Why Democracies Are Turning Against Chinese Influence
foreignaffairs.com
foreignaffairs.com
Whenever I read statements like that, it's as if somehow the EU/US think they have a right to be the dominant global economic and political power, and somehow it's their moral right to stop anyone else from ascending to that position.
China has over a billion people. So does India, so does the continent of Africa. They are all developing much, much faster than the vast majority of people realize [1]
Anyone who thinks the EU/US will remain the dominant global economic and political power in the next decades is severely deluded.
[1] Checkout the fantastic "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think " by the master Hans Rosling, where he clearly demonstrates using irrefutable stats that the poorest countries in the world today are developing faster than for example Sweden ever did, at any point in history. https://amzn.to/2CXPdCu
But, they are not very good to their own people and they are extremely distrustful of foreigners. Not just westerners but even in africa they've been caught acting with malicious intentions(the last example I read was how they backdoored the African Union's IT systems). Very hard to trust someone who trusts no one.
The primary fear should be wars and global instability instead of who gets to wear the #1 badge. It has not even been a century since WW2,the current chinese regime is operating as a response to WW2 and "running a marathon,not a sprint" to beat the west and russia. China dominating the west would usher in Cold War 2.0(or has it already,pentagon papers and all) except with higher stakes,in the end military dominance matters as much as economic.
Without wars, but with mass internment camps
About 1/4 of prisoners are there because of drugs[1]. Because of the US's punitive drug laws many of these are not dealers but users. In addition, African Americans are much more likely to get "stop and frisked" and get caught with drugs even where whites possess drugs more often[2]. They're also more likely to be arrested for drug offences[2]:
> 16% of those who sold drugs were black, but 49% of those arrested for doing so were black
The disparity in prison population cannot be explained away by crime rate or poverty demographics. It's the result of selective enforcement and preferential treatment for one group over another.
[1] https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/duc.cfm
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_War_on_Drugs#Stop...
You should checkout what the DHS, TSA and NSA have been up to...
>The US/EU will try to maintain their power because to do so is RATIONAL.
What you're getting at, I think, is true. ie - The US/EU are hypocritical. I could respond with, "Well, CHINA is hypocritical." But that wouldn't get us anywhere. The person who commented on nations acting in rational fashions made a comment that actually gets us somewhere.
No, there are no "good guys" here, just a lot of people acting rationally. When looked at in that fashion, the propaganda from both sides is completely understandable.
Also, a lot of it is true.
For instance, you didn't say that China WAS worthy of trust because x, or y, or z.
You said that the US is NOT worthy of trust because x, and y, and z. All likely true, but that doesn't make China any more of a friend to the world than is the US.
It's disingenuous to equate concerns over malign Chinese influence with some kind of neocolonial fear of the Global South.
It's because India is still too far behind. When one day India is about to be the next global leader, westerners will start to think otherwise. It's always possible to make a fuss about something. India's counterfeit drug, caste system, dispute with Pakistan and interference in Nepal are all going to be great concerns, just like how people are concerned about Chinese Belt & Road, IP theft and South China sea. It happened to Japan, is happening to China, and will happen to India or any other challenger.
Dispute with Pakistan - all the info I ever read (and it has been quite a bit since I visited those places), Pakistan was always the aggressor, India was defending itself against invasion on its own land. Pakistan loves to challenge Kashmir since it is predominantly muslim territory, but if we respect all treaties signed since India's independence, its simply part of India. The only reason there are issues is because Pakistan fuels the push for independence which wouldn't be there without this. People in the region would be actually worse off if they would be part of Pakistan. In this specific topic, I have 0 sympathy with Pakistan who is known to support terrorist cells in its neighbors via its secret service, and not event trying to hide it too much. India has something like 150 millions of muslims, overall less conflicts with them then ie in Europe so its not about hindus hating muslims. Also Rajastan territory has tons of muslims and no big issues there (who would fight for a desert). Its a shame that US supported muslim dictatorship instead of multicultural democracy defending itself in this conflict.
In the same vein China simply took some Indian territory in 60s by military, there wasn't a regular war since it was very mountainous region with little other value back then. These days they act like nothing happened. But this shows their general mentality - peaceful and avoiding conflicts. US would rather create WW III then give up an inch of its own land.
The rest of the points you mention are more controversial, but still, considering what a behemoth the country is, they are surprisingly peaceful.
If you perceive the actions and policy of another nation to be very immoral, is it not a moral obligation to try and spread your own version of morality?
Of course, all morality is relative, and so I'm not arguing about whether Western vs. Eastern morality is "better" or "worse".
I do think mass internment camps, social points, and mass surveillance are horribly immoral - but that isn't "Eastern" morality, just the actions of the Chinese govt.
I'd strongly disagree! Maybe there is consensus within western nations, or nations with a high average living standard, but even those vary greatly.
Things like marriage equality are extremely recent, but so is the universal right to vote. There are nations who still practice child marriage, for example.
In the end, in hand to hand combat in the trenches, Confucianism will win. It’s practical, it doesn’t care about “the Other”.
1. China just opened one of the largest bridges in the world, the Hong Kong-Zuhai-Macau bridge. This bridge cuts what used to be 4 hour journey from Hong Kong to mainland China, to 45 minutes.
2. While I was in Hong Kong, there was a disruption in the subway service. Instead of trains running every 3-4 minutes, they were running every 6-8 minutes. Some people experienced delays of up to 15(!) minutes. From the news coverage, you'd think this was a 9/11-level catastrophe. It was the top story all day, and it continues as the company responsible is still offering public apologies and reduced fares to make up for the disruption. It was absolutely inconceivable that the train should ever be late.
Meanwhile, back in DC where I live, we count ourselves lucky if the train shows up at all and is not on fire.
So leaders can go on about "determined political action" but the bottom line is, China is getting shit done and building things that people can actually use to make their lives better. (Human rights are another story of course).
The US and much of the western world seems to have lost any ability to build large-scale infrastructure project, and the infrastructure we do have is crumbling due to neglect. When was the last time something like the Hong Kong-Zuhai-Macau bridge was built in the US? Maybe Robert Moses building highways through Manhattan in the 60s and 70s?
The Three Gorges Dam wiped out 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages and dislocated 1.24 million residents. There were probably protests, but how would you know and what do you think happened to the protesters? Here in Britain we're having a permanent crisis building one more airport terminal.
Autocratic regimes are completely opaque in their finances and budgetary priorities and care more about publicly visible results, of which flagship infrastructure projects are a prominent part.
When you have such a complete monopoly on force and authority, you can tell people to build bridges or else; hell, you can chase crackpot economic development ideas that starve tens of millions of your own people to death if you want.
# of times in the average person's day when it is useful to be able to Google Tienneman Square: ~0
# of times when functioning public infrastructure is useful: All day every day.
So shrugging your shoulders and saying "whelp, that's the price you pay for freedom of expression" is not a good enough answer. Sooner or later people are going to decide the price isn't worth it if their government isnt capable of doing anything that actually benefits them
That said, there's a lot of fear in China about how long the government can keep the house of cards standing. The CCP derives its legitimacy from its successes - if things really start to go badly, there could be internal strife well beyond anything imaginable in the west. Their attempt to totally control information is really an indicator of weakness and paranoia, not strength. One would hope that if they can actually navigate the coming storms and build a genuinely healthy economy, the need for all that will gradually diminish. Of course, if they can't... well, I can see how being able to technologically inhibit massive rioting might be an appealing tool in the belt.
Remember Snowden moved to Hong Kong to get his story out.
The internet makes China out to be this place where everyone is just always working, have almost no rights anymore, constantly surveiled so they can't have fun or enjoyment, just NPC's making womens underwear for 2 cents an hour.
I think it's just projection from the failures of their own country to be honest.
Also the fact that you seem to equate shopping with freedom strikes me as very American :-)
If Snowden was in HK with Chinese state intelligence (or more likely, details about party leadership scandals), he would not have been able to leave the country unscathed.
Are you serious or just trolling? The US has intervened more than any other country over the last decade. As we speak unmanned US drones are killing and dismembering innocent people.
> And despite a bunch of nasty undemocratic stuff happening in the US, there were a lot of underhanded things going on in recent political events in HK.
That's why I said on par with US and Europe. HK is not Switzerland, but not the undemocratic hell some are making it to be.
That's the bottom line. It frightens me to admit, but China is the only advanced economy where progress is happening these days.
If you check out the opinion of Western expat population here (other than English teachers and ayis) a high double digit of them will put out this very concrete reasoning for coming here. Most come here because they are betting on a winning horse, not because they suddenly felt in love papa Xi or anything.
The scorecards of Western nations stopped improving two decades ago, and I believe we are now passing an inflection point from which their stagnation turns into a decline.
Even relatively deep in the countryside you will have new roads, so the infrastructure is spread out nicely. But in so many places you will find abandoned buildings, 80% empty new construction trying to capitalise on a huge real estate bubble, and some major overprovisioning (things are growing fast, but not that fast). So many places just feel empty.
A lot of it reminds me of the nightmarish city designs of le corbusier, where design decisions were taken to look the most impressive on a postcard, or to look huge from a postcard. But then you're walking inside the place and it feels totally out of place.
It's great that infrastructure is being built, and this sort of mass movement could help tackle a lot of problems. But like Moses' highways in the past, these are being built more as political monuments rather than as smart urbanism.
No politician wants to be in charge of building 3 normal-speed train line when they could be in charge of building a high-speed train line, even if the former would be more useful.
The Hong Kong subway was designed and built during Hong Kong's time under British administration, and built as a public programme under the HK Council. It would have been far larger but for the oil crisis, but expanded a dozen times between then and now, even after privatisation in 2000. Broadly in line with HK's development, and in a way that would have been difficult to replicate back in the UK.
The governance that makes HK such a success was nothing to do with Beijing. That was the whole point of the initial emphasis on two systems during handover. Since the 1997 handover Beijing has progressively weakened and interfered with HK, to barely a peep from the West, not even Britain. Only this week there's been reports of the last truly free bookshop (where one might find anything critical of Beijing), once a vibrant aspect of HK, has closed thanks to Beijing pressure. You might have heard the recent reports of the kidnappings of booksellers and publishers.
Hong Kong was a special, free, window into China until the early 2010's. Please don't give Beijing any credit for it.
We need to figure out what it is and fix it, because whatever the US is doing it's not working compared to China and HK. I live in the capital of the supposedly most powerful country in the world and the basic mechanics of getting from point A to point B are an embarrassment.
Look at the difference between these political statements. One is a tangible object: one of the longest bridges in the world that people could actually use to do something faster than they did before.
The "political statement" from western leaders is a quote in an article in a journal that only policy wonks read. I wonder which will have more impact?
It remains to be seen whether this will pay off, but they were significantly cutting back on spending before the tariffs started.
In my opinion you are a little too generous here. In many historical cases, and for many countries, a less active involvement of western democracies would mean more development and more poverty reduction. Just think of the interference in internal politics, the support to dictatorial regimens and the imposition of "free trade". Of course, that doesn't mean that the Chinese are going to be better.
This part of the article strike me as specially disconnected of reality:
"Unlike Western lenders, China does not require its partners to meet stringent conditions related to corruption, human rights [..]"
It's specially ironic because, who are the main partners of China if not those Westerns?
And MBS can be replaced if the collective royal family thinks he is a liability
Replace MBS? Ask Jamal Khashoggi.
It has to do with slavery by debt. Something as old as Roman Empire. The Jews created a cyclic system of years, with one, the Shemittah, the Sabbatical year to free people from debt for this reason.
If you want to know how the West has been doing the same (or worse) for a long time you could read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", by John Perkins.
Day by day, US think-thanks are joining Trump's economic war against China. For US, to build up allies, usual quick wins are Australia, Japan and adversarial countries surrounding China as well as UK and most of Europe and some of South America.
Harder competition ahead between China and US will be in Africa, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Middle East, Asia.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_Indo...
As I was reading this I thought, “and what happens when our neighbors to the south grow weary of our overbearing regional influence?”
"Democracies"? I get that foreign affairs is a propaganda think tank, but I wish they'd be more honest. People aren't uneducated saps anymore.
"why some in the west and others are working to contain china"? would be a better title. Has nothing to do with "democracies".
It's not a recent phenomenon. It's not just democracies. Some autocrats also are against chinese influence.
But this also applies to every nation. Many democracies and non-democracies are turning against european "influence". Many democracies and non-democracies are turning against american "influence". The same for russia and their former sphere of influence nations. No country wants to be under the thumb of another country.
The only difference between china and the US/EU/Russia is that china doesn't bomb and invade democracies or non-democracies to "bring them freedom". At least not yet.
Nothing this article stated is new. Essentially, water is wet but propagandized to make it seem our water is better or their is worse.