I am Lithuanian; Lithuania<->Taiwan<->PRC conflict is frequently a topic of discussion these days among my peers.
My position, shared by a few others, is that this is the next best thing that happened in Lithuania after leaving USSR: the first being joining NATO and EU in 2004.
Everyone in the world can (and almost everyone do) endorse PRC. "You won't get fired for picking IBM/Oracle/PRC". While very few countries have the guts and the internal political structure that allows opening a Taiwanese representative office. Lithuania shows that it prefers dealing with a country that takes the human rights into account; being the first one "in the party" to do so bring us significant advantages. Both Taiwanese investments and Lithuanian exports to Taiwan are picking up pace.
This will hurt us in the short-term, sure. It already does: packages(/containers) from PRC are delayed or cancelled, invoices are not being paid, we are losing business there. In the long term, if we don't change our mind (not impossible), I think this is for the better.
Everyone was outraged, Macron had his martial face to say that we will not tolerate this (I voted for Macron, to be clear). What happened? Exactly nothing. And this is against a clown regime backed by Russia who has vital interests in Europe. We dod not have the power to force Putin to do anything.
We are dependent on China like we are dependent on the US. Each of these countries will fuck us up the moment we get out of line (US did it many times already - the latest being the Australian submarines, but also our interests in Iran (the US said: either you move away from Iran or you will have problems. We asked the EU for help and eventually moved away as instructed)).
So our Napoleonian idea of a great country that everyone fears is just in th ehead of some people.
If we wanted to weight whatever, EU would need to be united. This is not happening with the current EU structure.
> the latest being the Australian submarines, but also our interests in Iran
Good point.
I think Europe is the only continent that can oppose to colonialistic empires like US and China, but needs to have a single voice, France, Germany, Spain, Italy etc. alone are insignificant in the scenario.
The problem is that each of th eEU countries is a country. With its own interests, culture, history.
We are eons from a country such as the USA, which highlights how federal it is. It is still one country, with one president, one army etc.
We (in the EU) are countries that love or hate other for over 1000 years. Some of the dislike is deep, some is surprisingly different now (France and Germany for instance, forever enemies and now counties that are really close to each other thanks to the post-war efforts).
But when it comes to money and politics, we are often each for its own.
it's unlikely to be the norm, most people are most likely consider themselves to be a part of the group that they hear most about from their favorite source(like tv host or YouTuber)
do you think for most people its a "group of Europeans"
France weighs very heavily. With Germany, they led the move earlier this year for the investment deal with China. The decision was made to become reliant on China, and the pandemic significantly worsened this dependency because China's faster recovery essentially mitigated the economic effect of the pandemic.
But it was a choice. Germany's politics appears to have been totally compromised at the highest level by Russia and China (Scholz seems to have been hand-picked by China, his positions on China couldn't be more worrying regardless of what he has said in the past month). France is moving in the same direction, although it is hard to separate this from the profound weakness of Macron.
There is no equivalence with the US either. The French position (and German) position on Iran makes no sense, it is the equivalent of: pretend the problem doesn't exist, and it won't exist (again, with policy being led by business interests). The interests of the US overlap totally with the EU, the US has been funding European defence for decades to the tune of tens of trillions but, of course, France and Germany will continue to nuzzle up to Iran, China, and Russia because they waved their chequebook in front of exporters in economically weak regions.
The only saving grace has been the EU which has effectively counterbalanced France and Germany in these areas (they stopped the investment deal with China). But, again, the policy positions of France and Germany are incomprehensible. It is not that France is insignificant but that their policy is totally at odds with the US and the EU. The reason they aren't opposing China is because there is a strong desire to support China.
> The French position (and German) position on Iran makes no sense, it is the equivalent of: pretend the problem doesn't exist, and it won't exist (again, with policy being led by business interests).
We had contracts in Iran and had to break them because US warned of retaliation. We are weaker and had to back off.
The US obsession with Iran (driven by religious organizations), instead of staying with the US, was broadcasted to all countries which had to show their vassal position.
We did not like it, as you can imagine.
> The interests of the US overlap totally with the EU,
in Iran?
> the US has been funding European defence for decades to the tune of tens of trillions but, of course, France and Germany will continue to nuzzle up to Iran, China, and Russia because they waved their chequebook in front of exporters in economically weak regions.
Ah - here you are right. And the normal reaction of the US should have been "since you support our enemy, we are withdrawing from NATO and the money we pour into Europe". But then so many US military companies would loose contracts (less production) so this is obviously not the right thing to do.
The US is a bully, and proud to be one. We do not like to be bullied but are the small child in th eplayground so we suffer in silence, hoping that oone day we will be able to respond (a day that will not come)
adding to your metaphor, US is afraid that China that has been both a bully and a weaker bullied child, now has grown up almost to the point where they can be the biggest bully around. The same applies to Iran with their nuclear program.
EU itself is not really a bully, but most EU members are, and always were.
So Isn't it's a smart thing to do for EU to make other bullies to fight each other?
No. France's traditional stance is more independent non-aligned and it is in France's interest to maintain decent working relations with all sides.
France was the first Western country to recognise the PRC, for instance. This was realpolitik and hopefully that will continue.
Before every action we need to ask yourself what we want to achieve and whether that is actually achievable. This requires knowledge of other countries' history, culture, and politics. Rash, emotional moves are rarely productive. Historically France and other Western powers have been aggressors towards China (which partly caused the reaction that led to the current Chinese regime). The reality is that a country like France is in no position to pressure China and rash action against China would help the Chinese government at home by allowing them to invoke history.
Its incorrect to call opening an office for Taiwan a "rash, emotional move". It's a simple ackowledgement of the way things already are (two nations who talk and negotiate with each other) and helps Taiwan and France build their relationship.
The concern is that the CCP will have a rash, emotional response (as they did with Lithuania) because they imagine they can set the terms for any Taiwan-related business.
These frequent emotional outbursts have cost the CCP so much political capital, which means countries like France will reconsider their relationship.
France, like everyone else, has all the communications channels it needs with Taiwan, and does business with Taiwan as it sees fit, but I was not specifically referring to that but rather to closing the embassy in China and other actions against China.
> Its incorrect to call opening an office for Taiwan a "rash, emotional move"
> but I was not specifically referring to that but rather to closing the embassy in China and other actions against China
Could you clarify what other actions did Lithuania take against China? This is the timeline afaik [0]:
- In August 2021, the ROC opened its representative office in Vilnius under the name of "Taiwanese"
- In response, the PRC recalled its ambassador in Vilnius, Shen Zhifei, and demanded that Lithuania recall its ambassador in Beijing, Diana Mickevičienė.
- On 3 December 2021, Lithuania reported that in an escalation of the diplomatic spat over relations with Taiwan, China had stopped all imports from the Baltic state. It said Beijing has delisted Lithuania as a country of origin, preventing items from clearing customs, and was rejecting all import applications
- As a result of the conflict China pressured Continental AG and other international companies to stop doing business with Lithuania.[7] The spat spilled over to the rest of the EU when China banned the import of goods which contained Lithuanian parts potentially disrupting integrated supply chains in the common market.
^ not included in the timeline: internal propaganda to smear Lithuania as a nation once the PRC deemed the tiny country a threat for allowing ROC to open a representative office under the name "Taiwanese" in its capital
Don't forget, there are hundreds of thousands of people employed by China to manipulate public opinion about China online.
Looking at the comment history of the person you responded to, they post pro-China stuff a lot. This is probably not a conversation being had in good faith by two disinterested parties. You're responding to a member of the 50 cent army.
They're everywhere online now. Some subtle, some not so subtle. But whenever I see a pro-China poster who doesn't really give any evidence to back up what they're saying, and they just spew pro-China apologist rhetoric, I become very suspicious.
You can't post like this to HN—it's egregiously against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules in the future, we'd be grateful. Don't miss this one:
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Participating in trade with the PRC requires action to support the PRC through domestic censorship and diplomatic support on issues the PRC cares about (Taiwan).
France has a choice in whether they choose to support the PRC or not - this requires stepping on red lines and facing the consequences.
There is no domestic censorship in France on China-related topics. As I wrote before France chose a long time ago to switch from ROC/Taiwan to PRC in terms of diplomatic recognition because that was the pragmatic and realistic thing to do for France.
France trades with China because it is in its interest to do so, not because of any 'support' for China.
Nobody asks France or Germany to stop trading with China. But both countries should use more of their power to support a fellow democracy that is under threat.
That’s impossible to prove, because not talking about it intentionally is self censorship, but by definition it wouldn’t be talked about so there’s no way of knowing.
While I generally think the EU should have a deeper relationship with Taiwan, I disagree with your interpretation of what happened here. Lithuania has weak trade relations with the PRC in the first place, and got basically paid by the US to provoke the PRC. The EU having no coordinated foreign policy, but being supposed to show solidarity is ill equipped to react to a member state just going of the rails, and this now basically forces the hands of the other members.
This sets a dangerous precedent: A member state shouldn't be able to start shit and then hide behind the others, it is a perversion of the idea of solidarity. If the rest of the EU shows major Support for Lithuania now, it will signal that small countries can dictate policy through stunts like these.
It also once again shows that the US really loves to manipulate supposed allies if it benefits them, and that the transatlantic partnership must be fundamentally redefined.
This occured after the embassy opening, one could argue that the spat with China attracted US investments.
Lithuania took a step in the right direction, something other EU states (Germany in particular) are afraid to do because it will affect their trade with China. Taiwan is an independent country, regardless of what the PRC thinks or wants others to think.
1) a transaction between the US and Lithuania occurred in which Lithuania agrees to provoke PRC.
2) Lithuania provokes PRC (presumably the act involves the embassy opening).
However, the article you linked publicizes the U.S. trade support which seems to have occurred after (2). The article you linked does not permit one to draw the causal inference that (1)->(2)
Fun fact, Ubiquiti started here (it’s not a Lithuanian company though). Another big one that’s founded and manufactures all it’s stuff in Lithuania is Teltonika. They make telecommunications equipment (mostly LTE based wireless modems).
Virpil ships from Lithuania but I believe is manufactured in Belarus. They make gloriously high quality flight sim gear, if you're into that: https://virpil-controls.eu
Its interesting to see which countries are standing up to China.
Particularly in the West where we like to grandstand over human rights (only up to the point where there is any kind of financial impact).
I agree.. I wish more countries would take a stand like this. But my own country (the Netherlands) are all about commerce and big business, they don't care about ideology.
I am also Lithuanian. I totally disagree with Your position and see no justification why this is good for us.
You seem to be naive and ideological. We didn't do a lot of business with Taiwan previously, sure. But it's very small comparing to the amount of business we are losing to China. I don't know if You have noticed the rising prices of products in our country much faster than wages. It took 1-2 months to get a shipping container from China 6months ago. Now it takes 3-5 months. Prices are going up. Taking a political stance against China hurts our businesses, increases prices to us all. With the marginal benefit of a pat on the back from ideological people
I think we should not be overly naive and idealistic when it comes to international relations. A country's course of action is weighted in order to advance national interests.
In the context of tensions with Russia and Belarus it seems likely that Lithuania is getting something out of its stance against China from the US.
The whole west depends on cheap labor and cheap resources that doesn't fit with human rights and economic interdependence prevents wars.
Lithuania is small so the impact of a chinese boycott could be compensated by other countries, a full trade war has lot more impact, short term and long term.
You understimate the chaos that then comes into being.
One component of this seems to be that by moving online we've lost access to the labels on goods. In a store, you can usually just look at the "made in <X>" label printed on the box. On amazon, that information is pretty much never available.
Possibly this is partially because they're commingling inventory made in different places, but I think a lot of it's just that amazon doesn't see any reason to force people to list that.
I once asked a person working on a large music instrument website why products "Made in USA" or "Made in [European Country]" were labeled as such, but the ones made in other countries aren't, and the answer was pretty simple: they A/B tested it, but "Made in China" or even "Made in [Asian Country]" drives people away. Japan and Korea have a good reputation for instruments, though.
Best observed while grocery shopping in chinatowns or dense Asian marketplaces. I'd say 95% of canned and packaged products stocked are imports from China.
It's impossible to do that for larger countries, cooperation with China is the only way. Large economies are too tightly coupled to just cut China off. It would take a decade or two.
Moral questions aside (as everyone here seems to focus on it), the people are split into roughly three camps:
- Anti-vaxers: hate anything government because Vax-Pass, including the China oriented diplomacy
- Libtards: love anything government and worship the leader of the main party. They celebrate this and openly bash China because their Leader said that it is good
- Non-involved people - worry about the economic consequences to businesses and people's lives. Most of them would have a hard time finding Taiwan (probably even China) on a blank map.
In my opinion:
Our Minister of Foreign Affairs went into this without really understanding what it would mean to the CCP and what possible counter-actions they can take. Lithuania was hit more than the politicians expected and we are, essentially, alone in this fight (save for endorsements and pats on the back). I guess that we will be in a pretty rough spot in short-term, while mid/long term can go either way depending on how the western powers and Taiwan will act.
The GP definitely shouldn't have included that provocation. But your comment did something worse: you singled out the provocation and reacted purely to that. That's blowing on the flames, and users correctly flagged it.
What we want HN users to do is leave provocations where they find them, and respond/build on the most interesting things in a comment/article/topic instead. We even promoted this to the official guidelines recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article and rush to the thread to complain about it. Find something interesting to comment about instead.
>you singled out the provocation and reacted purely to that.
Well I was actually trying to be constructive "it sounds like you might have some meaningful insight" but fair enough.
Some feedback: The problem with reacting to the most "interesting" part is that the rest of the comment is tainted by the obvious bias (and lack of maturity) presented. The whole thing comes off as bad faith by the commenter so engaging such a person thoughtfully feels like encouraging the behaviour.
Having said that, I realize the intent of the rule is to prevent escalation or amplification of such distractions. Next time I will flag and move on.
Thanks for the heads up and all you do for this community. Happy Holidays.
I think the right response to these provocations is to assist Taiwan in protecting itself. Essentially we should reverse the betrayal of Taiwan by Nixon in 1972, when he withdrew the US nuclear presence there. This time, to protect from changing political winds, the nukes should be under the control of Taiwan.
That is part of what China claims they do. There has been numerous incidents where their red lines had been crossed and no action was taken except stern words.
Taiwan could likely develop their own native nuclear weapons in a matter of months, if they chose to. They have a mature nuclear industry with several reactors, and likely already have plans for nuclear weapons drawn up.
China could accuse Taiwan of developing nuclear weapons today, saying their spies uncovered the plot. Would you, I or anybody else be able to refute it? Would our doubt matter? And if Taiwan really did start manufacturing nuclear bombs and China was telling the truth about it, would you, I or others in the West believe them? The 'actual validity' of a casus belli has never really counted for much.
Of course there is. Of course the West would still try to dispute it, but just like how the world saw through WMDs in Iraq if present with adequate evidence they would see through a thin denial.
>Yeah, that's what I just said.
In that case I don't see how we disagree.
Of course it does matter. The invalidity is why the entire world was opposed to the US doing so. If the US wasn't in such a dominant economic and strategic position at the time it would have had to pay a much larger price.
My sub-point is America would deny the validity of China's invasion of Taiwan regardless of whether China's accusations against Taiwan were accurate or not, meaning the accuracy of such accusations isn't relevant. The outcome is the same. People in the EU might roll their eyes and say "ackshully china is right and taiwan really is making nuclear weapons", just as they once rolled their eyes at America's bogus claims about Iraq, but what would/did that change? A fat lot of nothing.
But my main point is that if Taiwan wants nuclear weapons they can make their own, so there is no sense in America giving nuclear weapons to Taiwan. And if America did, that would provide China with 'valid' casus belli anyway. I think PRC spies would be no less aware of plans to import nuclear weapons than plans to make them.
If China would discover they are developing nuclear weapon they may choose to attack.
There is a rumor that Taiwan has rockets that are targeting Three Gorges Dam. In case of an invasion they may choose to destroy them which would result in millions of deaths of deaths. Nuclear weapons not needed.
One reason why China didnt protest a lot about US invasion to Iraq during Bush era is because they shared the WMD casus belli. Would be nice if China can use the same casus belli for the unification.
Taiwan is completely infiltrated by China. As soon as this plan is seriously discussed, China will invade Taiwan, and look like the good guys for 80% of the world.
I feel it amused that people here are discussing what and how Lithuania and the west can do to 'confront' China, but everyone in east Asia knows that before the next Taiwan election in 2024, China will do something to achieve some sort of reunification, either by forcing the Taiwanese government back to the old One-China promise (which is unlikely because the pro-China KMT lost power long ago) or by toppling the pro-independence DPP government.
And you people are seriously discussing the possibility that Taiwan goes nuclear, but it was in the KMT era after China had the bomb, Taiwan was considering building its own nuclear weapon, only to be quickly removed by the US. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to realize that the US has been selling Taiwan expensive out-of-date weapons, which is only logical if the US doesn't want Taiwan to defend itself. Taiwanese people know that, ever since the 70s when Taiwan was kicked off the UN and the US did nothing!
Do you guys know the real sentiment in Taiwan? They are more like, "F*k the US, they treat us like pawns. F*k the west, they would give us anything but real support! F*k the government, they got us in such a bad position. F*k China, they want to annex us. F*k the 20% Taiwanese, they do business with China, in China, for China!"
I'm curious how you know the real sentiment in Taiwan, and also how you arrived at the conclusion that everyone in east Asia knows China will attempt unification before the next election? I live in Taiwan, and I've never met anyone that said fuck the U.S. for not offering real support. I've heard people acknowledge that the U.S. doesn't sell Taiwan the latest defense tech, but are also aware that Taiwan is a rich country and can afford to pay for its own defense. The U.S. shouldn't discourage Taiwan from developing its own capabilities.
As for invasion within the next two years, I suppose none but some inner circle in China really knows, but that it's a guaranteed fact is not a consensus belief here. If it was true, people and money would be pouring out of Taiwan. From the outside, Taiwan sounds like a besieged island expecting incoming missiles any moment, but life is typical here. People are concerned with real estate prices, getting a promotion at work, construction noise in the neighborhood, climate change, etc. You'd think a place with such grim prospects about the future wouldn't have time to worry about animal welfare or environmentalism. However, any given weekend you can find thousands of volunteers going to clean up litter on beaches, or working in animal shelters.
Do you watch Taiwanese political talk show? Basically guests from both sides in the shows agree that the next election is going to be important. They do openly expressed their anger over the position of the Biden administration. At least for some people across the straits (maybe we can add some people in Japan and Singapore) they are expecting something big to happen between the end of the winter olympics and the 2024 election.
In Taiwan you see Taiwan is not grim, for the geopolitics people they are predicting big change, but from the outside it appears that Taiwan is doomed. This, if you think about it, is really the biggest problem for the DPP government: ordinary Taiwanese people do not really care if they are reunified, while some learned people are worried, and the US can do nothing. The day after the US fled Afghanistan, high rank government officials told the press that "we are not Afghanistan". Yes, no other countries want to occupy Kabul except for the yankees.
And why would the economics be bad if China finally annex Taiwan? Cash from China has been flowing into Taiwan for 40 years, and the rich in Taiwan knows that all too well. Internationally sanction? Do you think who in the world is in bad need of Chinese products now? Taiwanese cannot even count on their leaders. Legislators and local government leaders have always been able to send someone (or in person) to visit their family graves in China and the Chinese government permits it. In Chinese culture, that speaks more than their public speeches.
> Basically guests from both sides in the shows agree that the next election is going to be important
Every election in every country at any time is the most important decision we've ever faced, according to political analysts. Talking heads isn't a great way to gauge popular sentiment. I won't be surprised if _something_ happens, and I don't really know what people in Japan or Singapore think, but at least here, I would expect the atmosphere to be much darker if people were expecting an invasion by 2024.
> ordinary Taiwanese people do not really care if they are reunified
Ordinary Taiwanese care immensely, and that is reflected in the strong support for DDP. Not even KMT are indifferent towards unification, they're just pro-status quo, and they still can't catch a break lately.
> would the economics be bad if China finally annex Taiwan?
The per-capita GDP in Taiwan is ~$26k, while in China it's only $10k. If there was a successful unification, it's unlikely that Taiwan would be permitted to remain twice as rich as the rest of China. TSCM and other tech would most likely be relocated to Shenzhen, just like we're seeing finance get stripped out of Hong Kong. I can't see any circumstance under which Taiwanese people would be better off.
> Cash from China has been flowing into Taiwan for 40 years
This is true. Chinese money has flowed into Taiwan in an attempt to take it by economics rather than force. But, there are now laws restricting Chinese ownership of domestic entities. It's no secret that tons of the money in Taiwan was made using labor in China. Taiwan was a bridge between western markets and brands, and Chinese labor for a long time. Everything from Foxconn to Nike shoes. Most of those factories were opened using Taiwanese capital and management with mainland labor. No idea how all of that will unwind. Fortunately, Chinese labor isn't as cheap as it used to be.
I find it satisfying that while the so-called super powers routinely either turn a blind eye or pay lip service or worse, bend over backwards to accommodate China's bullying behaviour, of all the mighty countries, Lithuania showed some spine (irrespective of whether the reasons were based on principles or something else).
China has already started pressuring companies with manufacturing in China such as Continental, that they should get out of Lithuania or risk losing access to the Chinese market.
This just goes to show one thing: western companies have to leave the Chinese market and all its money on the table. Unless you are ready to live under constant threat of political pressure/blackmail, risk being spied on, forced to censorship or forced to corruption, you can’t operate there (and obviously several other countries).
The correct move for both companies and corporations is to be open from the beginning. Open about what you think about Taiwan, about Chinese politics and so on. If that leaves you in the cold - at least you aren’t already neck deep in investment in China.
I don’t pity corporations that invest in China only to find themselves blackmailed into (say) having their maps app show Taiwan as a part of China. I wish more companies had the moral backbone to say “we’re going to annoy China by showing the correct world map starting in may, and if you don’t agree you should sell your stock now”.
China can get away with their diplomatic isolation of Taiwan due to the large economic power imbalance between the two.
We never saw this with North /South Korea, nor West/East Germany. Countries recognized both as sovereign. There was no "Korean Seoul" or "German Bonn" competing at the Olympics, etc.
If anything, West Germany or South Korea could've done what China is doing now but they chose not to.
> There was no "Korean Seoul" or "German Bonn" competing at the Olympics, etc.
Are you aware that both China and Taiwan claim to be the legal government of both countries? Because that's completely different from Germany or Korea, where the states recognized each other.
The two Koreas also claim to be the government of the entire Korean Peninsula as well. Both countries have their "Reunification Ministry" There have been meetings between the two sides, but that's a far cry from diplomatic recognition.
They signed an agreement in the early 70ies ("Grundlagenvertrag") outlining their relationships and had mutual defacto-embassies ("Ständige Vertretung") and called the heads of those ambassadors (at least the GDR did, I believe the FRG did not, but they were ambassadors for all intents and purposes).
That does not sound hugely different from China and Taiwan, which, despite the bluster, also de facto recognize each other in all sorts of ways like having quasi-diplomatic representatives, issuing travel documents to each other's citizens, etc.
Having embassies, recognizing the other side's sovereignty and not considering them a rebellious province of your own state sounds very different from the China/Taiwan situation to me.
Germany's two halves treated each other as neighbors and did not consider the other side an opponent in a war that's temporarily paused (after the initial conflict, but that was mostly the Soviets trying to take Berlin by starving the population). In case you're wondering: the Berlin Wall does not suggest differently, it was meant to stop people from fleeing the socialist East Germany ("Republikflucht", literally flight from the republic, was a crime in the GDR, and they killed quite a few that sought freedom from the "worker's paradise"), it was never meant to keep invaders out.
My take on the whole China issue is this: no country actually cares about humans rights or any of that stuff but only about their national self interests and that most people do not actually care about humans rights, but only about their own personal self interests.
China is a rising power in the world and wants to at least be the primary power in its region (maybe the world, who knows), and the USA as the primary power in the world and the region wants to keep its position. The US and China also have a symbiotic relationship, China would not be able to be in the position it is today if not for American purchases, and Americans would not have the quality of life they currently enjoy if they did not have Chinese manufacturing.
Both countries know they cannot be openly hostile to each-other without huge ramifications so they use proxy conflicts to try to secretly bludgeon each other and propagandize their own populations. Americans can propagandize their population with HK, Taiwan, concentration camps, no freedom and Chinese can propagandize their population with drone strikes, Century of humiliation, US Imperialism... Nobody, except the misled population (who are being propagandized) or extremely dim-witted subsets of elites (who are doing the propaganda, and go high of their own supply so to say) actually care about these issues.
I do not think this will be as hot as the last cold war since the US and China are way more interdependent than the US and the USSR and the way to make sure that this semi-cold war will not turn into a hot war is to not trying to break the interdependence, but to strengthen it.
>Nobody, except the misled population (who are being propagandized) or extremely dim-witted subsets of elites (who are doing the propaganda, and go high of their own supply so to say) actually care about these issues.
IMO, this is a much bigger problem for Western nations. They want to pressure Hollywood and the NBA to take a stand against China, but that is exactly what China wants. They don't get any economic value from importing entertainment, so they would much rather that money circulate domestically. This is exactly what happened in with H&M and Nike when they started to look into Xinjiang forced labor. China had an excuse to encourage a consumer boycott, but they happily continued to manufacture for them, widening our trade deficit.
There is a simple solution. If most of western world allowed Taiwan embassies China would have to relent. They can't afford having entire western world stand against them.
Unfortunately, that would require western nations to agree on something.
Nah, it would require them to put principles over the profit of a few constituents. China's geopolitical strategy is brilliant. They see that their adversaries in democratic western countries are beholden to the quarterly profits of a handful of corporations. China, unlike any of the Western nations, WILL take a stand on their principles over profit (At least they seem to, but more on that in a second.) So, they've really effectively backdoored our politicians. If US companies don't comply with their demands, they just pull their rights to do business in China. When that's worth like $100-150 million annually, the corporations care, and so the politicians care.
Seems like nobody in these corporations or in politics has a spine anymore and is willing to say, "Yeah, I understand, but No, and fuck you for even asking."
Now all that said, I think if they saw some real unified push-back Xi would drop that shit in a hot second, but for now it comes at very little cost.
To play devils advocate to prevent this place from turning into an echo chamber:
You say "put principles over the profit of a few constituents", and that is a very widely held slogan or catch phrase.
Whose constituents? I, as a constituent, very much like not having a war going on where I could be drafted and sent to die for some people I do not know or really care about. I, as a constituent, very much like not having to pay 5k for a phone or 10k for a computer. I, as a constituent, like the cheap products that trade has allowed me to buy.
Whoes principles? America's manifest destiny principle is to take everything you can take and then fight weaker neighbors to take some more. Is it fair that we, Americans, got to do our dirty work in the past and make our country whole while other countries have to be plagued by a civil war?
The only actual principle that maters when it comes to countries is might makes right. The US was mighty so it could crush the Indians, the Mexicans, the Spanish and take what was "rightfully ours". The US was mighty so it could crush the CSA during the civil war. The US was mighty so they could use the threat of force to protect Taiwanese independence or de facto-independence. The UK was mighty so they could crush China and take HK. Now that China is (questionably? maybe?) mighty, they want to take back HK, they want to take over Taiwan. Now when other countries are mighty, the rules of the game suddenly change so that it is no longer might makes right but human rights and democracy and peace and sham pretending about principles?
I like human rights and I would generally support people being free (whatever that means), but is it not hard to see the hypocrisy in it all? Where were the principles when we beat up the Indians and Mexicans and grabbed up all of California? Where were the principles when we beat up all the LATAM countries who tried to have democratic elections. Where were the principles when we drone striked every adult man and called them all combatants since they were within the age range?
Exactly, Whatever factions there maybe in the CCP, externally they project a coherent policy, which is not possible in democratic countries.
>>> So, they've really effectively backdoored our politicians.
Not just politicians, they have backdoored hollywood, wallstreet everyone of em.
They will suck up to the CCP and pander to any of their demands
> China, unlike any of the Western nations, WILL take a stand on their principles over profit
Surely that's a joke, right? China, which still has the audacity to call itself a "Communist" nation, which is basically much closer to a Fascist system, with their authoritarian and state-directed control of capitalism?
China has one primary governing principle, which is to keep the CCP in power. Their primary way of doing that has been ensuring that bargain of "we get 8-10% annual growth, the populace is happy enough not to revolt", but they've also been phenomenally successful in using the Internet to stoke nationalism and Xi's personality cult.
The principle does not have to be ethical or moral or consistent to a philosophy. What OP saying is china does the ability (and uses it) to make unpopular decisions both to Chinese corporations or people unlike other politicians who are beholden to either voters or corporations.
The kind of censure that Jack Ma had for example would be impossible to imagine to say Elon Musk in the US .
OP of the subject comment here: Yes, this is the correct interpretation. I wasn't trying to argue that China's principles are superior, let alone even ethical.
You can be both lawful and evil character, at the same time, as any D&D player will tell you.
Sadly, people misunderstand those two basic concepts.
Autocratic systems are better in some ways. For example, they can be very efficient. CCP says something and it is done. Is it good/right? It is completely different topic.
When a “too big to fail” company misbehaves, China doesn’t bail it out, they nationalize the useful parts, send the rest to bankruptcy, and jail the responsible executives.
We’re talking past each other a bit, but this is evidence of principle driven behavior rather than government capture by the wealthy like we have in the west.
The US doesn't do free bailouts either, we nationalized GM and gave banks loans that we made a profit on. People misread this and just started claiming it was free money.
Airline bailouts last year were good because they saved subcontractors and union contracts.
We're actually in agreement I think. I think I just wasn't sufficiently clear what I meant by "principles". I am not in any way condoning China's national principles, nor did I mean to even suggest they were ethical. (My personal belief there is quite the antithesis.) ....but rather that they are willing to play hardball even if it harms Chinese companies over the issues they care about as a nation. Many of those principles are humanitarian disasters, but that's not the point.
>> China, unlike any of the Western nations, WILL take a stand on their principles over profit
> Surely that's a joke, right?
Nah, it's just an obvious truth.
> China, which still has the audacity to call itself a "Communist" nation, which is basically much closer to a Fascist system, with their authoritarian and state-directed control of capitalism?
That's pretty much what "communism" worked out to in the Soviet Union -- well, in the entire Warsaw Pact -- too. So in practice, that's pretty much what "communism" means nowadays.
> China has one primary governing principle, which is to keep the CCP in power.
Yup, exactly.
And they sure do stand by that principle, don't they?
A state-directed control of capitalism, of which the façade will be dropped immediately if their ironclad control of the political will is threatened for a second. They have punished huge companies for placing profit over human life, because it threatens "communist values". In my opinion that is placing principles over profit. Despite these principles being what they are. That is not a value judgment of China, simply a statement that they are not willing to throw away a percentage point of authoritarian control for a few more bucks.
> China has one primary governing principle, which is to keep the CCP in power.
Yes, which they place above profit motive. It seems like you agree with above
It's strange to claim US companies all put profit over everything when they're not nearly dynamic enough to do that. Why do mattress companies sell mattresses instead of cocaine? That'd be more profitable.
I think you greatly underestimates what Taiwan means to China. People in the west are quick to dismiss any claims by China on Taiwan as having any legitimacy, viewing it purely as expansionism. But regardless of whether the western view of that is right (or ought to be right), the Chinese don't view it that way: they view it as a sovereignty issue, as an unfinished part of the Chinese civil war, and as part of the US' efforts to militarily contain China. Taiwan is a strategic location on which the US's "first island chain" depends — China's entire life depends on it.
As such, China would rather fight the entire western world than to let Taiwan go. They would rather destroy all their relationships with the west than to let Taiwan go. It doesn't matter whether they will actually win or not — they are prepared to, and that's what we don't understand (or for some people: don't want to understand).
Exactly. Moreover, countries that support Taiwan don't do it to liberate "poor Taiwanese people from bad China's tyranny". Instead, they will use that as an excuse to back actions that support their own national interests. Exactly like what China does. Personally I understand everyone's point of view in this game, yet I wish Taiwanese people could be left alone to live as they wish. What's certain is that it's a more complicated situation that people tend to oversimplify, as usual.
> China would rather fight the entire western world than to let Taiwan go.
They already do. But now they do it via trade wars, strongly worded letters, Olympic boycotts. They ensure that the fight is China vs the enemy of the day (Today Lithuania). It’s unbalanced.
The “fight” vs the whole world wouldn’t be a hot war. It would be a more balanced diplomatic and economic conflict where China can’t bully one state at a time.
In diplomacy "give them hell" is usually not the right answer. Closing all Chinese embassies will just leave a black hole with regards to intelligence.
Politics is what it is, and the diplomats role is most often not to combat, but to ease communication.
For the same reason the UN may often seem toothless and not able to execute. But it is just a reflection of world politics. It is hard sometimes.
The precursor to UN was the League of Nations. And they were much better at condemning. Germany. That didnt work out much better.
I believe the right answer lies at home. As other commenters have said, it doesn't help things that domestic corporations fall over themselves to appease the whims of the CCP for fear of losing access to [markets / cheap manufacturing / etc]. And those corporations have the loudest lobbying voice. Seeing as this is just one case of the kinds of ills that corporate lobbying brings about, I think we should try to combat that in order to buy (pun not intended) our political class some more freedom of motion in terms of standing up to China.
What needs to happen is for every countries that adopts the One China Policy [1] to drop that policy and establish formal recognition of Taiwan.
However, this will be tougher than other countries that are newly formed like Kosovo. China will surely use its influence to make sure it won't happened.
Or keep the "One China Policy", but switch which China that is. Oh, I see that's called the "One-China principle"... Good -- it sounds so similar, politicians the world over can start saying they stand by the One-China principle like they've always done, and most people won't even notice the difference.
That is how it was from 1949 to 1971 right? Didn't work out that well for China or the rest of the world, I don't think playing word games with the PRC is going to do much.
Most western nations would probably accept a declaration of independence from Taiwan. The only issue western countries currently have with Taiwan is it's claim for mainland china.
Obviously they don't want to be careless, since China could try to invade them if they did that. So they would need quite some military backup from USA and Japan to make China accept their defeat.
Let's be clear, visas are handled separately because they are separate countries.
Maps are just political theatre. The vintage ROC map you are referring to also includes Mongolia and parts of Russia (Chinese territories that Mao/CCP ceded), but no one in Taiwan is seriously making those claims. Note the CCP lays claim over the SCS based on an old 9-dashed map made by the ROC.
Look I’m saying I don’t have to care and its easy to conform without actually considering it bending the knee, because its hilarious.
I get that the current head of state and majority party in the ROC doesnt extend its territorial claims beyond the island they are on. There are some people that hold on to the prior claims.
The rest of us really need to just build additional pylons so we don't have any manufacturing consequences when that matter is resolved. Because thats the only reason we care right now (aside from how brutal the reintegration will be).
Many Taiwanese would love to throw off the legacy of the ROC completely (territorial claims, claims on mainland China, etc...), but to do so would be an act of ultimate war as far the PRC is concerned.
Sure we can. It may hurt a lot at first but we'll get over it. Think about how hard it was to rebuild after WW2. This would be nowhere near that difficult since none of the west is a bombed-out ruin today and all of the west is made up of advanced economies with highly educated populations. Furthermore, there are developing countries (such as Vietnam) that are going full-steam-ahead with ramping up production, especially in heavy industry.
The ones who can't afford to be without China's manufacturing are big tech companies like Apple. Perhaps they will take a huge hit but it's hard to imagine them going out of business. I remember the Apple of the mid 90's and how close they came to going out of business. Now, with the enormous cash hoard and other capital they've accumulated, I can easily imagine them surviving for many years even if they were cut off completely from all their manufacturing in China.
The sole reason USA leapfrogged the rest of the developed world economically after WW2 was because they didn't have to rebuild everything from scratch.
Cutting off all reliance on China would be economic suicide for any individual nation unless every one mutually agrees on it. Best of luck getting that to happen.
> The sole reason USA leapfrogged the rest of the developed world economically after WW2 was because they didn't have to rebuild everything from scratch.
It's possible, but the US and much of the western world would have to tolerate a decade or so of severely diminished standard of living when judged by consumption standards. The country as a whole would also have to work a lot harder and for more years.
In the past I would have said "there's no way that we would tolerate that," but for the last two years we have seen substantially diminished standard of living already due to [redacted], the monetary response to [redacted], and the policy response to [redacted], but now that we've seen that it is conceivable that the US would go a more austere route now. I also have seen now that no one in our leadership believes in anything or has any principles, so radical shifts really are possible.
With Vietnam, a lot of its recent development is related to expansion of Chinese foreign direct investment with substantial percentage increases every year in recent years. A lot of the notions about Vietnamese hostility to China and Chinese business is out of date and becoming more out of date.
There's virtually no US industry that is not heavily dependent on Chinese industry for refined materials, intermediate goods, and consumer goods. A lot of substitution could conceivably happen at higher prices, but really the way that we get out of it is defaulting on the government's medical obligations to the boomers and rededicating the money that was slated to giving them their to-the-grave care to industrial redevelopment.
The endgame is robotic replacement for skilled labor.
The pandemic has forced technology companies to push harder on communication products and development of virtual places.
Severely diminished trade with China would require an acceleration in manufacturing technology on a scale that could only be borne out of necessity.
Recognizing that robotics technology is orders of magnitude more challenging than an improved Zoom interface, It won’t come easy. But the demand will be there and so would be the creativity to overcome the challenges.
Sure that will be a lot of it. Robots also require lots and lots of both skilled and unskilled labor to maintain. Christopher Mims has a great pop business book out this year about the state of automation in logistics and industry. One of the emphases he makes is which things are being automated now and what types of jobs for people that automation creates at multiple skill levels and social classes.
I think when it comes to articulating this to the public and to the government, I would never say "robots are replacing all skilled labor," because that would predispose the legislator or the staffers supporting the legislator to think about what they could do to quash it.
> because that would predispose the legislator or the staffers supporting the legislator to think about what they could do to quash it.
Fwiw, I see only a downward trend in the effectiveness of governments larger than cities to contain or regulate technology. What is possible is changing too fast.
> A lot of the notions about Vietnamese hostility to China and Chinese business is out of date and becoming more out of date.
Note that the last major riot against China in Vietnam was way back in 2014. As long as China doesn't do anything aggressive in the SCS, the Vietnamese should come to like China again, however the chances of the former happening are very slim.
You forget the resources the west gets from China, partly China is not only the main source but the only source.
The economy nowadays is much more fragile than back then, the price increase alone would be destructive enough, especially for low-income earners.
I'm actually not sure why this is being downvoted.
I'm not a fan of the heavy dependence on Chinese manufacturing as it comes at huge human rights/ecological costs (in that order), but companies typically care about the bottom line above all else. How the product is made is less important typically than whether or not it __is__ made.
And it's a simple truth that right now a lot of companies are heavily dependent on China for production of goods, and if the US/UK unilaterally were forced to drop Chinese Manufacturing without time to plan, it would be pretty devastating to a lot of businesses.
Please don't misread this as "no action should ever be taken against China", as absolutely that is not my position; moral stands sometimes have a significant cost. Same with changes for a more sustainable future, you might need to have a higher upfront cost than you may want.
That doesn't mean these changes are bad, it just means that there is a non-trivial cost to consider. For me, this is a no brainer, as I like to look more towards the future and have the comfort zone to do so. Many businesses do not have that comfort zone, and regardless of the reason they're in that position, it's a reality for them that losing their chinese suppliers is a deathknell for them.
I'm not trying to propose anything except that I can understand why some businesses are against taking strong stances against Chinese manufacturing; I don't action _shouldn't_ be taken if China is not behaving well, just to be clear. But I can understand where people are coming from if they are opposed to it, as they don't want to bite the hand that feeds so to speak.
Yup, that’s what decoupling is about - gradually shifting production out of China, either to other low-cost producers or back home where robots and AI can do the job cheaply and sufficiently. It’s a prerequisite to ending economic dependence on a totalitarian nation, and their leverage over you.
But I don’t imagine Western nations will ever remove their embassies from China, as OP suggests. Those are useful for both official and backchannel communications, and have no bearing on nation’s leverage over the other.
We = the people, maybe. However, the corporate class has a lot more decision making power over the government in most western nations, and they definitely cannot do without rampant consumerism.
China's economy would crumble a little if it could not sell anything outside anymore. Imagine a few billions of people losing their current level of life in China... a good recipe for regime change.
All that would happen is that the Chinese government would become even more authoritarian and a whole lot of people would be worse off. These fantasies always seem to ignore the human cost.
> All that would happen is that the Chinese government would become even more authoritarian and a whole lot of people would be worse off. These fantasies always seem to ignore the human cost.
Your suggestion is that the rest of the world should play nice with China, and accept an invasion of a free nation (Taiwan) and its people because not doing so would hurt Chinese nationals within China?
Chinese people suffering due to the CCP is bad, certainly. But what's worse is another country (having nothing to do with the CCP) suffering for it.
Not quite as small. Combined EU has the largest economy in the world, is by far the wealthiest region on the planet, possesses a huge & advanced military force and despite decline still has pretty substantial manufacturing capacity. (only reason US tops these rankings is because in EU each metric is tracked separately for each country).
So if EU got its shit together and formulated a coherent unified foreign policy - it would be at the very least on equal terms with both US and China. Hence why everyone (from Putin, to China to even our allies the US) are so invested in breaking EU apart (and even succeeding - the Brexit).
> Combined EU has the largest economy in the world
Unfortunately (?) not. By nominal GDP the US is the largest. By PPP-adjusted GDP China comes first.
> So if EU got its shit together and formulated a coherent unified foreign policy - it would be at the very least on equal terms with both US and China.
The West will not go, and die without one xmass season, and a new Iphone 99.
But Western elites all holding stocks of companies valued in trillions will do.
I requires a healthy conversation in society about this. It will come to a time when people will have to decide what to do with these people.
Potential adversaries now do things which just 15 years ago would've meant a real hot war with the whole Western world by leveraging their financial influence on Western elites, and a threat of bankrupting them.
I hate that China vs US thing comes down to race things, like it’s us white americans vs those bad chinese. Even American companies are now bad since they dare to sell to chinese people and only care about profits but not the fragile white american ego. It’s especially visible on Hacker News, asian bashing is so common but I guess it’s mostly due to demographics (right wing white americans mostly lurk forums like these, just remember how BLM movement was discussed here).
What a farce
i don't pretend to read everything on here but i have yet to see any "asian bashing". i have seen people raise their concerns about the CCP. i hope that's not what you are calling "asian bashing".
You realize many American are from Chinese decent.
Not selling to a citizen of China regardless of race (not all Chinese are from the same race) is much different than not selling to anyone who has a Chinese gene.
The nation state you think China and the US to be doesn't exist.
Voting D, and being very right wind doesn't preclude each other. This election was really an outlier.
As the article already mentions: "While Biden performed well among Asian Americans, the data suggest that Trump didn't lose support with the group, either."
This is the truth the way I see it. I don’t care if I have to go back to coming over a wood stove with a stick if it meant stopping China. The only area of concern I do see is they provide a lot of pharmaceutical with the chemicals they need and they would not be able to produce the drugs they currently make. As for the rest, I’ve lived without a cell phone for decades I would love to go back to suck a time. Is there any other critical industries reliant on China and for what?
You might be content with living like a pre-industrial peasant but how many other Americans or Europeans would be? I would wager very few. People care about their own immediate needs (or what they perceive to be their immediate needs) first and things like China, HK, Taiwan do not even register in their minds. I would bet that most Americans would rather live in a vassal nation than to not have any of the convinces of modern day living, and I quite frankly, would also. When gas gets over 4 dollars a gallon, people get mad. When lumber prices jump by 25%, people get mad. When steel prices jump by 10%, people get mad. How do you think people would react if the next iPhone cost 5k or the BigMac cost 10$, they would vote out the current government and replace them with a new one.
I think you are being a bit too idealistic and have quite honestly drank the Kool-Aid and forgot about the original purpose of why America dislikes China. They are a rising power seeking to disrupt the current one. Good playing American jobs have been cut and Chinese jobs have sprang up in their place. People who had those jobs are now experiencing a reduced quality of life.
I do agree with much you write, I don't think many care as long as their status quo stays the same. I have not drank any Kool-Aid I just find it hard to watch the suffering in China. The changes needed would effect the people at the bottom the most as it would be too expensive to live if the cost of everything went up 25%. I don't know the final answer but I don't think we can turn a blind eye to China's human rights violations forever.
If everyone went back to wooden stoves climate change, deforestation, and air quality would all be much much worse. Remember, degrowth is wrong! Economic growth is the only way to pay for environmentalism.
In the end they could, though it would be a hard transition. The western world pre-Chinese manufacturing was better off than China pre-Chinese manufacturing. But in reality, we're in a relationship neither side wants out of, so we should probably learn to compromise, and that compromises cut both ways.
As a Lithuanian, I have mixed feelings about this. From one side, I applaud my country for standing up to China. However, the rest of the EU seems to not be supporting us in taking strong position against China. This makes it easy for China to retaliate against Lithuania.
The real issue, in my opinion, is that the EU and the rest of the world depend heavily on China for manufacturing goods. There is that great initiative in the EU to invest in the semiconductor industry so that we would manufacture them in the EU.
The situation in our country is very strange. I haven't seen so much chaos. This pro-USA anti-CCP propaganda is hurting us practically a lot.
Current situation in Lithuania:
-We have a big real-estate price boom, because people are putting all of their savings to real-estate, because money is losing value due to USA recently printing ludicrous amounts of money. Housing market is getting crazy.
-Prices of imported products are also going up because of the supply shortages in the market. Let's face it - Europe is dependent on China. A lot. And if only Lithuania take a stance against it, only we are going to take the hits.
-wages are increasing, but not as much as prices are going up.
For me it seems that the only ones that are getting the benefits for these anti-CCP stunts are the politicians and their groupies, who are getting patted on the back by USA, other ideologists and pro-"Lansbergis" (our foreign ministers grandfathers cult) people.
Me and my dad have a small business importing high-quality electrical products from China (yes China sells good products too. We tested them in laboratories). This political tension is not good. We are considering options to import not to Lithuania, but to Poland instead
On Taiwan: the more the Chinese government talks publicy about it, the more is clear they can’t/not able to do so imo. It’s just ccp propaganda, you dont announce out loud military plans
China would be much better off if they just gave up on the whole Taiwan charade. I understand how badly they want to put Taiwan under thumb like they did HK, but Taiwan is really the only issue I foresee with potential to derail China's progress.
It isn't that easy. It's not just China's government that believes Taiwan is part of China — China's people also believe that. There is a saying that if China is democratic, they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. Or another saying: if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow.
Another factor that complicates things is the fact that Taiwan is a strategic location for the US's military containment of China. The whole "first island chain" depends on it. The US knows it, China's life depends on it.
There's a reason why this issue has persisted since 1949 and why it's China's "reddest of the red lines".
I don't buy this. If the government would stop making "reunification" so prominent in official rhetoric, eventually there would be room to back down from the hardline view on Taiwan. Maybe not tomorrow, but certainly in 30 or 50 years. The government is feeding the flames of nationalism by making Taiwan such a prominent issue. The reason the CCP won't back down on Taiwan is not because they can't, but exactly because it's an issue which encourages nationalism and internal unity.
Saying that Taiwan is merely a nationalism and internal unity issue, and that people's views are merely a result of propaganda, ignores the very history of how Taiwan came to be and how the Chinese civil war developed. Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years.
But more importantly, you dodged the military strategic significance of Taiwan. Telling China to give up Taiwan is like asking China to give cut off its lifeline.
At the end of the day, your point boils down to that China ought not to think that way, for reasons that you believe are the only legitimate reasons. But that is useless: Chinese do view things that way, and if foreign forces pressure China to let Taiwan go, then they will fight to the end.
> Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value
It seems to me that you are saying that a contemporary political position (that Taiwan should be ruled by the same government as mainland China) is in fact a "core value". Unity can be a value, but the political position that the island of Taiwan is an integral part of China, and China can't be unified without it, is not. That's the position which is encouraged by propaganda and government rhetoric, and mirrors similar positions with regards to, for example, Tibet.
That is correct. But as I said: Taiwan is being used by the US as a strategic military location to contain China. As long as this situation persists, China can't accept any other situation than Taiwan being part of the same state.
Were this danger to disappear then I foresee much greater chances of Taiwan emerging as a independent state, probably as one that is aligned with PRC in the same manner Canada is to the US.
The US _removed_ troops from Taiwan when they recognized the PRC. China has had every opportunity to bring Taiwan into its orbit by simply having enough sense to not threaten Taiwan so much as to to force it to seek out allies against it. Taiwan has shown that it clearly considered business interests to trump any differences in political philosophy. If China would simply declare that it wouldn’t attack Taiwan, then the US wouldn’t have an in any longer. The fact that Taiwan can be used strategically against China is due to China’s shortsighted thinking and nothing else. It’s complete inability to treat neighboring countries like Taiwan as anything but vassals is mind blowing. The PRC government is playing a dangerous game.
The US removed troops as part of the One Child Policy. That policy is now being undermined by the DPP, US and Lituania, where "undermining" includes selling weapons to Taiwan, sailing more warships near China, and AUKUS. It's not exactly a peaceful situation right now where China's worries are completely made up.
He means the One China Policy. But CogitoCogito is right. China is only be "contained" by Taiwan in the hypothetical circumstance of a war; during peace time they obviously have no trouble sending ships around the world and are not contained in any sense. And the only reason they haven't been able to bring Taiwan into the fold is because they keep making psychotic violent threats. All China needs to do to completely resolve any problems with Taiwan is stop being nuts.
China obviously doesn't want the matter resolved peacefully, if at all, because they use this conflict for internal control.
Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.
>unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years.
I don't have an opinion on that. Just want to point out that out of the previous 2500 years, China has been unified for only 500 years, and 300 of those 500 years was spent under the yoke of a foreign invader (the Mongols).
> I don't have an opinion on that. Just want to point out that out of the previous 2500 years, China has been unified for only 500 years, and 300 of those 500 years was spent under the yoke of a foreign invader (the Mongols).
This is not true, Mongol rule only lasted for about 100 years.
Han dynasty lasted 400 years. Tang about 300 years, Ming and Qing together lasted about 550 years. All of that adds to about 1250 years of unified times. That did not count Qin or Sui or Northern Song, which are unified that just happened to be short lived.
It was foreign, but they sinicized and they claimed to be representatives of Chinese civilization, so in the course of history it was eventually accepted that they were legitimate successors. This is in contrast to imperial Japan, which explicitly did not claim to be a successor of Chinese civilization, which was one of the reasons why they continued to be viewed as foreign.
Also the landmass referred to as “China” has constantly changed throughout history. For example today China _is_ unified, but Taiwan is not a part of it.
There is no need for Mr. Xi to formally give up on Taiwan. He could just kick the can down the road for another few decades, like all his much smarter predecessors did.
> China's people also believe that.
Only because that is what they learn and hear (literally) daily, starting with kindergarten. Just reduce this crab step by step, and it will fade away. The same is true for this even more stupid 7-dash line. They draw this stuff only really, really every map you see in China.
Saying that viewing Taiwan that way as purely a consequence of propaganda is like saying that American patriotism, and the fact that Americans believe that the South's cecession is illegitimate or unrighteous, is purely a consequence of having taught people so since childhood.
Yes education is a contributing factor. But it is my no means the only factor. Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years.
Ridiculous. People always bring up the secession of the south but a far more accurate corollary would be if the citizens of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, decided to formally declared independence and vote to become an autonomous nation from the United States.
I think if you asked the average American living in the continental United States, that they would not care one iota if Puerto Rico suddenly became independent. And frankly it's the same for people living in mainland China - their day-to-day lives would change zero percentage if Taiwan was formally recognized. It's purely a matter of conditioned education delivered as part of the party system.
Is warring with all neighbors a core value too? Chinese government, through censorship, controls the minds of the Chinese people. The government needs to update the core values.
This is naive. The government simply doesn't have that power. If they tried to downplay Taiwan people would be absolutely furious.
The extent of "mind control" is really not that great. The internet exists, and despite imperfect controls people have access to information. It would probably take Xi down to try to abandon Taiwan.
Serious question: Why do the Chinese people care so much about Taiwan though? What do they want with it? What's the endgame plan?
If the vision is that everyone will be living happily ever after under the PRC umbrella, I could see some flaws in that reasoning. Like a whole population that will probably take up arms guerilla-style. I've visited Taiwan and even wearing pro-CCP colours is frowned upon. If they just want the territory and not the people and it'll end up another XinJiang style "re-education" camp, well that's obviously something unsupportable.
Also, of course Taiwan is so crucial to global supply chains that this has all the ingredients to become a world war in short order, which is pretty worrying.
How about unification, under the government of Taiwan? Is everybody down with that? No? Oh, then maybe the mainland could see why Taiwan isn't down with unification on the mainland's terms.
But that's the problem. Neither side is willing to be unified "under" the other. That's not unification; that's subordination. Neither is willing to be subordinated. So no non-violent unification is currently possible.
My point is that whether the west thinks the Chinese ought to think that way, is not very important. People can debate that all day long, but at the end of the day the Chinese do think that way, and they are willing to fight for it.
This has strategical implications. Do we want to grandstand or do we want to actually solve a problem? If we want to grandstand at all cost, then we have to wage war with China and force them into submission. If we want an actual peaceful resolution then something has to give.
Taiwan is already an independent nation by all measures that anyone really cares about; the status quo is to their advantage. If China wants to change this, they are going to have to wage war by sending ships across the strait.
Maybe the Taiwanese can defend their nation mostly by themselves; amphibious assault is not easy, even for major world powers. Even more difficult with satellites watching your (extensive) preparations. Even more difficult with hostile submarines prowling the seas. The PLA can't march to Taiwan.
China does not have that much of a problem with the status quo. The status quo with the One China Policy has worked very well for decades. In fact, 2015, right before the DPP got to power, could be regarded as the height of cross-straight relations. Things only started going sour after the DPP started making moves towards true independence, and after the US sent increasing numbers of warships to China's back yard.
It is not China that is deviating from the status quo.
Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.
Then you clearly either haven't read enough of my tweets, or you don't know official CCP positions as well as you think you do in order to differentiate my views with official CCP positions. Do I need to copy a few links where I disagreed with CCP official position?
If you think my views are too much like CCP's, you should talk to more mainlanders. There's a way deeper rabbit hole out there.
Yes I have a different opinion than the mainstream western one. So what? I can have my own legitimate, independently researched opinion, of which some parts may or may not align with other actors because that's what I happen to believe in based on research results.
Who is "we" and "they"? The west vs China of course. This was, after all, the context to which I was replying to. Not sure how you missed that context.
What's absolutely disgusting is you misrepresenting my views like that in order to smear me just because you don't like the fact that I have a different opinion about China. If you read that thread it is perfectly clear that I merely pointed out that different opinions about the situation exists without giving my own view, but that's not acceptable to you because you seek to doxx. To be perfectly clear, if that wasn't already so, I am against any kind of sexual assault and I support an investigation into corrupt officials. Thank you very much.
You presented yourself as an authority (native speaker) and provided a translation + opinion of her statement. You omitted the part about her crying, etc. Why? And why do you refuse to you update us on your opinion now that the omission has been pointed out?
Again, the question: does your opinion of her statement change when considering the panicked crying (that you casually omitted) which was pointed out by another user?
>To be perfectly clear, if that wasn't already so, I am against any kind of sexual assault and I support an investigation into corrupt officials.
Another dodge. The question isn't about generalities. It isn't about "different opinions about China". The question is about this very specific instance.
(I didn't doxx you, your information is in your profile.)
I never said I'm an authority, I simply posted a link to a translation and I said I checked it. People can choose to listen to me, or not. You made up the strawman that I'm positioning myself as an authority.
My post was never supposed to be a full summary, and I never claimed that it is, so it's very strange that you attack me for not fully summarizing. Passages such as crying, feeling like a zombie, etc are already covered by western media and people have likely already read that -- me pointing out all that again does not add anything useful. The intention from the beginning is to let people read the full thing, including translation nuances, and to let them read parts that they probably haven't read yet (or not in its original form), so that people can make up their own minds. That includes reading up about crying, and more importantly, how the passage about crying was written as well as the context in which that passage appears.
I added some commentary after people asked me to comment on another translation and compare that with the first. But that commentary was secondary to the main goal, which is to let people read the original, full text and make up their own minds. Thus it is neither necessary nor a goal of that commentary to be a full analysis, and I never claimed that it was.
Why are you so obsessed with this? Why is my opinion so much more important to you than what Peng Shuai herself wrote in full? What are you afraid of? Why do you not like the fact that I let others read the original source?
I think there is only one possible answer: you have a specific opinion that you want to force on others, so you are alarmed by others being exposed to more and original information. That's some chilling 1984 thought police behavior right there.
This is our 6th (or so) exchange on this matter and the first time you've even acknowledged that the crying wording exists(!). I've asked you what you think of the crying over and over and you repeatedly answer in vague terms like "people are free to listen to me if they want...", but never, not once, answering the very direct, very specific, and very simple question.
What do you make of the crying?
Do you not see how your attempt to skirt the question makes you look like an apologist and not a neutral commentator? Do you think people reading our exchanges won't notice?
>I think there is only one possible answer: you have a specific opinion that you want to force on others, so you are alarmed by others being exposed to more and original information.
I haven't disputed any "information" you've provided. Not once. The truth is exactly the opposite: I've been questioning your omission of key information.
>That's some chilling 1984 thought police behavior right there.
In a thread precisely about abuse of state power, with real lives at stake, this comment is tasteless. It's you who support the CCP in almost all your commentary here and on Twitter.
I hope you see the irony. Rest assured, people reading this will.
>Why are you so obsessed with this? ... What are you afraid of?
As someone with women in his family who have suffered sexual assault, I find your refusal to even acknowledge her crying, both sickening and cowardly. That's not even to mention your unwavering support for the CCP. But that will be on your conscience not mine.
As someone who also has a close woman friend who suffered such assault, and as someone who has even discussed the Peng Shuai issue with multiple women, I find your willingness to take a pitchfork to go after imaginary enemies to be sickening.
Okay you know what, this time I'll tell you why I was reluctant to answer.
The first part is: because I don't trust you!
Here, just look at this sentence:
> It's you who support the CCP in almost all your commentary here and on Twitter.
This is a huge misrepresentation of my (much more nuanced and complex) position. If you do good research into my Twitter history will you find multiple points where I disagree with CCP. But the fact that you disregard such facts, and choose to misrepresent me as "supporting CCP in almost all commentary", is telling.
Right off the bat, your suspicious, paranoid behavior gives you away as someone who actively seeks to label people as a propagandist, shill, enemy, criminal, etc. merely for disagreeing with your world view on China. The fact that you continue to stalk and hunt me further confirms it.
The second part is because the Hacker News crowd loves to attack, or downvote without discussing, comments on China that they don't agree with. I have to be careful with not offending the crowd by giving too much wrong opinion. And here you are, zooming in on wrong opinions, which you call "apologist".
I've discussed the Peng Shuai situation in detail in private with multiple people, including women. The opinion among mainland Chinese is, for the most part, very different than the narrative painted in mainstream western media. But why should I say too many things which will potentially cause a flood of downvotes and shitstorm simply because that's not what people here like to hear?
Just think about how wrong this is. For a crowd that loves to preach freedom of speech, I have to fear giving my opinion, in no small part thanks to people like you who continue to harass me and continue to label imaginary enemies. For a crowd who wears the mantra of "we are only against the CCP, not the Chinese people", I have to be wary of giving opinions aligned with the Chinese people. No, having a different opinion on China is not "being an apologist", it's having a different opinion.
So my statement that you are engaging in 1984 thought policing, and actually also in McCarthyism 2.0, is not "irony", it is accurate. The biggest irony is that even though you are supposed to be a supporter of free speech, you attempt to deny others of their free speech by labeling them as enemies, merely because you disagree with them.
You know what, my relatives lives are indeed at stake, and they are indeed being threatened — by a potential US-led war for which its consent is manufactured by anti-China propaganda. So I'm pushing back at that. I can see that you have fully bought into the China threat theory, zooming into anybody who has a different opinion about China, like a drone, denying others of the opportunity to see a different perspective. This is entirely deplorable behavior.
>This is a huge misrepresentation of my (much more nuanced and complex) position. If you do good research into my Twitter history will you find multiple points where I disagree with CCP. But the fact that you disregard such facts, and choose to misrepresent me as "supporting CCP in almost all commentary", is telling.
You've said this a few times so I'm going to call you on it.
Can you point to a few examples? Specifically, do any of your Twitter posts disagree with the CCP's official stance on censorship, human rights, international relations, international boundaries, democracy, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Tiananmen Square? Are any of your comments critical of specific, highly ranking CCP officials?
Or, are your comments limited to economic policy and other similarly non-controversial issues?
You've repeatedly touted how critical you are of the CCP on Twitter as proof that your opinion is not one-sided, so I'm looking forward to your response.
And actually, now that I think about, even this is another example of you grossly misrepresenting me:
> and the first time you've even acknowledged that the crying wording exists(!)
Go back and read what I wrote in verbatim! I wrote:
> There is no doubt that Zhao is a manipulative jerk and that he engaged in unacceptable questionable acts.
"unacceptable acts" include that which make her cry! I didn't "omit" saying that he did deplorable things. This is yet another deplorable example of you looking for imaginary enemies and engaging in thought policing.
That's because Taiwan had maintained the One China Policy. This worked very very well for decades. It's only recently when they are becoming more serious about true independence that things are souring.
Furthermore, China can no longer afford to use empty threats when US warships are inceasingly sailing in China's backyard. Things weren't so militarily contested before.
And yet it keeps making them, and no actually doing anything about any of this.
It has been decades of empty threats. I am sure people said the same thing, the last time more empty threats for made.
Yeah, no. Thats the facts. They keep making empty threats, and not following through on them, and they are still doing that to this day.
> more serious about true independence
Well, Taiwan is already truly independent, and that has been the case for decades. They have their own laws, borders, and taxes. That is what an independent country is.
Furthermore, the official stance of the ruling party, is that they are already independent.
Nothing really needs to change, for them to become independent, because that is already the case.
> had maintained the One China Policy.
They have their own taxes, laws and borders. They are already an independent country, actually. There is nothing to be maintained, other than some fantasy make believe lip service.
Of course they keep making them. They don't want bloodshed where it's not needed.
But you seem to think that this trend can go on forever no matter what. That is a dangerous mistake. What's needed is deescalation, not more escalation in the faulty thinking that they will continue to do nothing no matter what happens.
> Of course they keep making them. They don't want bloodshed where it's not needed.
Exactly, I agree. They keep making threats, that they don't follow through on, and they will continue to not follow through on them.
Nothing is needed, to do anything, given the fact that Taiwan is already independent, and that has been the case for decades.
> What's needed is deescalation
There is nothing to de-escalate. Taiwan is already an independent country, and it has been so for decades, and that will continue.
They have had their own taxes, laws, and borders for decades. And they have those same things today. Nothing has changed. They are already independent, and that was the case before, and still is now.
And anyway, the only one who can choose to stop making those empty threats is china. Complain at them if you don't like their big talk, and no follow through threats.
I am saying that none of this has changed. Taiwan is its own independent country, for decades, and we've been doing the same things, which is follow our defensive treaty with them, and have been doing this for decades.
That's the status quo. Nothing needs to change. Nobody is shooting down Chinese military assets.
All that is happening is the same exact, completely normal defensive treaty actions that we've been doing for a while.
And china isn't going to do anything about this status quo, of Taiwan already being an independent country, with a defense treaty with the US.
He cannot kick the can down the road if the West forces a point of no return by suggesting the above.
Chinese people initially saw Taiwan as part of China for historical reasons as well as a result of the civil war. Propaganda slows this from stopping, but the problem very much is not manufactured.
CCP has a much greater control on its people than others can imagine. If they want to give up on Taiwan, they can do it without much trouble. Japan used to be China's mortal enemy. CCP has no trouble normalized relationship with Japan and built "Sino-Japan friendship" [1]. No citizen uprising over this in China, though CCP used Japan as a whipping symbol to flame up nationalism from time to time. Mongolia used to be part of China and it's an independent country now. No one in China made a sound. Vast vast area of Siberia including the city Vladivostok were taken by Russia from China. Under CCP no one made a sound again. In fact, CCP and Soviet/Russia in the 90's signed a treaty to recognize the ceded territory. Again no one in China made a sound, no one overthrowing CCP on that issue. The funny thing is ROC Taiwan doesn't recognize the ceded territory and still claims the land as part of China. Taiwan is a CCP issue; Chinese people really have no say in it.
Having been to both Taiwan and China several times - this is a bit inaccurate.
Yes, there is a certain believe among Chinese that Taiwan is an inalienable part of their territory, but most don't believe that reunification should be achieved by force. There is also the idea that Taiwanese people are indeed different from mainland Chinese, but at the same time, any strong Taiwanese identity is the result of propaganda and indoctrination by the Taiwanese authorities.
In other words, it seems that Chinese citizens believe that Taiwanese are "misguided children", thus there is no reason to punish them militarily, and the Taiwan question should be treated as an internal conflict, like any other separatist movement.
The context of my post is that I replied to another post that talked about the west fighting China.
Hence, I did not say people believe reunification needs to be achieved by force. What I did say is that if foreign forces pressure China into letting Taiwan go, then China will fight back.
> I did not say people believe reunification needs to be achieved by force.
Then this line:
> if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow.
doesn't make much sense to me. Who would overthrow the CCP, if not the Chinese people? And if they would be willing to do that, why wouldn't they believe in achieving reunification by force?
Many accept the status quo in which Taiwan is de facto self ruled but at least there is an aspiration towards future reunification by peaceful means, and in which Taiwan identifies as Chinese (just disagreeing on the government). As one of my (Chinese) family members put it: we can be very flexible and patient in arrangements as long as you reconize you're Chinese; who is the government is not the most imporant.
Letting go of the reunification aspiration entirely, and letting Taiwan relinquish their identity as Chinese, is a whole different matter and would make lots of people angry. It would be seen as a sign of a weak government, one which is in collusion with foreign forces to destroy Chinese sovereignty; an extension of early 20th century efforts by the west to balkanize China. The CCP will lose legitimacy.
Once CCP is overthrown, who can say whether the new policy is peaceful? Maybe a populist will make use of the anger to incite people to call for an invasion.
The CCP are actually moderates. Be careful of what you wish for.
Well there are many mainlanders who disagree with that. To many people, being Chinese is being 中国人, which doesn't mean belonging to the Chinese state (whether that's PRC or ROC), but belonging to Chinese civilization, which is a bigger concept than merely speaking Chinese (中文).
I don't place much value on what mainlanders think, but we have to care because they make us.
> being Chinese is being 中国人, which doesn't mean belonging to the Chinese state
I wish that were the case, but the CCP declare themselves the arbiter and they have all the guns. People's Daily says we are "race" traitors if we don't obey their government.
So we don't like calling ourselves 中國人 anymore. I can read OK but not speak their 國語 well enough with the Taiwanese I meet to understand what they prefer. It is not a simple question. 或者华人? Maybe they ignore the pinks and still say 中國人.
我叫自己唐人
If the PRC were as reasonable as the relative you quoted above, none of this would matter. But they are not.
> if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow
Haha, no. CCP will just present it as a victory for some weird reason, and everyone will just keep applauding. There might be some resentment, but not open one.
China peoples believe what the ccp tell them to believe with their indoctrination, military containment story included Taiwan is a free and democratic coun3tey and a quite decent one in recent history.. bullying a country for for fake historical reunification purposes is not different from religious motivation and the world should take stance
I haven't found anybody actually who would care, only for recent nationalistic voices. If that would be lowered, they wouldn't care less.
And even for those who "cared" I've explained, that imagine yourself as a Taiwanese, who had and always will have a better life than any mainlander. Would they want to have a dictator above themself who beat them up like they did with HKese?
So far, I've found no mainlanders yet who would still insisted to take them over. (of course personally, in chat it might be different)
The Chinese people have been indoctrinated by the CCP for decades. So to just chalk it up to the Chinese people demanding invasion is absurd and completely contrary to the facts.
Chinese Communist Party has tied it's legitimacy into uniting China. Xi has doubled down on it. Giving up would destabilize the party. It's and identity question for China. Chinese law ways that China must go to the war if peaceful unification is not possible.
Even Chinese people seem to think that Taiwanese want to be part of China. In reality support for unification is about 4% of the population. The official One China Policy exists to prevent immediate start of war.
It's not that the Communist Party ties itself to unifying China. It's the culture. It's because that the only way to claiming yourself a legitimate Chinese government is to become the conquerer of all China. All dynasties who did not have reign over every parts of China, like Jin and Song, are considered shames in history by the Chinese people.
There is nothing to do with the Communist ideology or any particular party or people. If it were KMT on the mainland and Communist Party on Taiwan, they would do the same.
You are also missing the part where the Taiwanese have always held an ambiguous stance towards reunification/independence.
I would bet that a Scottish-style ref in Taiwan (which would be tantamount to declaration of independence and hence, dead on arrival) may yield a surprising similar response: no majority support for independence.
> You are also missing the part where the Taiwanese have always held an ambiguous stance towards reunification/independence.
You are also missing the part where the ambiguous stance is mostly a consequence of China's threat of immediate violence if independence is ever declared. Taiwanese support for reunification is under 15% or so - and even lower among Taiwanese who were born in Taiwan. Why would they, when their living standards are way higher than China's and they live a free country?
Actual survey results are a bit more mixed: https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7805&id=6962 Support for moving towards independence has clearly increased a lot since 2018, but many people still haven't made up their minds yet.
That is because formal independence - as used in this survey - means a considerable risk of war with China. It is no surprise that people hesitate going to war when the current status quo is somewhat ok.
There is a strong Taiwanese identity among younger people, and that's one of the reasons why the DPP is so popular right now. Older generations and KMT supporters may favor reunification, but that's a sentiment fading away.
So, no, I don't think Taiwanese would agree to become Chinese.
Obviously they would. If China was democratic they would probably elect a more repressive and economically left wing government. At least that's until the private sector buys enough political influence.
Posting like this is a bannable offense on HN. You can't attack another user like this, no matter how strongly you disagree with them. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29739415 for a longer explanation.
I hope you are not seriously thinking true propagandists are recruited out in the open via HN comments. Are you seriously paranoid and naive at the same time?
No, there are a lot of strategic reasons beyond that.
People in China and Taiwan are happy as it is right now, yes. But if the status quo changes, for example if Taiwanese independence is recognized, people will become unhappy.
Edit: apologies to anyone who read my comment analysing the situation and assumed that I’m some kind of warmonger. At no point did I advocate for Taiwan to be annexed. I merely pointed out that China really wants to and they’re stronger than ever in 2021. Shoutout to the dude who implied I’m a Nazi for saying this.
Why would they give up on this “charade” as you put it? They’re closer than ever to annexing Taiwan in 2021. They hold every card.
- Diplomatic advantage. Only 14 tiny, inconsequential countries + the Vatican recognise Taiwan as a country. Everyone else acknowledges that there is “One China”.
- Military advantage. Taiwan struggles to man their military. In any case the investment in the PLA in the last 10 years means no military can stand up to it except for America. Except America is at peak war weariness with the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan. They’re comfortable with Sabre rattling but it’s clear they won’t draw the sabre from the scabbard.
- Economic advantage. Every country in the world needs China. China doesn’t need any single country. See how they bullied Australia and Canada successfully. This dependence on China is at an all time high. It could maybe diminish, but it’s unlikely.
And Taiwan is a more compelling prize than ever.
- Political incentive. The leader who integrates Taiwan will enjoy unquestioned power for the rest of their life. Xi Jinping is often described as the strongest leader of China since Mao. This would be his opportunity to become more powerful than Mao by doing something he couldn’t. Unify China and importantly, face down America and show the world who’s #1.
- Economic incentive. 2020 and 2021 has made the world realise exactly how important Taiwan is to the world economy. TSMC in particular the most pivotal supplier for most of the worlds critical industries. If Taiwan could be annexed and TSMC brought under state control, China would have a bargaining chip of unparalleled power.
I thought the Chinese bullying of Australia has been largely recognised as a failure. Australia just exported to elsewhere (e.g. a lot more coal to India).
If China invades Taiwan then most likely the USA goes to war over it. Anything else is to accept the final end of US leadership in the world. If we're going to end the world and kill billions then I guess it might as well be over something as honourable as Taiwanese freedom and in the broader name of freedom, human rights and democracy. Human civilisation could end in a far more banal way.
> Australia has been largely recognised as a failure. Australia just exported to elsewhere
Not only that, but the loss of coal imports from Australia led directly to massive power outages in the northeastern provinces this fall. Though it's possible that the people aren't aware of that causal connection.
> Anything else is to accept the final end of US leadership in the world
There is some sense in which the US is willing to relinquish its "leadership in the world" and "take some me-time"; it's just too much of a pain in the ass. This has been a trend since 2001, when george bush was elected on a "humble foreign policy" platform (but not delivered upon), skipped obama's cabinet (though he was famously aloof during high level diplomatic meetings), through Donald Trump, who hasn't started any new foreign adventures, and Biden has actually withdrawn from Afghanistan. I think that we are emerging into an zeitgeist where the US doesn't really care to be number one, it's just so stupid and so much of a waste of time.
But even in context of deliberately disengaging from the world, the US still goes to bat for Taiwan.
The outage was caused by misguiding policy incentive (clean air etc), which was seen as a huge blunder, rightfully so, but it had nothing to do with Australian coal.
We've seen what happens when authoritarian governments which start locking minorities up in concentration camps progress to inventing historical grievances to start seizing territory. Appeasement doesn't work.
I am concerned about an authoritarianism in America, even more so if the president started saying stuff like: "Canada and the US are essentially the same people and should be one country. The Canadian government has always been propped up by foreigners to weaken us. Reunification must happen, by force if necessary."
War with China is not possible because of nuclear weapons. China can do anything to Taiwan. And China size will make sanctions essentially useless (especially because half of the world will not join those sanctions).
> They’re closer than ever to annexing Taiwan in 2021
> 2020 and 2021 has made the world realise exactly how important Taiwan is to the world economy.
These two statements are exclusive.
If China would invade Taiwan, the economic downfall and the reactions from most western countries, which, on the other hand, are essential partners for China to continue its manufacturing dominance, would be catastrophic.
This is a bit of a shallow understanding of things. They were a lot closer 6 years ago to annexing Taiwan than they are now.
Diplomatic: Official allies matter less and less. The deepening unofficial ties with the US and Japan (I can cite examples here if you like) are much, much more important. If the current trend continues, ties between Taiwan and the US will be unofficial by name only. Dual recognition by stealth.
Militarily: Taiwans problems here are well known. But Taiwan has a free and very critical press, and will gladly tear into their military for clicks. This is not the case for China, god knows what problems it has (though the skirmish with India probably gives you some clues). You call the US military war weary, I call it highly experienced at waging war.
Economic: China is completely dependent on global trade. To act otherwise is laughable.
The US military isn’t war weary. The US public is. And ultimately any US politician who launches yet another war will likely lose their job very quickly.
Obviously China is dependent on world trade. What’s laughable is not reading what I wrote, in that China can afford to lose trade ties with one or two nations, although not all at the same time. Whereas no single country can afford to lose China. That gives China the high ground - it can threaten any single country with a boycott. And it has done so successfully.
Any US conflict with China over Taiwan is not going to be a 20 year occupation of a territory that doesn't want them there. It would be primarily a naval/air conflict, and over rather quickly.
Which Chinese economic boycott was successful in achieving their goals? You surely can't point to the Australian one.
China could take Taiwan and I don't think anyone would stop them.
But the aftermath would be pretty terrible. The US and EU would lock them out of the their economies, as would basically every country in the region except NK. Economic collapse would ensue and that would likely lead to a revolution: the CCP have basically ruled on a "give up freedom and get economic opportunity" ticket. If they can't deliver...
There is also a pretty big US air force base there which would be hard to... Invade around?
China has a military strong enough to credibly take on the US, the UK, Australia and Japan in their backyard. That is because, as you'll note, these powers are all thousands and thousands of kilometers away from the theater, which gives China a massive advantage.
The best they could realistically do if the invasion does succeed is try to force an embargo. This will be massively unpopular, kill tens of thousands in third countries that will be sanctioned as collateral damage, and crash the world economy, and still might not work.
>> these powers are all thousands and thousands of kilometers away from the theater, which gives China a massive advantage.
The past 100 years of wars and military conflicts have shown that military logistics can overcome great distances if needed.
Great distances and economic consequences did not stop past wars. I doubt they would stop a war caused by the invasion of Taiwan.
>> This will be massively unpopular, kill tens of thousands in third countries that will be sanctioned as collateral damage, and crash the world economy, and still might not work.
The damage would be incredible, likely as bad as World War 2, or possibly worse.
None of us know exactly what different leaders are planning so you may well be right.
I do wonder though: if that is the USs plan, why not say so? The US has formal alliances with NATO, Japan etc. They're public, because making them public dissuades the chance of an attack. If you're going to risk getting into a war, why not minimise the risk at no cost by being upfront about it? Instead the US maintains a position of "strategic ambiguity".
It would also be hard because China isn't Iraq. It's a nuclear nation with a bigger stronger army and much better morale. And Taiwan is an Island. You can't mass your troops 100m from the border and then march over when ready. The allies would need to do an amphibious landing less than 200 miles from the Chinese coast (aka air force), under fire from subs and against a fortified target.
Strategic ambiguity makes sense because they don't want to encourage Taiwan to declare independence by saying they'll 100% back them to the end. Blank cheques are great ways to start wars.
There is no US Air Force base in Taiwan. There are 3 in South Korea (Kunsan, Osan, Sasebo) and 3 in Japan (Kadena, Yokota, Misawa). That’s it.
No country would lock China out of their economies. It would be the most painful suicide imaginable. China is already the source of most components in most industries. A China that annexed Taiwan would also be the main source of the world’s semiconductors.
And that’s even before getting into how companies cut off from the second largest market in the world would struggle to survive against competitors that weren’t.
13 percent of US trade is with china. 20 percent of EU trade. And that's trade, not percent of economy.
I think you might be over estimating how indispensable they are.
This is one of (not the only reason) China is so hungry to move into harder to replace industries (cutting edge chip manufacturing for instance, infrastructure like 5G).
And of course Chinese markets are mostly closed to Western goods and services already...
The author was just pointing out China's incentives. Any negotiator, a person analyzing international relation theory, or any policy maker must do this.
He doesn't sound like Germany 1938. He sounds like a person trying to analyze a power dynamic.
The Congressional Research Service tries to boil down complicated issues for Congressional members in public, short reports. Here is the one on Taiwan that discusses Taiwan and China in two pages (and has Lithuania).
Yeah I don't see the point or value at this stage. They control their media tightly, and if they just stopped talking about Taiwan I doubt many people in the mainland would care. They've proven they don't need Taiwan and vice versa.
+1 thanks for that, now that I think about this issue, that is the way I feel also.
A few of my friends think I am overboard when I talk positively about China, but really I am just reacting to how wonderful the people there were when my wife and I travelled in China, and I also really respect their AI tech, their tech in general, and how so many people have moved out of poverty.
It is just their current government that I don’t like.
Governments are a reflection of the people. They're not some nebulous, abstract entity; they're literally made and run by people of each country. They're chosen–or in some cases imposed–to represent the people to the world. Even in dictatorships, it is the people that choose for governments to remain in power. When that stops being the case, governments are overthrown, and a new set of people take power.
The people of China choose to allow CCP to run their country. If they were so different ideologically the CCP would no longer exist. Countries with orders of magnitude less people struggle to remain united. The fact 1.4 billion people can be represented by the same political party speaks to the strong ideological ties that are shared by most Chinese people. I would argue that those ideologies were implanted by decades of brainwashing and totalitarianism, but how it was achieved doesn't change that fact.
So, yes, your experience and likely many others' is with good people. Countries are not exclusively bad or good. We can recognize those good traits that China has as a nation.
But it would be wrong to also not criticize the bad aspects, and sweep them under the rug as the CCP constantly tries to do. The rampant economic and moral corruption, overfishing of world's waters and general disregard for animal life and nature, disregard for human life, widespread racism and xenophobia, isolationism, etc.
These are not only governmental issues, but part of the modern Chinese culture that taints whatever good aspects we can celebrate.
Undoubtedly comparisons to the US will be made, but at least we can criticize bad US aspects (both government and cultural) openly, without random US citizens coming up with defensive arguments. The US government will persecute whistleblowers for airing its dirty laundry, but we've known that for decades.
I fear a world where the dominant superpower has such a culture and is closed to criticism—not only because of its oppressive government, but because of its people.
Seriously, I wish I had your optimism that governments reflect the people. I really do.
In my worldview, and I am likely at least partially wrong, I think that almost all governments are totally controlled by corporate and elite interests - same as news media.
I do try to not get too upset by this, and I just try to be a decent person. Really, I am just an average person so what else can I do?
Even if I'm wrong and governments don't reflect the people, my main point is that there are many issues with Chinese culture itself that should be criticized. This common phrase of "I don't like the Chinese government but I like the people" as a way to not appear xenophobic is what I'm arguing against. We definitely should be able to criticize wrong cultural behavior, and China has plenty of that.
> Governments are a reflection of the people. They're not some nebulous, abstract entity; they're literally made and run by people of each country. They're chosen–or in some cases imposed–to represent the people to the world. Even in dictatorships, it is the people that choose for governments to remain in power. When that stops being the case, governments are overthrown, and a new set of people take power.
This seems closer to the mandate of heaven[0] than an explanation of how governments work or why they are overthrown.
Here's another explanation based on The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. The 18 minute video The Rules for Rulers[1] has a great summary of the principles from this book.
Dictators and elected representatives have the same problem; they must keep control of key supporters and reward them in order to remain in power.
Dictatorships have only a few key supporters - heads of the army, secret police, treasury, etc. Popular support isn't required; if these people are content with your rule, you will remain in power. If they aren't, you will be replaced.
Democracies have many more key supporters; we normally call them voting blocs - suburban voters, Hispanic voters, non-college voters, evangelic Protestants, etc. Popular support from these groups is required and this difference is why democratic governments change between parties so often.
There is some truth in what you say that even in a dictatorship the government needs the support of some people to remain in power.
The problem is that it is enough for only a small minority to support the government for it to keep the power forever.
I have been born in a country occupied by communists and there for many decades an overwhelming majority of the people wished that the current government would be deleted, but nobody could do anything.
It is hard to estimate how many people supported the government, but it is very unlikely that they were more than 5% of the total population.
Nevertheless, that was enough to make impossible to organize any kind of opposition against the government because any attempt would be reported by informers and the initiators would be eliminated before being able to do any action.
Maybe in China there is a majority that supports the CCP, but that certainly is not a rule in dictatorships.
> if they just stopped talking about Taiwan I doubt many people in the mainland would care
Not at all.
For a mainlander, Taiwan _is_ a region of China, think of it as Hawai for the US.
People in the west see Taiwan as a separate country that China tries to forcibly absorb.
People in mainland see Taiwan as a region of China that tries to be independent.
Also, there is a lot of eyes on the Taiwan case from mainlanders because other regions of China are seen as potential underdogs for independence, due to cultural heritage (and wealth), such as Shangai.
And the real shame is that nobody seems to care what the people in Taiwan themselves want. (Which, overwhelmingly, is to be independent and free to go their own way.)
For a mainlander, Taiwan _is_ a region of China, think of it as Hawai for the US.
Where I live in the Midwest USA, nobody would care if Hawai'i claimed its independence in some not-harmful-to-tourists-nor-threatening-to-military-fuel-depots fashion.
That doesn't mean it would be easy. Much as was seen in the original USA annexation of Hawai'i, it is very common for interested parties to create violence where none naturally exists.
> Where I live in the Midwest USA, nobody would care if Hawai'i claimed its independence in some not-harmful-to-tourists-nor-threatening-to-military-fuel-depots fashion.
Also Midwest/Great Lakes and I’m not sure about that. I know I’d be pretty upset about it just as I would be if Texas tried to seriously secede or similar. I wonder what a poll would show? I hadn’t thought about Hawaii like you have but it would be interesting.
I was stationed there too. It felt like America on an island. It was weird.
The Us would never let it happen though. Too strategically important
Taiwan still has 400+ tonnes of gold the Guomindang took with them on their way out. I have no idea if good reserves have any relevance in this century but it’s just one part of the long term animosity.
Did you forget the Cold War before Nixon? The Korean War? Even today various officials in the US military are discussion how best to militarily contain China.
Which of those relates to Chinese internal security?
In other words - aside from containing Chinese/Communist external influence, when has the US threatened China?
Note: I'm not justifying or condemning any of those "external" actions by the US, I'm just curious if you can illustrate a past or ongoing threat to China proper?
> People in mainland see Taiwan as a region of China that tries to be independent.
They've been 'trying' pretty successfully since 1949 :) Maybe it's time to just cut your losses instead of trying to rebuild the past. You can pretend they're just a territory that wants independence but really the PRC has had no control over it for 72 years.
Control of South China sea is far too important for china to ignore Taiwan, also Taiwan's dominance in chip design/manufacturing would give china enormous influence over the world.
I'm pretty anti China (or rather anti the CCP). But this is the same everywhere: leaders keep foreign conflicts burning to distract from domestic issues and shore up domestic support.
The UK (my country) does it with 1001 places (Greece and the Elgin Marbles, Argentina and the Falklands, German and WW1 and WW2, France and, well, everything). The US does it with Iran and Cuba. China does it with all it's neighbors.
It's childish and short-termist and dangerous. But it works.
That's what this is. It's Winnie the Pooh rallying support, not an actual political position.
Looks like CCP painted itself into a corner. Internally it has fostered the narrative that Taiwan is a renegade that should be brought to order for so long that citizens themselves now call for that. Walking that all back is tricky and would take a while since the government is worried about own popularity.
Why would they give up when they are winning? I personally would be really surprised if Taiwan is still independent in fifty years. I wouldn't be surprised if the situation comes to a head much sooner than that.
Massive economic bubble, dams failing across the country, no real government accountability, doctors getting lynched if their patients die, and the list goes on
Omicron is real. It's having very tangible impacts on the ability of countries to provide necessary healthcare services to their citizens. People who normally should be first in line to receive care (cancer patients and the like) are having their critical services interrupted or deferred.
Just because you personally don't see the impact doesn't mean it isn't there.
Source please? It sounds like the most mild of all the 99.97% survival rate variants of covid.
If you don't want to get sick, then stay home, but don't tell me how to live my life
Did you even read my post? I said nothing about not wanting to personally get sick (although of course I'd prefer not to). I was talking about cancer patients and people in other similar situations. What are they supposed to do, not go to the chemo clinic?
They should go where ever their doctor tells them to go. But quite frankly I don't see cancer patients going to bars/resturants/clubs etc. This includes the world prior to 2020
But they're going to the same grocery stores as the rest of us. Often they have to ride public transport to get to their appointments. And so on. Thinking that this is just a matter of people's social enjoyment is naive.
I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on this. You clearly forgot what life was like before the news scared us into shutting down and will never feel comfortable operating in society again. That's fine, but don't bring others down with you.
Note that any constant factor of "less cases requiring hospitalization" is very quickly compensated by exponential spread. London for example has just locked down because the speed of Omicron spread threatens to overwhelm its hospitals.
The recent study about Omicrons severity is from South Africa where 80% were already infected, so mild symptoms could just be because it's the second infection.
The severity of Omicron as a first time infection is not researched enough.
How's that any different from any disease in the history of humanity? We "dont't" know (even though we know covid is harmless for the vast majority of people), so why risk the adverse effects of a shutdown again. Aren't you worried about the mental health of children, the women at risk of being shut in with a domestic abuser, or the resulting inflation disproportionately affecting low income people of color?
Aren't you worried about the hospital overload, the people who die because their operations have to be postponed or cannot be treated thanks to triage, the hospital staff who become physically and mentally overworked and burnt out and quit, so that in the long run the health care system gets worse, which again costs lives.
Aren't you worried that it seems to be bad for children's mental health that they spend more time at home and with their parents, that our world is so broken that the only thing that seems to stop abuse of women is that the abuser goes to work so they don't have time for the abuse?
The poor are also disproportionately affected by the disease and death consequences of Corona, the effect this has on children and women doesn't concern you?
Financial problems can be solved, it just takes political will, illness and death is more complicated.
Not to mention the destroyed trust in the state's ability to act and in the minds of fellow citizens, cue vaccination opponents.
It seems to me that you are worried about the whitewash that has so far concealed our problems to some extent and that is now coming to light thanks to the pandemic.
You've made so many assumptions here that it's almost impossible to reason with your slanted and opinionated point of view.
The hospitals never became overloaded. Government run hospitals were mis-managed and appeared overloaded. The government ordered elective surgeries to be postponed, not the hospitals.
Children need to socialize with other children, it helps them learn how to be functioning individuals.
Telling people "your jobs have been taken away by the government, but here's a few hundred each week" forces people into situations they'd otherwise avoid.
I am VERY concerned about how the poor are affected by the lockdowns. The inflation the biden administration is causing under the guise of covid is hurting them the most. They'd be much better off in a free economy where there's plenty of market rate jobs and minimal to no inflation.
Things were going AMAZING from the start of 2017 until early 2020 when the democratic controlled house and democrat state governments starting forcing all of these lockdowns and moving the goalpost
Totally agree. I think we have been warned more than enough. You afraid? Stay at home and lock down. (Didn’t stay home and) got sick? Your problem if no space is available. Split hospitals 50% covid and continue the rest as usual with limited capacity. We cannot control covid anymore and this was apparent just a few months in. Stop supporting authoritarianism and get real.
The percentage was just a wild guess. Its just that some resources need to be allocated to covid and the rest should continue as usual. That could be up to free market to decide, not me or you or some almighty “leaders”.
Well it is very hard to argue against this. Do you mean to say that people should not be able to decide what is more important to them so that resources can be appropriately allocated?
That wasn't why I was struggling. I was struggling because I deem it a very heartless argument, and I don't know how to have meaningful conversations with people when they don't seem to have the good of their fellow citizens at heart. The free economy can function as both an instrument of liberation and oppression depending on your place in society. It is not a universal panacea.
Living in a society requires giving up some of your personal liberties from time to time, so that other people can enjoy theirs. That doesn't mean that I condone the government stripping away everyone's personal liberties. I wish that people were individually capable of making those sorts of sacrifices without any government intervention. But that isn't the world we're living in.
> Do you mean to say that people should not be able to decide what is more important to them so that resources can be appropriately allocated?
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to decide what is more important to themselves, but rather that they can't always be trusted to respect what's important to others. Thinking that a free market economy will always result in the most equitable distribution of goods and services for everyone -- that's childish.
Ok, so people are too stupid to decide for themselves. In that case can we trust their “chosen” leaders? You know they may be too stupid to pick a good leader too. Monarchy sound good?
unfortunately most people on this website aren't rational, and either want to be a victim or want to be a hero, and view the current state of affairs as their chance to fill that mold.
Reduced death rate doesn’t change the fact hospitals are overloaded and you might not be able to get treatment for other emergencies.
> stay home
> don’t tell me how to live my life
I hope you see the irony there. If only it was that simple. You want to be out and about, unvaccinated, putting other people at risk, while the ones who took the vaccine and are trying to stay safe stay home? Yeah right.
If you want to live a “free” life you can go setup shop in an island somewhere away from civilization. Total freedom to do whatever you want.
I got three vaccine jabs and I am totally pro vax. But the unfortunately the majority of scientific data shows that fully vaccinated people still can spread Delta variant, because neither of the current vaccines has been tailored for Delta. For omicron this is probably even worse, since it is even more contagious. So I do not see how the narrative of COVID being spread by unvaccinated is true in the end of 2021.
You speak in absolutes, but it’s not like vaccines suddenly stopped working for Delta or Omicron variants:
> effectiveness against infection with the delta variant declined from 94.1% (90.5% to 96.3%) 14-60 days after vaccination to 80.0% (70.2% to 86.6%) 151-180 days after vaccination
80-90% is still infinitely better than zero. The “narrative” of infection being spread by the unvaccinated (also usually non-mask-wearers which doesn’t help) is obviously true, as logic would suggest, and hospitalization numbers everywhere confirm. Most recent data suggest slightly lower protection for Omicron, around 70%.
Not to mention, again, that hospitalization is still reduced by 95%+ even if infected which makes a huge difference for healthcare systems.
> In November China unilaterally declared that each country’s respective embassy would be demoted to an office headed by a chargé d’affaires, or caretaker.
Is this technically an invasion from China since the embassy grounds are theoretically soil of the embassy's country?
No, this whole "embassy grounds are the guest country's territory" thing is a myth. There are special privileges granted to embassies, but they are not technically "foreign soil" or sovereign territory of the guest country.
Me speculation is Lithuania is ‘taking one for the team’ (EU) and doing what others are reluctant to. Any benefits from Taiwan - lithuania engagement will spill over to the block I guess. Kudos to them nevertheless
Lithuanian here too. I'm 100% certain PRC will try to inflict as much pain on my own country via some side pressure to larger companies that have footprint in the country or by pressing applying political pressure to other countries. Some say we just do what the US tell us. The others say we should shut up and know our place. But the reality is that this isn't Nazi Germany v2. It's a country that is unparallel in population. It also has tons of money and also capability to manufacture virtually anything. It also has so many people in concentration camps that the world just can't continue to ignore for the sake of having cheap pair of shoes. It's a bully. It won't stop with a little country in Baltics.
The trade with Taiwan will unlikely to replace trade with China purely because of the scale of Chinese market, however it will hopefully act as an indicator of how things are to those who work/planning to with China.
China has had only one leader who was educated in the West: Deng Xiaoping. Deng was sent to Paris in 1920 when he was 16 where he attented middle schools, in 1926 he studied in Moscow. He moved back to China in 1927.
Deng understood the West and was able to advance Chinese interests. Xi Jinping is complete opposite of Deng. Xi has no understanding of other cultures.
Russia under Putin bullies and plays brinkmanship due to political weakness. That seems to work for them under the circumstances.
Chine under Xi bullies because they are incompetent. China under Xi can't even bully right. Wolf Warrior tactics of Chinese diplomats works against Chinese interest. Nobody is scared and everyone wants to resist.
It is true, he did not spend a few years, I misremembered.
Still, this is not from a lack of understanding of the West. There a lot of complex strategic factors that mean that China cannot abandon the idea of holding Taiwan, which means either war or the One China Policy, which requires the behaviour we're seeing now.
> I wish whole of EU would declare in unison support for Taiwan.
Sure, Spain can take a break from hunting down Catalonian referendum politicians in France, or hunting down the Basque separatists that Franco didn't wipe out in Guernica, and can declare Taiwan should be an independent country.
The British PM can visit soldiers in Thiepval, Holywood or other UK barracks in north Ireland and declare support of Taiwan breaking off of China.
The Italian newspapers can take a break from condemning the northern League wanting to break off from Italy and form another country, and praise Taiwanese independence.
Maybe after an EU council meeting denouncing the people of Crimea voting to be annexed into Russia, we can have an opening of Taiwanese embassies in preparation for Taiwan announcing a break from China.
Catalonia, the Basque region, Ireland, etc are not comparable to Taiwan. Taiwan _is_ a separate country today already. There is no separatist movement. It’s all just Chinese propaganda. (Officially Taiwan has similar claims, but they clearly have stopped actually exercising them hence that fact isn’t really relevant).
If you want a more accurate comparison it would would be as if Spain started claiming that Portugal is a part of its territory and pushing the world to accept that position.
Italian here. The separatists you’re talking about are absolutely a thing of the past and they were never serious to start with. There is no actual separatist movement, and the one still in it usually didn’t even finish middle school. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t even make the connection.
I thought this was a discussion site about "hacking and startups".
If there's enough daily top of the front page US/EU bash China/Russia/Iran/Cuba/Venezuela (put your developing country not bowing down to the west here) threads for someone to have a "colorful comment history", then maybe this new focus of the site can be updated in the about section.
> the northern League wanting to break off from Italy and form another country
This isn't the 90's, that stuff died down when we all united against the africans. [1] There's no separatist movement in Italy other than in fringe groups on Facebook. Definitely much less than "Texas wanting to secede" anyway.
Supporting Taiwan is really not a question of opposing local separatist movements (at least in Italy) as much as just "losing China" and all that it'd entail.
As european, I think EU is too busy looking good to have time to actually something good, so I am not sure our political and entrepreneurial tools are willing to damage their wealth over something good, on the other hand, taiwanese people don't even seem to care https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y18-07g39g so why do we have to be this world police?
I highly doubt they would. Most of the governments worldwide are realists, most of the time they are doing lip services, not many have the gut to do what Lithuanian do.
I think, on a cynical take, that Lithuania only is able to do it because they have nothing to lose. Their trade with China is small so even if it is cut off, then it will be almost like if nothing had happened.
You are aware that in the new world order in the making Europe is NOT shifting towards American geopolitical priorities, right? If anything Europe wants nothing to do with thorny issues that are bad for business (which Europe has plenty with China)
They don't need to kick out their embassies, they just need to stop exports for a short period of time.
A short stop because of the pandemic had hard consequences but it could be much worse.
The west ignored the human rights situation at the beginning to get cheap labor, cheap resources and to ignore environmental issues and now the west can't simply stop without killing it's econonmy.
If they did that, I hope they would coordinate the timing with America first. It would be American forces, not so much the EU, that would be helping Taiwan defend against the invasion that would probably follow.
That count is a bit deceptive, France has a single aircraft carrier with fixed-wing aircraft, the Charles de Gaulle. The other three are Mistral-class amphibious assault ships with helicopters.
The recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh proved that the future is here, and no large asset is safe from drones. Even if carriers could deny airspace to cheap tiny airborne loitering munitions (they can't), they have no hope against the submarine variety.
Spending more doesn't mean much if you don't spend it on something worthwhile. Not to mention that the European countries don't count money spent on healthcare, education, etc for veterans as part of the military budget.
The US is definitely overspending for no real benefit, except lining the pockets of defense contractors(and by that, politicians pockets)
On the other hand, we don't really have any business being there. So why would we. We're not the world police.
In the EU we view the "Department of Defense" as a tool for actual defense. Not for invading the middle east for corporate benefit. We've been dragged into this several times by the US in the last decades and it's always been a huge failure and has sometimes led to worse threats (ISIS for example which was much more of a threat to us than Saddam Hussein was)
A land war against China is not winnable anyway. I do think we should help Taiwan if it comes to it. But this should just come down to strategic deterrents. There's no point sending armies. By the time they get there it's too late anyway.
Our main threat right now is mainly Russia. And mainly so because they view us as enemies. But having entire tank brigades like in the cold war won't do us any good. This is not how the next war will be fought.
To be clear, I'm not faulting the EU for it. The EU should be concerned more with their own security, particularly if America gets tied up with China and is consequently less capable of helping to defend the EU against Russia.
1. Beijing rejects being merely the "workshop" of the unipolar world, embraces sovereignty (GFW), high quality development (HSR), technological innovation (4IR), including in the military space (space, cyber, hypersonics). Oh and BRI.
2. Washington doesn't like that because it will displace the unipolar moment. USA has been in economic decline for half a century while PRC has been on a dramatic rise. Washington tries to break up PRC like it's a too-big company, via hybrid warfare. It tries everything possible to politically destabilize Beijing, with propaganda being a cornerstone.
3. Washington enlists anyone available to achieve this goal, including washed-up NBA benchwarmers and irrelevant Eastern European countries. They are encouraged to adopt a foreign policy that is in line with Washington's desire to preserve unipolarity and therefore hostile to Beijing. Who knows what they get in return, because it certainly doesn't make any economic sense in the long-term.
4. When Beijing responds tit-for-tat, answering sanctions with sanctions, harassment with harassment, downgrade in relations with downgrade in relations, it's a simple matter of spinning PRC as the aggressor who acted first.
Alternatively, "See See Pee Bad". Propaganda works and no one is immune.
Both China and the US are trying to protect their interests, and both are aggressors. Making it look like this is some sort of US initiated warfare is insanely simplistic, and mostly wrong.
> Making it look like this is some sort of US initiated warfare is insanely simplistic, and mostly wrong.
It is a simplification, but it is mostly true. Washington has literally been trying to contain PRC's rise since it was born in 1949. Because duh, China has historically been the most prosperous civilization on the planet and they just got out from under the boot of Western/Japanese imperialism.
War in Korea (and almost over Taiwan). Deny access to 1st island chain.
Sino-Soviet split.
War in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. Scorched earth policy. Deny access to SEA.
Transition to hybrid war (propaganda-driven psychological warfare) as PRC opened up under Deng.
Tibet.
Tiananmen Sq.
(20 years of relative tolerance, Washington assuming PRC won't get uppity and will follow USSR's fate)
Obama's "China Pivot", anti-BRICS campaign.
South China Sea.
Hong Kong.
ETIM/Xinjiang.
Taiwan.
You can spin Beijing's responses to this containment strategy as "aggression", but frankly that doesn't make much sense unless you believe Washington is entitled to global hegemony.
The fact is that Beijing has been consistently outplaying Washington since Mao. And that makes Washington extremely nervous and irrational.
The Korean and Vietnam wars had nothing to do with China, but the USSR.
Other than that, China was the clear aggressor in most of the conflicts you mention.
China invaded Tibet with the excuse of “liberating” their people, which is essentially what the US has claimed to justify most of their foreign interventions.
The CCP violently squashed the Tiananmen protests.
China keeps claiming authority over large areas of the South China Sea, disregarding protests by surrounding countries like the Philippines.
The CCP backtracked on their promise of keeping Hong Kong’s system of government, putting more agreeable politicians in charge, and disregarding and/or squashing any citizen movements.
Taiwan is a de facto independent country whose mere existence is threatened by China.
I could go on and on, but pretending that China is not the aggressor here is almost laughable.
> The Korean and Vietnam wars had nothing to do with China, but the USSR.
Frankly, this makes me want to stop reading right here. This is an outrageously ignorant comment. PLA participated in both wars, which bordered China, and backed the Northern factions. USSR did neither.
But don't take my word for it. SecDef McNamara to LBJ:
"1. US strategy. The February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain Communist China."
You should not believe everything you read from Washington media or high school American history textbooks, as your comment implies you do. It will make you weak and exploitable.
Containing China by deploying troops is one thing. The US did deploy troops all over the world to contain advancement of countries under the USSR influence, or simply “communist” countries or governments, during that time.
Starting a full on proxy war in Vietnam during the Cold War era is a completely different issue. Same goes for Korea.
China wasn’t that big of a threat to the US. Pretending that it was, and that it was at the same level of the USSR, is ridiculous and close to historic revisionism at this point.
The Sino-Soviet split took place in 1960. Vietnam War took off later. The latter had virtually nothing to do with the USSR and everything to do with violently containing PRC. Read the linked White House memo above.
> China wasn’t that big of a threat to the US
Believe it or not, US strategists in 1950 were capable of planning more than 0-4 years into the future.
The war started half a decade prior. The US already had 50,000 soldiers stationed in South Vietnam by the time the Sino-Soviet split reached its point of no return, plus several thousand advisors and other personnel.
> Believe it or not, US strategists in 1950 were capable of planning more than 0-4 years into the future.
I agree. I also think they were a bit more concerned about an arms race with the USSR, and the fact that the Soviets were involved in half a dozen direct geopolitical threats in the 50s and 60s.
Anyway, let’s say that you are right. Supporting and arming the North Vietnamese regime would make China as much as an aggressor as the US. Funnily enough, China also turned against Vietnam and both financed the Khmer Rouge and directly attacked the country after the war ended. But I guess those don’t count as “aggressions” either.
We are specifically discussing American combat involvement in Vietnam, which did not meaningfully begin (beyond 100-1000s of noncombat advisors) until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. With the explicit goal of containing China.
> …until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. With the explicit goal of containing China
You are making a single phase the whole reason why the US deployed millions of troops to Vietnam, which is patently untrue.
I see you would not acknowledge either that China became the aggressor a few years after the US withdrew, and eventually the Chinese got their asses kicked too.
It's not really decline but relative decline, otherwise the rest of statements stand.
The most amusing thing is that people forgot that US threw the firebrand Taiwan independence advocate Chen-sui Bian under the bus.
USA has absolutely been in economic decline since the 70s. Which was okay because USD is the global reserve currency and Washington can just print USD to buy things and offset the declines in productivity/etc.
However, once the USD loses global reserve status, USA is in extreme economic trouble. In 2021 alone, it will have over $1T trade deficit in goods.
I would hate to see what the US would be like if the US didn't get to the tech space first. It's the only pillar holding them up beyond the 20th century.
Of course China doesn't want a sudden collapse of the global financial system, but China is actively dedollarizing. RCEP and Russia trade is aiming to be 0% USD and may already be there. Russia and India also just announced that their bilateral trade will be 0% USD.
Yeah the writing is on the wall. Except it's being wiped out by the US and written as something else. Meanwhile the original writing wasn't so great, but it was true.
Honestly I've never liked americans because of arrogance and the way of dealing with things, but the Communist-China really unites all democracy as it is a nightmare utopia.
Can't imagine anybody reasonable wants to give more power/influence to a country that destroys all differences (in minorities), killing the languages, traditions, old structures everything traditional. There is even less value there than in US, money is the god, and who is a cheater is the smart. The rule is by force.
Did you see that the government hired thugs to beat up it's own people in HK?
(and after used the police directly to do this?) It's said if a small irrelevant country is doing this, but if this becomes the standard of a global power, well I don't want to be nearby.
1. PRC has a very clear national security interest in Taiwan not being ruled by an unpredictable regime that may host American weapon systems pointed at the mainland. See Cuban/Soviet Missile Crisis. Coincidentally, similar situation going on with Russia and Ukraine right now.
2. If/when the DPP regime falls and is replaced by a more "independent" government, that government will naturally be favorable to joining the PRC as an autonomous province. Because the economic incentives are there and there is no real ethnic/cultural barrier to reunification (there is already massive brain drain from TW to mainland). This is the outcome that Beijing is clearly planning for and they won't have to fire a single shot to get it.
Uyghurs:
1. Xinjiang is a pathway to Central Asia and critical to the Belt and Road initiative. It's also a relatively undeveloped region that shares a small border with Afghanistan, with a history of widespread poverty and separatism/terrorism.
2. In the mid 2010s, Beijing was busy implementing two important policies in Xinjiang. A deradicalization campaign and an anti-poverty campaign. These are serious, fast-moving policies that involved a lot of heavy-handed action. Like getting millions of people enrolled in vocational training, Mandarin classes, and distant employment. Basically, Beijing wouldn't tolerate Xinjiang becoming Afghanistan 2.0, as much as Washington would love that. So they aggressively developed the region. Ürümqi in 2021 is probably unrecognizable to Ürümqi in 2009, when over a hundred civilians were butchered by ETIM-linked terrorists.
3. In response, Washington, through proxies like Adrian Zenz and WUC, launched a vicious propaganda campaign. Ordinary prisons for violent extremists and other criminals became "concentration camps for Uyghurs". Schools became "reeducation facilities". Vocational training and just having a job became "forced labor". Mandarin lessons became "cultural genocide". Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression". And so on and so forth.
4. The hypocrisy from Washington is mind-blowing. On the "forced labor" front, Washington implemented sanctions against any company that uses "Uyghur labor", in other words, virtually any company that employs Uyghurs. The goal is obvious: to push Uyghurs back into poverty and therefore destabilize the critical region. Because Washington does not care about the lives of distant Muslims; the last three decades make this abundantly clear.
Sounds like you've swallowed some propaganda yourself.
"The mean old world is just lying about China." Kind of incredible that literally the whole world is conspiring against the truly good natured China because... Reasons.
Please substantively challenge any of the facts I laid out.
> "The mean old world is just lying about China."
It is a literally a core theme of modernity. Opium Wars, Yellow Peril, anticommunist crusades in SEA... Chinese civilization is a historical threat to narratives of Anglo racial/cultural supremacy like nothing else.
Thanks for taking the time to write this out. Two questions, followed by a response to one of your comments:
1) On the Uyghur issue. If what you say is true, why is it difficult to get CSPAN footage in Xinjiang?
2) Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it?
> Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression".
It can simultaneously be true that the heavy-handed actions (as you put it) successfully lifted women out of poverty, and also violated their individual human rights. The words we use to describe these actions aren't mutually exclusive truths.
> Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it?
A good start would be a motive for why Beijing would do a Holocaust against peoples within China.
Hitler had a motive, you can read all about it in Mein Kampf. It was out in the open. There is nothing even remotely resembling such a policy by Beijing.
On the other hand, there is a very clear motive for why Washington would spread misinformation about Beijing. So to believe Washington's story is to put on my blinders towards Washington's interests and simultaneously accept that Xi Jinping is a comic book villain. Sorry, but that is ridiculous.
When I ask pro-CCP people the question "what might change your mind", I often hear a variant of what you just said - "consider the motives (of the American hegemony), it explains our observations".
But that doesn't answer my question (2). Would you please answer it directly? Either there is some hypothetical evidence that would change your mind, or there is no hypothetical that could change your mind. Providing the affirmative to one or the other would help us understand whether you are open to changing your perspective at all.
For what it's worth, I'm happy to volunteer a hypothetical that would convince me to believe more in the narratives that you provided.
If you insist: how about the Uyghur population decreasing instead of increasing? That would be a good indicator that a genocide is actually taking place.
Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?
> Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?
Oh yes, I'll gladly dismiss it: You introduced it with a carefully weasel-worded "a good start would be"... So even if you got an iron-clad motive in reply, you'd just go on quibbling, because it was, after all, "just a start". So: Dismissed!
> On the other hand, there is a very clear motive for why Washington would spread misinformation about Beijing.
And the rest of the world? Why is the free press of the entire world conspiring against China? Or the free press in the US? Does Washington own that?
Anyway, we can only speculate on the motive. Ethnic cleansing? Perceived threat of religious beliefs? Who knows. You're gonna have to do better than "I don't think those are strong motives" to dismiss mountains of evidence.
Your long list if irrelevant facts is very impressive, there's no doubt you are well read on your history. The consistency with which you present these facts any time China's atrocities are mentioned is also impressive.
Do you even consider the possibility that you are being tricked by the same warmongers who tricked you into thinking Saddam Hussein was about to use WMDs against the West?
I don't know where you were twenty years ago -- maybe too young to really follow the news? -- but pretty much nobody outside far-right cults like evangelical fundamentalists bought that bullshit line even at the time.
So fuck knows who this "you" (who was tricked by that) that you think (or pretend to think) you're talking to might be
Ideology is important and if they truly believe in this fight, more power to them. But it's not easy being a battering ram for somebody else, which seems like the more probable case.
Hope this Russian-Ukraine tensions, also China-Taiwan tensions will open eyes of western world like it happened with Europe during WWII.
Collapse of Soviet Union influenced western world badly. They relaxed and eased requirements whom to work with.
We need at least to introduce tyranny tax, same as carbon tax. That will give a good boost of local economies also gives a proper signal to the entire world.
That's naive world view. Putin wouldn't have happened with capitalist errors under Yelzin.
And the west never cared about whom to work with as long the got their needed resources.
And the west has a long tradition of using countries with lack of environmental and human rights to produce their products or get needed resources.
We complain about Ukraine and Taiwan but about the Yemen we don't care. Because there seem to be good and bad tyrannies.
Russia, China bad, Saudi Arabia, Qatar good.
Iraq good as long they fought Iran, bad a soon as they attacked Qatar and threatened our oil.
that's the same problem just some of them causing west troubles, some of them don't. The question is why we even allow to do so. Wasn't that clear in 2014 with russia that it's extremely aggressive? Kicking out russia from economy in 2014 would prevent such events. China also had so many times you can stop it, or at least put the world on other track.
it's not about capitalism. Current time is the most close to WWIII , if Russia and China will decide to attack Ukraine and Taiwan right now. What would west do?
Most likely the answer is nothing. You just need to hit hard. And that's how WWII started.
My Grandmother just turned 100 and grew up under the Nazi regime which controlled her island in Norway. All of her grandchildren would occasionally tease her about her staunch refusal to buy anything made in China due to their politics (to this day). I find it interesting that she may have been forward thinking about this.
> It's like if the confederates lost the war, but simply kept Florida or if Nazi Germany lost, but kept Austria.
Kind of a good analogy, but the wrong way around. China vs Taiwan is more like if the confederates won the civil war, but the Union kept Florida; or if Nazi Germany won WW2, but the Allies hung on in Austria.
Europeans were quick to scorn Mr Trump’s policies but the reality is that China has been unfair in its trade practices. Also, losing liberty in Hong Kong was sad but it will be much worse if free Taiwan is crushed by CCP ambition. The West should have alot of introspection about which battles are the right ones to choose.
How will history judge the current leadership of the West if they abandon Taiwan?
but these doesn't have much to do with each other.
It was already known before Trump that the lack of trade/investment reciprocity with China is big fucking problem. (2016 Brookings report, and Brookings is not a conservative think tank. Quite the opposite - according to conservative pundits.)
Of course this concern was mostly completely ignored, because the money was good. (The economy was booming, who cares if the CCP is a narcissist control freak. Human rights violations are nothing new, it's just Tibet again.)
> who cares if the CCP is a narcissist control freak.
My first impression is that CCP and Taiwan remind me of the archetype of the unwanted suitor that never gets the message and keeps on pursuing a disinterested woman. But I think your framing CCP in psychological terms is just as if not more apt. I'm just pasting a list of symptoms of narcissism. Not all apply, but strikingly, enough symptoms do apply to CCP for a positive diagnosis:
Grandiosity
Exaggerated sense of self-importance
Feeling superior to others and that one deserves special treatment
Feelings are often accompanied by fantasies of unlimited success, brilliance, power, beauty, or love which more often than not cover for hidden anxiety
Excessive need for admiration
Must be the center of attention
Often monopolize conversations
Easily offended, slighted, mistreated, depleted, and enraged when ignored
Engages in blaming
Long-held grudges
Superficial and exploitative relationships
Relationships are based on surface attributes and not the unique qualities of others
Others are only valued only to the extent they are viewed as beneficial
Lack of empathy
Severely limited or totally lacking ability to care about the emotional needs or experiences of others, even loved ones
Engages in cruelty
Identity disturbance
Sense of self is highly superficial, extremely rigid, and often fragile
Self-stability depends on maintaining the view that one is exceptional
Grandiose sense of self is easily threatened
Patients retreat from or deny realities that challenge grandiosity
Difficulty with attachment and dependency
Relies on feedback from the environment
Relationships only exist to shore up positive self-image
Interactions are superficial
Intimacy is avoided
Chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom
When attention and praise are not available, patients feel empty, bored, depressed, or restless
Vulnerability to life transitions
Difficulty maintaining reality-based personal and professional goals over time
Compromises required by school, jobs, and relationships may feel unbearable
Young adults may have a “failure to launch”
Successful dictators tend to be similar. They have an enormous capacity for management, exercising control (maintaining their status and position through manipulation and every means necessary), enduring unfavorable circumstances, achieving (real or fake) results. All of it usually driven by ideology and amplified to the extremes by anxiety/paranoia. Oh, and just a dash of pride, just a tiny bit more than needed to kill/destroy people who could hurt them or their dreams.
Well the Chinese historians will praise the West leadership for the wisdom and restrain, so will the Western. The Japanese and Korean will be harsh, the rest of the world will file it under meh ...
How has history judged the Western leadership after WW2 for abandoning Eastern Europe to Soviets? I'm amazed we aren't telling the truth and west was only slightly above Germans in being evil. They had option to be good, but instead because they were unquestionably pure evil they sacrificed huge number of people to Soviets...
The reason EU considered Trumps actions dangerous is because (1) he went after symbolic stuff and (2) Europeans companies got caught in the crossfire and it severely damaged the EU economy in steal and aluminium sectors.
See also the ZTE and DanceByte sanctions. WTF was that about?
> See also the ZTE and DanceByte sanctions. WTF was that about?
Legitimate reasons of concern.Either estonians or lithuanians released a very detailed report (from their ministry of defence if i recall correctly) showing how chinese manufacturers installed backdoors(these are not mere malware viruses, because that would assume infection post-purchase) on their phones which actively surpress any messaging/information exchange about TW,HK, or touchy subjects that the Chinese governments wants to shut down.
That's a big of a strawman.I think more correctly would be to say western europeans(and even then not entire accurate, many brits and germans for example like trump,especially when he defended HK) were more critical of trump (if not outright TDS oftenly) than the rest of the continent.
Especially eastern europeans(not the media) weren't critical at all of Trump,for key reasons: he was pro-nato, he promoted 3SI, pushed back against Russia(contrarian to what MSM said).The very important distinction and the reason you might have that impression is because the media is de facto the same on the entire continent and very much US-aligned.The EE media outlets literally copy-paste western talking points, you rarely see opposite voices, obviously with the exceptions of outlets that are either local or not the biggest, and why not often owned politicians with opposing voices..
With very few exceptions, the entire EE dislikes to a degree(to say hate is strong here) China,mostly on an ideological context.The more important question is to analyze China's (forceful) involvement into EE and specially Balkans.You see how hard they try to push development projects in Serbia,Bulgaria, etc and you really get surprised.They try to fund everything they can(because they have money) in order to expand their sphere of influence.However they have less success when it comes to critical infrastructure with nato members.Also on the Taiwan/HK issue, i don't think many people are pro-china at all.
If you are the referring to Trump cancelling TPP it was a dumb move that only emboldened China. The TPP was supposed to be the US and 12 smaller Asian nations vs China. TPP was created because of China's unfair trade practices and Trump dismantled it.
No one needs to rewrite his history. The guy was a complete fucking disaster.
I don’t think I ever heard anything positive about the TPP. NZ hated it because it was being pushed through the government and no one was allowed to read it. When questioned if we could change the Terms or cancel in the future if it turned out bad for us we could not get an answer. No one in nz wanted the TPP.
It’s the only good thing trump did IMO. As a kiwi.
I agree, it shouldn't have been in there. But that is only tangential to the reason why Trump pulled the US out of it. He despised China so much that he made sure to strengthen his personal businesses with them while simultaneously weaken the US trade partnership with their rivals.
> He despised China so much that he made sure to strengthen his personal businesses with them while simultaneously weaken the US trade partnership with their rivals.
Would you mind expanding on this? I could only find articles describing a bank account opened in China, that indicate only a little less than $500k business per year. What do you know?
Bringing China into the world of global trade has lifted literally hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty, and created a consumer surplus for billions of people in the developed world.
I agree that China shouldn’t get a free pass to pull this schoolyard bully BS, but the economic consequences of “just cut them off” need to be factored in.
Fair enough, but draconian measures and their side effects (making many poor even poorer, and enriching Marc Rich) were pretty much universally espoused and employed against South Africa. Of course, China >> SA, but the per person human toll could be similar.
We can't, we have exposed ourselves way too big with China over the last decades. Especially us Germans are a major part of the problem, given that our car industry has their only growth market in China - Europe and the US are saturated, South America, large parts of Asia and Africa are too poor (corrupt elites aside), and Arabia wants luxury cars that our car makers don't have - so the amount of influence from the car lobby on our politics is what has kept the CDU (the Conservative party that lost out end of September in the elections) to go against China.
> Doesn't VW own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche?
Yup. And BMW owns Rolls Royce.
> I think Mercedes has a pretty solid market in Arabia too.
I'd imagine it's their Maybach sub-brand's biggest market not only in percentage of total local car sales, but in absolute numbers. (Hm... Unless the latter is China.)
China won't allow airlines to say they fly to Taiwan. Western media frequently defer to PRC rules (the latest one: Top Gun sequel removing the taiwanese flag). John Cena had to publicly apologize because he referred to Taiwan as a country. Chinese vessels regularly violate territorial waters, and there is an ongoing spat with India around their borders.
The PRC is bullying the whole planet, and people are letting them do it in name of profit.
The status is controversial,
it's similar to Catalunya in Spain (see what happened to Catalan leader Puigdemont) or Flanders in Belgium, but Taiwan is not officially a country.
I think that if someone called Fort-de-France a country, France would correct them.
On the other side of the spectrum, if someone says that Vatican and San Marino are Italy, they would protest.
Yes, Spain would protest if you said Catalunya is a country, but you likely wouldn't be forced to make a public apology to protect your business in Spain.
I don't know much about catalonia or flanders, but don't they participate in the national government? Dissimilarly, taiwan hasn't participated in the chinese government? Correct me if I'm wrong, I've been under the impression they are not integrated with the mainland in any meaningful way governmentally.
I was looking it up as you replied and yeah, it seems like spain has judicial jurisdiction over catalonia and that is it. Huh. Thanks for the response.
This is disingenuous. You can't seriously claim there is no difference between Catalonia and Taiwan in their relationship to the broader national entity.
I didn't say there is no difference, I've specifically said that their status is similar.
Catalunya has a quite conflictual relationship with Spain and the level of conflict has raised in the past few years.
Catalonia is not a country, Taiwan is not a country.
Some of us might think that they deserve to be independent, but that's not their current political status, so calling Taiwan a country is technically wrong, just like calling Catalonia a country.
In this specific example, if John Cena said that Catalonia is a country, Spain would have protested and probably asked Cena to correct himself.
I mean, I understand that in US Taiwan is recognized as a country, in Italy Palestin is recognized as such too, but they are not officially sovereign countries and protest from mainland are to be expected because it's a very complicated international matter and of course China uses all the tools they have to support their position, just like the US.
Do you remember what happened when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel capital?
Conflicts over sovereignty on land are as old as the human race.
> Chinese vessels regularly violate territorial waters, and there is an ongoing spat with India around their borders.
If you are talking about India's spat with China in terms of territorial waters, I think the general consensus is that India is in excess of international law with its claims and China is conducting legal freedom of navigation operations just like the US does.
The SCS is an entirely different issue, where both China and Taiwan have made territorial claims that are largely illegal under international law.
See also: Australia. However it’s largely held that Australia have “won” despite China’s attempts at harming the Australian economy through many of the same tactics used against Lithuania.
The US views itself as the enforcer of UNCLOS for all navigable bodies of water in the entire world, a treaty it hasn't ratified.
It has tons of military bases in the SCS, a region not even close to it, compared to the furor when it becomes possible that China might build a single military base along Africa's atlantic coast.
It seems like a bit of a double standard to me.
I wish a good faith discussion about China was possible here, but I think that HN swings pretty jingoistic on these issues.
> The US views itself as the enforcer of UNCLOS for all navigable bodies of water in the entire world
50 years ago Americans were mass bombing North Vietnam, spraying toxic chemicals across large swathes, and generally killing. However, now America is a friend and trading partner to Vietnam and China is a bitter rival because China has many centuries of history bullying and brutally subjugating Vietnam and compared to that the US comes off looking ok. It doesn’t diminish how terrible and regrettable the Vietnam War was but it sure puts China’s long held attitude toward foreigners in stark relief!
If criticism of the US and the President were treated by the US with such vitriol and reprisals as China responds to criticisms of China and Xi then the world would be a smoldering crater.
I am not making a whataboutism claim. I am merely trying to figure out what our standard for "bullying" behavior is. If the standard for "bullying" behavior happens to also apply to the US and is the impetus for why Lithuana evacuated its embassy, then I would suggest they should evacuate their US embassy as well.
If there is a reason why Lithuania hasn't evacuated their US embassy, then I am just seeking to figure out what the standard is that makes China's behavior uniquely bad.
I think it is pretty undeniable that jingoistic rhetoric has increased in both China and the US in recent years.
> If there is a reason why Lithuania hasn't evacuated their US embassy, …
That is a simple one. The US is not hurting Lithuania the same way China is hurting Lithuania. This is the reason why Lithuania evacuated their Chinese embassy and not their US embassy.
Your question seems to imply that Lithuania drawn a big tally of the Chinese “moral failings” in general and decided to withdraw. This is not what happened.
Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open an embassy in their country. In response, the PRC recalled its ambassador in Vilnius, Shen Zhifei, and demanded that Lithuania recall its ambassador in Beijing, Diana Mickevičienė.
Following this Lithuania experienced a trade distruption. Shipments to and from Lithuania didn’t clear Chinese customs and invoices went unpaid. It goes as far that assemblies containing Lithuanian parts get blocked by the Chinese.
This is not rhetoric. This is not some feel-good measure to communicate displeasure with China in an abstract. This is a trade war.
Now I ask: is the US doing anything like this to Lithuania right now?
Hi dang, will be mindful to reply with more context, thank you for the warning. What can we do about commenters that spew misinformation or twist issues? Is there a report option?
You can flag, but you might have to have posted a little bit more in order to be able to do it. I am not sure what the guidelines are for flagging tbph
I don't think imprisoning a large proportion of a certain ethnic group due to BS laws around extremist ideology is all that different from imprisoning an even greater number of a different ethnic group (1 in 3 black men imprisoned) due to BS laws producing a 100:1 sentencing disparity based on which drug is more popular among a certain ethnic group.
I've been using the past tense this whole time, I am not claiming that it is occurring in the present.
In the 80s and 90s, 1 out of every 3 young black men was under current custody by the criminal justice system, and the lifetime rates were close to the 1 in 3. Today, you are correct that it is closer to 1 in 4 (although still above).
I don't think this makes a very large difference in my point.
"I don't think imprisoning a large proportion of a certain ethnic group due to BS laws around extremist ideology is all that different from imprisoning an even greater number of a different ethnic group (1 in 3 black men imprisoned) due to BS laws producing a 100:1 sentencing disparity based on which drug is more popular among a certain ethnic group."
You think 1 in 3 black men imprisoned is due to crack vs cocaine laws? Do you really believe that every single black person in prison in America was there because they were smoking crack?
In the 90s, the majority of people in federal prison were due to drug offenses, primarily cocaine. [0] The sentencing disparity was a big driver of these increase imprisonment rates.
But no, not all because of the disparity - but a large part. Illegal guns are another big offense sending lots of black people to prison.
> African Americans now serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense at 58.7 months, as whites do for a violent offense at 61.7 months [1]
So what percentage of black people were in prison because they were smoking crack? Why do you say it's "large"? Why don't you just say what the actual percentage was?
You needn’t look very far to answer your own question. Last year Chinese diplomats crashed a Taiwan national day party in Fiji held by Taiwan trade office staff. The Chinese were there photographing (Fijian) guests. Why would they do that except to bully politicians in the host country away from contact with Taiwan? The incident ended with the Chinese officials starting a fistfight over the display of a “false national flag.”
This is an almost mundane incident compared to ethnic genocide, but it’s illustrative of how they believe the can operate in the world. A flag “provoked” their diplomats so they are within their rights to trespass and commit assault? That’s bully diplomacy if anything is.
Okay, then I would claim referring to "cultural genocide" as "genocide" is genocide trivialization. In the Holocaust, they killed 11 million people.
I wouldn't compare that to an attempt to end child marriage in India, for instance.
Some cultural practices should be ended. By contrast, people from a certain culture should not have their lives ended simply for being from that culture.
I'd encourage you to study up more on the literature and definitions around cultural genocide. You're conflating nuances in subjects. Anyone discussing the subject seriously is typically focusing on one group, usually non-native to an area forcing cultural change on another group for the purposes of, compliance, curbing, minimizing or destroying, the group. See events such as Uyghurs in China, Natives in Canada, Darfur etc. You may value the destruction of a culture such to kill a peoples as lesser than say, the holocaust, and I doubt anyone would slight you on that value judgement, never the less, these are distinct things and need to be discussed equally, even if you're unhappy with the context around phrasing.
No, they absolutely should not be discussed equally.
Darfur was an actual genocide, ie. a killing fields genocide. Native Americans were also killed at high rates, the "cultural genocide" came later.
Equating the killing of millions of people from a certain ethnic group with prohibiting certain practices (like France prohibiting the burqa or public expression of religion, like attempts to outlaw child marriage, etc.) is wrong.
You're seeking to launder the distaste people have for mass killings of an ethnic group into prohibitions of certain cultural practices which are not viewed nearly as negatively. There is no other reason to simply call it "genocide" without the (very important) "cultural" modifier.
Well it's wrong in your book, but it's not in mine, so where does that leave us? Reasonable people cannot disagree? I'm a dimwitted plebeian? Shall we reach for the white gloves?
Last I checked, folks were welcomed to their perspectives around here, we don't typically just go around telling people their opinions are "wrong".
It is my opinion that your opinion is wrong. You are telling me to not express that opinion.
But sure, we can agree to disagree about whether the killing of 6 million people of a specific ethnic group should be "discussed equally" with cultural genocide practices like Burqa bans in France, child marriage bans, or limits on having more than 3 children.
Sorry, I should have used the word "can" instead of "should" - As simply as possible what I was trying to convey is that cultural genocide can be discussed next to the holocaust in the context of genocide, the way an orange can be discussed next to an apple in the context of fruit. What I was trying to say is some people would say an apple is equally an orange in the context of fruit, not that some people might like orange more than apple, if that makes sense.
Fair enough. My intention was not to equate them, but merely to disagree that cultural prohibitions of any kind should be "compared equally" to genocides which kill people.
I think what's going on in Xinjiang is broader and much worse than merely trying to restrict certain "cultural" practices, but I also don't think it is a genocide with the intent to exterminate the Uyghur people.
Why is gene metaphorical here? Are people not a result of external stimuli? My understanding is that gene variants are involved in evolution often caused by extrinsic factors?
Let's recenter the definition of genocide. From google:
> the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group
Now to your points:
> religious conversion
1. No, forced religious conversion is not genocide in my book.
> Forced sterilization
2. Look, I'm not a fan of this law either, but sterilization in-lieu-of fine is one of the remedies in China for breaking the two (previously one)-child law and is also applied to Han Chinese. The Uyghur population is still growing at a faster rate than Han Chinese.
> the occasional organ harvesting
3. Awful and at large scale, absolutely a genocide. My understanding was that this had been done against Falun Gong in the early 2000s - do you have evidence on this practice continuing against Uyghurs circa now?
1. There's also such a thing as cultural genocide, which forced religious conversion certainly qualifies as. Not to mention wiping out a culture is part of an overall genocide, usually it's the objective.
2. Oh, so the Chinese are just enforcing their population control law? Then what are the internment camps for? And why the Uighur birth rate plummeting far faster than the reported national Chinese birthrate?
https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...
"Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show."
"UN human rights experts* said today they were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China
The experts said they have received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations. The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation."
> 1. There's also such a thing as cultural genocide,
1. Yes, referring to "cultural genocide" as "genocide" is genocide trivialization. There's an obvious difference between killing 6 million people because of their ethnic background and outlawing a practice (say, child marriage in India or wearing a burqa in France) that happens to be a large part of a certain culture.
2. You're conflating a few different things I'm saying. The internment camps are for alleged violations of a lot of extremely broad and bullshit laws designed to target Uyghur people, as well as for violations of China's two-child law. I am not claiming that the internment camps are just for people violating China's two child law.
Your chart indicates that Uyghur birth rates are roughly the same as Han Chinese, not that they are being disproportionately suppressed below Han Chinese.
I'll defer to them then. If they've been doing it against Falun Gong in the recent past, I wouldn't put it past them to be doing it to the Uyghurs. That is obviously a crime against humanity. It is scary that we probably won't know the true extent of this for decades at least.
You're trivializing "cultural genocide" by comparing it to child marriage bans in India or Burqa bans in France. Cultural genocide is not just banning random specific practices, the near complete eradication of local languages or cultures by the French state throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is a better example or what the British did in Ireland. And if "cultural genocide" is not the appropriate name for that what would be a better one?
1. I think it is up for debate what the way France treats ethnic and religious minorities, and their extreme focus on eliminating any sense of cultural difference from the public sphere constitutes.
2. I am not saying that "cultural genocide" is not the appropriate term. Honestly, it probably is. I'm merely saying that "genocide" is not the appropriate term for a "cultural genocide."
The purpose in referring to the repression of the Uyghur's as a "genocide" without qualifiers is to try to take some of the distaste people feel for mass killings and apply it to this.
Then let’s clear up this whole debate. I meant to type cultural genocide, but it was late and I was sleepy so I said “ethnic” instead of “cultural.”
It’s trivial compared to the Communist Party’s ongoing cultural genocide against numerous ethnic minorities, involving imprisonment, slave labor, forced sterilization, “re-education,” family separation, forced marriages to Han Chinese men, and many other abhorrent conditions, but still terrifying that Chinese diplomats in another country think it’s okay to gate crash a party, photograph attendees (presumably for identification and retribution), and then start a fistfight because they were “provoked” by a “false national flag.”
I don’t need to take some of the distaste we have for the holocaust and apply it to this. It’s shameful and terrifying enough on its own.
If the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II, involving forced labor,suppression of religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception and forced abortion does not qualify in your view as genocide than you are out of touch with the accepted definition of the word.
>> My understanding was that this had been done against Falun Gong in the early 2000s - do you have evidence on this practice continuing against Uyghurs circa now?
Yet you seem to really like the "1 in 3 black men" behind bars headline, based a study from 2001, at the peak of US incararation rates across all population groups. Even the authors state its' gone down significantly.
> If the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II, involving forced labor,suppression of religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception and forced abortion does not qualify in your view as genocide than you are out of touch with the accepted definition of the word.
There are 2.5 million black people in prison in the US, compared to a high end estimate of 1.5 million Uyghurs. (To be fair, there are 3x as many black people as uyghurs, but you said largest-scale.)
I would not expect a population to increase while it is undergoing genocide.
> based a study from 2001, at the peak of US incararation rates across all population groups
I've been consistent in using the past tense when referring to this study.
Is there a special law targeting Uyghurs? Or are Uyghurs (due to their religion) more likely to have higher birth rates that are in contravention of Chinese two-child law?
Another question - does a genocide necessarily require an actual reduction in the population of people being genocided?
I do agree that the strongest case is for (d) (or maybe c, actually), especially if Uyghur women are being sterilized with fewer than 2-3 births.
Are you a PRC-funded troll or misinformation spreader? You keep misinterpreting arguments here and posting silly (and wrong) rebuttals.
Nobody is calling disproportionate imprisonment "genocide" (we call them "lockdowns" LOL).
The "genocide" accusation against China is (these days) focused on / caused by (alleged) sterilization of its Uighur population. Which undoubtedly is a genocide (extermination of a lineage), if a bit more bloodless than e.g. Holocaust.
> Are you a PRC-funded troll or misinformation spreader?
You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you have evidence of abuse, you should send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it. If you don't, you should remember that the vast majority of these perceptions on the internet are completely imaginary. Either way, you should be editing such swipes out of your comments here.
What would be an appropriate response to someone who's posted several comments to the same top-level post, all of which are grossly misleading and/or complete strawmen?
Obviously I don't have evidence of "abuse" (is this even abuse? obviously people can be trolls without being big-co/gov funded) but I'd like to point out the above fact to other commenters who might not have noticed it otherwise.
In terms of posting to HN itself, an appropriate response would be to refute bad arguments with better arguments and/or incorrect information with correct information—or alternatively, to remember that to a first approximation, everyone is wrong on the internet, and just let it go. You don't need to do more than that for other commenters; they can take care of themselves.
If an account is behaving badly, such as by repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, sending a heads-up to hn@ycombinator.com so we can look into it is also an appropriate response.
I'd need to see specific links. It's difficult to answer that generically, because who people call a 'shill' varies so much, and it's unquestionably the case that people frequently apply such terms to other commenters who in fact are posting in good faith. On the internet, someone having a sufficiently different background from you, and someone posting in bad faith, are basically indistinguishable.
I can't resist saying a couple general things though. First, I think you need to assume a smart audience. If someone's throwing an endless sequence of distracting objections at you (which is how I understand 'gish gallop'), that doesn't have a lot of persuasive power for a smart audience. You should trust readers to see that those are distractions, and limit yourself (at most) to pointing out that they're not relevant.
Second, if you're truly dealing with someone posting in bad faith, the time-honored internet adage explains what do to: don't feed the trolls. I would never underestimate the wisdom of that advice. It may be the wisest thing the internet has ever said.
> I'd need to see specific links. It's difficult to answer that generically
Sorry, no links; I was asking generically. (Though a couple pro-PRC guys on this page feel pretty close.)
> the time-honored internet adage explains what do to: don't feed the trolls. I would never underestimate the wisdom of that advice. It may be the wisest thing the internet has ever said.
Yup. (Well, immediately after anything posted by me, of course.) Sometimes hard to remember, though: Provocateurs provoke.
Anyway, forget all that for a while, and have a merry Christmas!
I disagree if the sterilization is applied even-handedly as an application of their two-child law. I am skeptical that a lineage is being exterminated if, at minimum, they can have replacement level number of births. The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is.
But backing up a bit - really what I'm taking issue with is the word "genocide." We can call horrendous, human rights violating policies for what they are without having to fall back on calling something a "genocide."
Not everyone who disagrees with you is PRC funded. I would encourage you to look over the HN guidelines as you seem to have forgotten some of them. [0]
> The Uyghur population is growing faster than the Han population is.
This seems to be the crux of your argument justifying the PRCs sterilization policy. As others have noted forced sterilization is a crime against humanity regardless of reason. Justification of forced sterilization based on a believed “correct” ethnic ratio is abhorrent.
1. Saying a birth rate policy should be applied universally to all citizens of China is not justifying such a policy based on a 'believed “correct” ethnic ratio.'
2. My point about the growth of the Uyghur population was a separate point, which is that from my (apparently naive) understanding of what a genocide is, the population would typically decrease after it occurred, not increase.
3. Forced sterilization is ongoing in the criminal justice system in the US, at least as late as 2011. Don't think it is equivalent because it is not nearly as broad based, but in the 80s and 90s it was a not uncommon remedy offered (mostly) to black people to get probation instead of jail in exchange for sterilization, as well as just straight-up court mandated sterilization.
I also don't think the CCPs child policy is justified, but I do think that it should be within the realm of actions that the state can take.
You’re advocating for a position on China’s 2 child policy that, in America, would most certainly would be deemed unconstitutional under a disparate impact framework. I know we’re talking about China here, but most Western countries have recognized that you can target a subgroup without saying you’re targeting a subgroup. You’re basically arguing that the Holocaust would not be a genocide as long as Germany was universally applying its no [insert Jewish characteristic] policy.
Just to underscore my point here, almost every aspect of your viewpoint on the genocide China is committing is abhorrent and untenable if you believe in human rights.
So you are saying that having lots of children is intrinsic to being Uyghur? It's a Uyghur "characteristic"?
The US law around this issue is in flux, see for instance [0], where policies that were neutrally applied but impacted people a specific religion were ruled constitutional. This specific case was later rendered moot by congressional action.
Regardless, is the claim that China is conducting a genocide, or that its actions would be in violation of the Civil Rights Act if it were a US state? Are we enforcing the Civil Rights Act globally now?
US common law like disparate impact is always in flux - it’s common law. The minutiae of disparate impact edge cases is irrelevant under your argument where the universal application of the 2 child policy somehow requires China to round up, sequester in internment camps, and ultimately sterilize a particular group.
I won’t bother replying to the rest of your post about religious beliefs and children because it’s an attempt to derail the conversation by focusing on details that are relevant only to the particular framing you’re advancing.
No, I think such concerns are stupid. I also don't think the Uyghurs are "replacing the Han."
But I do find it interesting that China is apparently conducting the first genocide in history where the population being genocided is increasing rather than decreasing.
There are so many things, I could write an entire book. So here is one of literally thousands of crimes the CCP commits:
It sends armed fishing boats[0] into the territorial waters of other countries to plunder its fishes. At night, PRC boats turn off their (mandatory) transponders, enter the waters to steal fish, then leave the territorial waters and turn their transponders back on. At times, you can watch it life on marinetraffic.com
For instance, last year a huge fleets of PRC fishing vessels raided the nature reserve around the Galapagos Islands[1] and destroyed much of the fauna around the islands. Same tactic was used, they turn off their transponders, steal what they can, and then turn the transponders back on.
Again, this is just one tiny topic of thousands of crimes the CCP and their thugs commit on a daily basis.
The sooner the Chinese people are freed of that criminal organization, the better. Look at Taiwan: they are Chinese too, and they have one of the best run governments and most democratic systems in the world.
Also, I don't like that questions like your's are downvoted. Its a legitimate question and not everybody has the time to focus on PRC politics and the crimes of the CCP.
Could you please not post flamewar comments to HN? Several (I'm not saying all of them) of your comments in this thread have been doing that. This is not what this site is for.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
China was organ harvesting in the early 00s. You didn't see anywhere near as many negative articles constantly about China, Chinese enroachment, etc. etc. then.
It is only now that we are afraid China will eclipse our spot on the global stage that anyone gives a crap about Chinese human rights abuses, because of coverage largely driven by the media.
We've also switched to spinning things that China does that we also do in a much more negative light, for instance, how the media discusses Chinese loan programs to Africa (compared to how IMF/World Bank programs are just not discussed) or Chinese attempts to build a military base on the Atlantic coast (compared to the dozens of military bases we have in the South China Sea area).
We also burned coal for decades before people stared learning about how bad it was for our planet. How does modern awareness change the ethics of a perpetual ethnic slaughter?
So your claim is that we weren't aware in the year 2003 that organ harvesting was wrong?
I'm not making any claim about ethics, merely that the perception that China is doing so many bad things all at once because they "want the rest of the world to hate them" is more likely driven by US media highlighting terrible things China does because we view them as a great power competitor now, and it is important that our populace is rallied against them.
And yet, we don’t do what is best practice for dealing with such an actor: disengage.
We (the US primarily, but also the rest of the developed world) have a tremendous opportunity with a still productive labor force and cheap capital to boot up manufacturing capacity we offshored to China, and we won’t have the chance again when China decides to act against other countries (economically or militarily).
It's not a bad trick. Lots of historical examples of an external enemy bringing internal stability. It often ends in genocide, sure, but it does seem to work!
What? Yes, of course it is. Do you not see a difference between a nuclear threat to, well, agreeing to the opening of a Taiwanese office? In what world is this even similar?
You're missing the point. NK/Iran aggressiveness isn't remotely similar to Lithuania letting Taiwan open an office.
As for how real the threat is - I'm not an expert, and I don't know you calculate threat, but NK does have nuclear weapon and it's probably the only reason why the are allowed to starve millions of human beings. They also literally, well, threatened to use it. Iran doesn't have one yet, but are lying about their status of development, enriching way more then required for civil purposes, and kicking out international watchers. Oh, and at the same time threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Saying there's no threat sounds like nitpicking to me.
I do not trust that meme. Taiwan became the country it is today because it was heavily settled by the traditional Chinese Burgeoisie that became the target of Mao's revolution. It may be that China would now like to pivot towards a culture more informed by Taiwan's system than the leftovers of its own Marxist system. So 'Mainland Taiwan' may very well play into the CCP's current cultural intentions. Regardless, we should not lose sight of what this conflict is about; it is first and last about who controls the world's supply of semiconductors. Any cultural, idealistic, or legal considerations are secondary.
Here is a perspective on China's current aggressiveness: those in power are from the culture-revolution age(1966-1976), which means they did not get good education(if anything at all). Most of them are not even middle-school graduates. Their youth time are filled with beating those well educated ones based on ideologies accusations.
Xi himself did not even finish middle school, his professional skill is the worst comparing to his past peers, he could not even read correctly many times in public since he came in power.
Hsi Chinping bought his degree paper from a ghostwriter, and barely showed for classes.
A practice deemed "almost" acceptable in the mainland among elites. People tell "for somebody already so high rank, merely buying a university degree is not really cheating"
I once had an argument over this 9 years ago with Chinese peers. The conversation came to "Maybe, if he was given a degree, and job even without a ghostwriter, then it may have been said he jumped the line."
It's problem with these people who genuinely believe that rank, and status is a license to violate things, and that is the reason to get it.
Out of all Westernised mainlanders exposed to overseas, or even out of the few who spent some years abroad, almost nobody gets past the superficial in understanding the world outside China. They are really a minority, among the minority.
TIL that George Bush is "the only U.S. president to have earned an MBA", I'm not sure if that's better or worse than purchasing a BSc in Chemistry, though.
Zhu took the tests and get admitted, like the rest of his peers(Jiang, Hu, Wen, Li,etc) they're all true graduates from the best universities in China then, which explains why China made leaps and bounds under their leadership.
Xi is the only exception among them. Xi got in college without _any_ tests, purely because he has a powerful father then. It's said he could not understand a thing taught and there is no way he could graduate(or admitted). Indeed it's unimaginable for a 6th grader to take calculus in the top universities all of a sudden.
Xi even said he has a PhD degree, it's so laughable he had to remove that claim himself.
He was at least studying for PhD in Law, according to Xinhua News Agency. I’m not entirely sure whether he ended up getting the PhD. The wording in Chinese is a bit ambiguous.
It would help if the West stopped fooling itself about the abilities of the Chinese government. The Chinese government is awash in people that have been selected, filtered, and tested as very well educated. Their average government bureaucrat would put our average government bureaucrat to shame in raw ability to get things done. We may be ahead in creative, rule breaking ideas, but do not underestimate the raw intelligence available in the Chinese government.
As someone who have spent 13 or so years of their life in China, I absolutely agree with this perspective. The culture of modern China seem to support a strangely "macho" image particularly for men: it's acceptable and maybe even encouraged, for men to be overtaken by rage, and thrash and kick around while yelling things. [1] It looks like this mentality is reflected by the politics of china as a whole.
[1]: This is actually very accurate to how people get angry in China, I've seen teachers, businessmen, even customers, rage in this characteristic weirdly macho way. https://youtu.be/aCdFec3uu_g
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic/ethnic flamewar, regardless of how many years you spent in a place. Nothing good can come of this sort of provocation.
? I honestly don't see anything in this video that I wouldn't see in expressions of anger in the US, except that they are speaking a mix of chinese and english.
Emotional regulation issues are generally caused by childhood abuse. Mainland China is a society suffering from untreated PTSD and inter generational abuse.
This is ridiculously and demeaning to the Chinese people. Losing your temper is universal and I have seen plenty of white friends that lash out. To say that only Chinese people behave this way and not white people is well at best a sign of superiority complex and at worst a subtle _______ remark.
People of all color lost temper all the time, that normally gets improved when they age.
The "Red Guards" (i.e. culture revolution) generation from China indeed stood out as a group that acts very differently. They are always ready to _fight_ with anyone just because of different opinions, thus the aggressiveness. It's a life long disease that keeps getting worse with no cure.
I agree there are many in China that feel ready to fight. But I don’t judge all Chinese people like so. Just like I don’t judge all Americans act like their Republican politicians either. Imagine if someone called all Americans are loud, obnoxious, fat, and dumb. Something that is frequently claimed by most Europeans about Americans. This wouldn’t be fair to regular Americans, would it? What OP is doing is pre-labeling an entire country’s population. And it is wrong. If readers here can’t see how this is problematic, then I am simply disappointed how low HN has fallen over the years.
Where did you see someone targeting _all_ Chinese? I did not see that. The point here is the red-guard generation in general is a bit unique, that's about it. All or nothing argument is dead on arrival, we all know that.
“China is evil and so is a large number of other countries including Russia, a lot of the Middle East and Central Asia. The others aren’t necessarily heroes but at least have free press…”
Lithuania did sentence some Nazis in 1935 to deter Germany in Klaipėda/Memel. Then managed to hold onto it till spring of 1939. Then refused Hitler offer to join attacking Poland.
In 1941-1944 people tried to stay away from Nazis and keep a fighting chance against Soviets once they’ll be back. For example Lithuanian SS division was never formed as in other occupied territories. While Germans did push for it, locals actively sabotaged it to have more men for coming anti-Soviet resistance.
Now standing up to Soviets.. while 1944-1952 was pretty decent, summer of 1940 was rather sad.
> Which is more than what the ostensibly anti-fascist USSR did.
The funniest part is that when the USSR started the invade the other half of Poland right after Germany started, none of the allies declared war on the USSR while they had a protection treaty with Poland in the first place.
I mean, of course. The alternative was that Germany takes all of Poland and gets to be more agressive against the allies. The Soviets taking half of Poland was a massive benefit for the allies.
Half of europe being behind iron curtain is beneficial to allies too. Now West got plenty of cheap workforce... Today's China is great too in a sense :)
Looking at Poland army in exile, I bet if those people shot in Katyn were able to escape, that'd have helped allies more than decomposing bodies helped the local ecosystem.
USSR being lord savior from the Nazis is the best marketing campaign ever. And that sells like hot bagels :(
Joint parades in Poland, training German armies in secrecy, Gulag tours to learn about concentration camps, selling strategic resources right up to the day when Nazis do u-turn… meh.
To be fair were was little anti-Nazi resistance. The general notion was that Soviets will be back in no time. So better not waste resources on fighting Nazis.
In Lithuania, over-16s without immunity certificates proving full vaccination or recovery from Covid are banned from shopping malls, beauty salons, cafés and restaurants and indoor public events, but are permitted to shop at food, veterinary, optical stores and pharmacies, as long as these are under 1,500 square metres and have direct street access. They can also visit art and museum exhibitions and libraries.
Why "evacuate"? Were the safety of the embassy's staff under threat?
I can't help but wonder if the word was deliberately chosen for click-baiting --- the only three occurrences of "evacuate/evacuation", including the one in the title, are concentrated in the second and third paragraphs --- it is as if they are injected as a last-minute after-thought.
The Chinese government had demanded Lithuania’s remaining diplomats in Beijing hand in their diplomatic IDs to the foreign ministry to have their diplomatic status lowered. The move raised concern in Vilnius that the officials could lose diplomatic immunity, putting their safety at risk if they remained in China. [1]
After Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius under the "Taiwan" name, and subsequently getting blocked from Chinese customs from EU shipping routes [2], and now being asked to change the ID of their diplomats to remove the diplomatic status, many would not doubt that the Chinese government would arrest and detain some embassy staff in this move, as ordinary residents of the country, like they have done in the past in the case of Canadians [3]
1. Do diplomats normally lose immunity after an embassy is demoted to a consulate (or something of a lower status)?
2. Did China have a history of detaining diplomatic personnel, disregarding their immunity?
5min searching for sources ... Might be a mixup with sonic weapons. "An employee at the U.S. Embassy in Guangzhou, China, allegedly suffered mild traumatic brain injury after hearing a vague and abnormal sound" https://www.theepochtimes.com/with-sonic-weapon-attack-china...
China always calls people and organisations who disagree with the government nasty names. Terrorists, propagandists, meddlers, revolutionists etc.
This continual name-calling of anyone who criticises any aspect of their government leads me to always doubt the sincerity of such accusations. Boy who cried wolf, writ large.
Could you provide independent sources that this Falun Gong spreads propaganda?
Considering the CCP has along history of going after religion and is persecuting religion and religious people to this day, its difficult to believe that it's a 'racist cult' when prior to 1999 it was fine, and then the CCP realised it was gaining popularity and all of a sudden it's declared an evil cult that the CCP has used to blame everything on over the years.
This is all completely irrelevant to the argument at hand. According to the Falun Gong themselves all interracial children are barred from Heaven, with their own special racism class system. I'm not quoting anyone but themselves.
Beyond that, cults are obviously more dangerous the larger they are. That goes by itself.
> cults are obviously more dangerous the larger they are.
And the biggest cult in the world is the CPP -- no, correction: Judging from some posters' claims here about how all of China fervently believes Taiwan must be "reunited" with the PRC, the biggest cult in the world is... the PRC.
> Were the safety of the embassy's staff under threat?
Seems they didn't want to risk it.
> Not knowing whether the staff would retain diplomatic immunity, and not accepting its embassy’s demotion, Lithuania told all diplomats and dependants to keep their cards and leave the next day on an Air China flight to Paris.
