese exporters or by using the Dollars to get Yuan in the forex markets.
  China can solve this, it can grant an unconditional line which allows India to import $9.6B worth of Chinese goods without giving China (directly or indirectly) any first world currencies. Chinese exports will still happen but it will accumulate third world currencies instead of first world ones.
  Tldr: CIPS is only a payment clearing/settlement system not a funding system.
  
  For third world countries, obtaining Dollars is easy, you export your goods to the U.S. and get Dollars, same with the EU to a lesser extent. Obtaining Yuan is much more difficult, the way most countries do it is by giving Dollars to Chinese exporters or by using the Dollars to get Yuan in the forex markets.
  Bingo. And this is why the summer of 2022 when Biden hiked the Fed rate was such a rare opportunity for de-dollarization. The sudden rate hike threatened a global dollar liquidity shortage that could have prompted a global effort to de-dollarize and ended dollar hegemony right then and there!
  This was a brief period between 2022-2023 when many Global South countries were seriously looking to de-dollarize, not because they don’t like the US (of course, the US confiscating $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserve was part of it), but mostly because they were literally being deprived of any opportunity to earn dollars.
  However, as the US short term treasuries matured in late 2023, the liquidity crisis is eventually reversed. The window of opportunity has now closed. Most countries are no longer looking to get away from the dollar, at least not any time soon. In fact, the foreign holdings of US treasuries have soared to an all-time high as of September 2025.
  This is a very important lesson to learn: people don’t rise up and overthrow the system because they’re suffering under it, they rise up when they are literally being deprived of an opportunity to survive under the system.
  
  I want to know these things like this
  
  This one's pretty good:
  https://annas-archive.org/md5/133afacf8e89f57d6ba6cbe8bc2a4360
  Chapter 24 is on balance of payments and trade.
  This one's simpler and less Mathy, 2.7.2 talks about current account deficits in context of the US :
  https://annas-archive.org/md5/4659883553a91af0bbc63a3b162beeec
  
  Is there an argument to be made about this helping countries sanctions proof themselves? Still using dollars, just not clearing systems hosted in the EU.
  
  Yes. That's how Russia and China makes payments with one another despite sanctions. If sanctions ever occur it can be a good method of payment.
  Russia is willing to accumulate Yuan via exports. China is willing to accumulate Russian goods and willing to supply Yuan.
  For countries which have trade deficits with China, Eg India. India can buy from China the amount receives from China using Yuan but not any more than that.
  So, if India exports to China ¥9B worth of goods it'll have ¥9B in its account which it can use to settle in Yuan using CIPS. CIPS will eliminate settlement of this in Dollars, since a significant portion of exports from India to China are paid for in Dollars by China, not Yuan. That can be eliminated.
  But given India imports much more than it exports, it imports ~ ¥77B worth of Chinese goods and exports ~ ¥9B, India will have to take the Dollars, Euros etc it obtains from other countries, take it to forex markets (or PBOC) and get equivalent amount of Yuan credited in an Indian Commercial Bank's account in CIPS system. The ultimate settlement can be done in Yuan, but the conversion is there which relies on Western financial system.
  All the transactions done under CIPS are hidden from West. But if India is sanctioned by the US/West, then it cannot accumulate Dollars, Euros and its trade deficit with China will collapse. India can then use CIPS to settle imports using Yuan whatever it earns from abroad (Eg through secret dollar, euro accounts, intermediate countries like UAE, commodities).

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