Malaysia Resists China’s Investments, Fearing ‘Colonialism’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lank...
"Bigger pile of money" diplomacy meets "bigger gun" diplomacy. It shoudn't be surprising. We did the same thing under the Monroe Doctrine. But it's been long enough that many in the West have forgotten about it.
Severe pain for India, as Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar have Chinese presence now, just a matter of time when the boots land. String of pearls, as it is called.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/jul/31/no-cambodia-l...
https://laotiantimes.com/2017/05/16/chinas-investments-costi...
Part of the reasons why countries are wary is because the Chinese just doesn't play nice with the local: all the contractors are Chinese companies, the business is run by Chinese, the tourists use RMB and doesn't respect local culture etc... Maybe it will take them 10~20 years to learn the lesson.
So Samoa will use their vote to support any Chinese motion no matter what.
A country as wealthy as China can quickly take over most of the assets in Malaysia, which is another form of colonialization.
With sanctions and protectionism, I wonder if the barriers to war are actually reduced.
Again, the US has done similar things in the past, hence the numerous US air force bases scattered around the world. It's simply practical to gain soft power, and then convert that soft power into harder power.
That is the US's rational for doing the same thing, yes.
It doesn't end well. It results in stuff like the Iranian revolution. Installing and/or supporting "friendly leaders" who then push deals that are against the local national interest results in a great deal of hostility in the long run.
The reason the US is hated isn't that the US is evil. It is the fact the US meddled in the affairs of others more than they should have and then leveraged concessions beyond what the native population wanted. China is repeating that mistake.
> Again, the US has done similar things in the past, hence the numerous US air force bases scattered around the world. It's simply practical to gain soft power, and then convert that soft power into harder power.
Practical? Yes. If you are expecting to go to war.
If no war materializes, you've destroyed any chance of popular support in that country indefinitely. China is burning bridges with the native populations in these countries that won't go away in 5 years.
Why not?
>It results in stuff like the Iranian revolution.
Also resulted in the greatest era in human history in terms of peace and prosperity.
>It is the fact the US meddled in the affairs of others more than they should have and then leveraged concessions beyond what the native population wanted.
I think it's hard being at the top and maintaining global order. You get blamed for everything and you get credit for nothing.
You are confusing Capitalism with foreign policy.
> Why not?
Where do you think all this anti-US violence comes from?
Empires have never fared well once they fell from power with the exception of the British who were geographically isolated and had very powerful allies.
Simply because the bloodshed caused by US foreign policy mostly occurs on foreign soil doesn't mean it will stop just because the US is no longer an empire.
> I think it's hard being at the top and maintaining global order. You get blamed for everything and you get credit for nothing.
The US actively instigated violent revolutions, torture, and abuses in other countries. Pretending that is "part of maintaining global order" is absurd.
The pillars of what the US is credited for is something half the population actively rebels against (globalism, free trade) and were achieved in spite of the popular will domestically.
Simply because I believe a certain technique should be verboten doesn't mean I ignored credit for the US's successes.
Being at the top (say, a superpower in today's world) means you enjoy at least an order of magnitude advantage over any other country in the majority of interactions you might have with them.
If you think of maintaining global order as helping to maintain that lead, then not getting credit for anything really doesn't factor into any of the decision-making calculus.
Except I wouldn't think of it that way. I don't think that's the correct interpretation. I think maintaining global order means you live in the world you want to live in. Americans wanted to spread American ideals of Democracy, free speech and free enterprise. Soviet Union wanted to spread Soviet ideals. I think that's as simple as that.
Do you think it's a coincidence the world adopted the economic and political system of the world's superpower? When there two superpowers, the world was neatly divided by the economic and political system of those respective of superpowers. Another coincidence?
Before WW2 and America's official accession to a superpower status, even Europe didn't really embrace democracy (outside of Britain and France), with fascism and communism taking hold of much of the continent.
>Empires have never fared well once they fell from power
I'm not even sure how to contextualize that statement. Empires have always fared well but you're right they don't last, and when they fall, it leads to anarchy, misery and war... until the next Empire. So I wouldn't be so quick to celebrate America's decline as the maintainer of present global order.
>The US actively instigated violent revolutions, torture, and abuses in other countries.
Forest for the trees. I'm sure you can pick out many individual cases where you think America didn't live up to your ideals ... but it's a big world, and lots of things happen and this sort of selective focus on negatives is easily done and gives a warped perspective.
Look at the big picture. We live in the most peaceful and prosperous time in the human history. Things like that don't happen by happenstance.
For some.
There's this great documentary called "Germany after the war" which bears attention to people who wish to understand how the world works. West Germany ... pretty much as overt a satrapy as East Germany was.
Basically, China is the jailhouse thug that enslaves you for a carton of smokes you borrowed. The US is the Hollywood producer who achieves the same ends through more subtle means.
Isn’t it only Russians who think that the Ukrainian coup was done by the US?
China is spending trillions building infrastructure across the planet.
The US is spending trillions bombing its enemies across the planet.
Both policies are arguably wasteful and misguided, but I'm pretty sure China will be left with the longer standing positive impact and goodwill.
And this is why that strategy is called American Imperialism, also called "a kind of low-grade colonialism"
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/asia/china-malaysia-mahathir-...
"Doors Slam Shut for China Deals Around the World"
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-20/doors-sla...
I know I'm not the only one who feels this way and I can only imagine the great expert commenters this board is losing because of this.
What I can say is that I preferred the version of HN where the eclectic and mind-opening topics would get voted to the top and thought provoking debate from domain experts would be left in the comments.
Increasingly it's posts directly from main-stream media pushing the main-stream media narrative, and the comments serve little to no value other than providing a place to declare one's political ideologies.
If I wanted to read main-stream media I would be reading it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_toll
How is defending South Korea a human rights violation? All those deaths are on NK and China.
However, I do disagree that free speech should be the end-all-be-all, ultimate supreme virtue to strive towards. That's such a naive and childish notion and I don't understand why it has become such a meme. Yes it's up there, yes it should be implemented in due time and is suitable for economically and politically stable nations but how can any rational person advocate it for all nations in all states of development?
I'm sure the vast majority of citizens in those states where freedom of speech is most advocated for would prefer censorship over living in a destabilised nation mired in endless conflict and divisive free speech.
The US seemed to be just fine with free speech as a tenant.
If you want a great example of a nation that has eliminated conflict by suppressing all of that pesky free speech, look no further than North Korea.
You've presented a silly false dichotomy between free speech and a stable nation when it's government censorship and oppression that eventually leads to a breaking point and genocides/revolutions.
There are hundreds of other countries around the world. People call you out for whataboutism for complaining about the US on articles about China because the article is not about the US. Why don't you say "what about Somalia" or "what about Russia"? Is it because that would seem like an distraction from the topic under discussion?
This article is not comparing China to the US, Somalia, Russia, etc.
I was actually referring to China in that sentence. Freedom of speech is taken for granted in the US and rarely needs to be advocated for.
> You've presented a silly false dichotomy between free speech and a stable nation when it's government censorship and oppression that eventually leads to a breaking point and genocides/revolutions.
In my opinion it is neither silly nor a false dichotomy. As much as censorship and oppression has contributed to genocides/revolutions in history, so has factious and reckless speech leading to the rise of populist demagogues and cults of personality.
Freedom of speech and the right to express all of one's most basest thoughts and impulses has never gone down well in nations where the populace is too ill educated to fully comprehend what is being said. The same goes for the infallible and shining doctrine of democracy -appropriate for an informed populace that actually knows what it is they are voting for. Inappropriate for places two decades removed from abject poverty and 3rd world status.
"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It" is a cornerstone of democracies - though of course most fall short of the ideal, but it is still an ideal to strive for.
Those who prefer censorship usually prefer it for other people, not themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...
Anti/pro Americanism is mostly the same. Worse even...
This polarization has always showed up here but in the last year or so it seems to be upticking around nationalistic questions. We may be in for rougher waters.
Although it did make for some good faith debating, I'll refrain from doing so in the future... for as long as I can, at least :)
With both the whatabowtists and the anti-China hawks trying to outplay each other in the moral outrage game.
There are plenty of subreddits for those who like to astroturf about China ranging from anti-China hawks to pro-Beijing trolls.
Sorry for the cynicism, but I really dislike astroturfers.
I've seen a couple of userames popping on these threads all the time. And China related threads have an odd number of new accounts posting comments in them.
It can be people that have to live anonymously lest they have to deal with dictatorships or it can also be the same group of people posting the same opinions all over again.
As for names, there is two users in this thread that are posting in almost every China-related thread for at least a month or so. I won't particularly point to them, since I'm not sure it goes well with the guidelines
Though it didn't happen on HN, the unidan case on reddit is a good example. The guy basically manipulated voting in a large subreddit on his own by using a number of alternative accounts to upvote his own comments.
Anyway, if that is the direction HN is headed and this is regarded as acceptable, then I'm leaving.
I don't tolerate propaganda or people spreading it. This is on the guidelines: "Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle." A bunch of users forget about that and I won't be around a website that goes into it.
We have an actual word for this: grassroots.
Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data.