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Comment by tehjoker | Hacker News Reader

I understand in the abstract why the US is freaking out about China as their economy is eclipsing the US and they are starting to create a competing international order to the WTO/IMF type deal with the belt and road initiative. However, I don't understand exactly what is triggering the national security establishment's (usually stupid and deadly) sudden paranoia about China.

Many people I know simply see these headlines and start to see China as an official enemy. I don't understand why we should see them that way at all. The official enemies of the US are typically brutalized in various ways and slandered in the media. It is difficult to know what is to be taken at face value.

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Thucydides's trap, old as history itself. From the wikipedia page of the Graham T. Allison who termed the coin: Allison coined the phrase Thucydides's Trap to refer to the situation that when a rising power causes fear in an established power, it escalates toward war. Thucydides wrote: "What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta." And a Ted talk from him explaining the matter: https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_allison_is_war_between_chin...

> I understand in the abstract why the US is freaking out about China as their economy is eclipsing the US and they are starting to create a competing international order to the WTO/IMF type deal with the belt and road initiative. However, I don't understand exactly what is triggering the national security establishment's (usually stupid and deadly) sudden paranoia about China.

The previous administrations were directly collaborating with China, which was justified to the public with the wishful thinking that the CCP would liberalize when exposed to the productive free market. This administration doesn't have the same ties with the Chinese state that the previous ones did, and at the same time China is becoming visibly less liberal and more tyrannical. It's not paranoia if you know anything about the CCP.

I think the concern is that a nation that has literal concentration camps and exhibits any-western thought and agendas is going to become a major power.

China is hardly going to "eclipse" the US. I think the concern is less economic and more geopolitical. It should worry the West that a highly authoritarian nation is becoming wealthy and powerful.

It's a reasonable concern, I think. Once China gets hard geopolitical power it will start to export its own way of thinking, just as the US did. But unlike the US, which at least in theory believes in basic rights, China is a literal authoritarian surveillance state with no such values.

I worry that state run concentration camps like those in xinjiang will become normalized.

Yea, China definitely has problems no question about that. Xinjiang is one of the points I am most concerned with. However, the US doesn't take actions based on anything resembling goodwill towards others (we have a network of torture stations and kidnapping black sites don't forget). In many important ways, the US can be described as highly authoritarian, particularly when it comes to foreign policy (witness combinations of illegal invasions, brutal sanctions, and sometimes decisive support for death squads in Panama, Venezuela, Cuba, Iraq, Guatemala, etc).

I do think the world should bring more attention to Xinjing, but I don't think escalating tensions is going to do anything worthwhile (especially when I haven't heard a whit about the trade war being sanctions for humanitarian violations). The trade war is also not going to help American workers, capital controls would do that though.

Personally I think it’s not a ‘sudden’ paranoia, it’s an overdue one.

China has made it abundantly clear for a long time that it considers the US to be an ideological enemy, a military rival and a target for economic and geopolitical warfare.

Since ~2008 / Xi Jin Ping took over, its also been fairly clear that China has no intention of liberalizing in any sense, and the government is actively working to undermine the US/European model of a harmonious world.

However, US government policy pre-Trump basically assumed that China was going to liberalize and play by the (US/EU) rules.

I’m not a Trump fan by any means, but regarding China I think he is the first to drop the pretense that China is a friend of America, and now the China hawks in the media, government and military are all piling on.

> China has made it abundantly clear for a long time that it considers the US to be an ideological enemy, a military rival and a target for economic and geopolitical warfare.

Not true. China is only interested in preserving its own authoritarian system. China feels fine to coexist with other forms of government, democracy or monarchy. It may influence other countries to advance its business interest, but never attempt to overthrow a government for ideological reasons. What you said only shows the US considers China an ideological enemy, but not the reverse.

I think if you look at media and propaganda within China, my original point is true - America (and often Europe) is presented as an enemy, an example of the failure of democracy, a chaotic place, a dangerous place to live/visit, a country that intrinsically hates China.... there’s no way in which Chinese people are told ‘American democracy is good, our system is also good, let’s just learn to get along’

edit: in addition, things that we’ve seen in recent years like ‘purges’ of Western influences in Chinese universities - those directly contradict your point that China doesn’t consider the West an ideological enemy.

There is a difference between “stay away from me” and “I’m going to fk you up”.

If the former also fits your definition of “enemy”, I get your point.

Leaving aside the anti-western reasons for having "stay away from me" as a stance, how does it not fit that definition of "enemy"?

"Stay away from me" doesn't mean anything without a willingness to do something if the other doesn't stay away.

Would you call someone an enemy just because he told his kids not to play with your kids?

China wants the seat at the table back and reinstate themselves as a world power. Unlike the USSR they have the economic, military, diplomatic and cultural power to be an equal to the current players. Accommodate or resist. The US seems to steer to the latter.

> Unlike the USSR

The USSR did match or surpass everyone else for a while. You can argue about long-term sustainability, but from 1945 to 1975 ca. they were a legitimate superpower by all definitions.

Well there's certainly more in play here than plain "paranoia". Abuse of WTO rules, foul play on the internet (particularly pertaining to BGP hijacking and DDoS attacks), spying, concentration camps in Xinjiang, etc.

Trump and our right-wing government is helping speed things along, but it's a bit of a stretch to claim they're eclipsing the US. It's more like we're fumbling the ball.

Moreover, China's economy is heavily dependent on the consumption of the goods they manufacture for other countries. As their own population demands better wages and living conditions they've been outsourcing basic manufacturing to places like Africa. They haven't got a good foundation to develop the systems, intellectual properties, research, and other things necessary to move beyond manufacturing. Things may be changing, but the sort of cultural change required for that effort is huge. Even with Trump's substantial effort to tear down the US as a world power it is not likely China will rise to even nearly the same level of dominance any time soon (decades out, if ever).

Have you looked at your firewall’s logs in the last 15 years?

Are you prepared to send your children to die in a war over those logs? Both World Wars were caused by such mercantilistic tensions and they were economically ruinous for primary participants.

Why are you in such a hurry to escalate to war and send off Americans to die? Do you think you can really walk off with an economic advantage after war with a nation of 1 billion?

> Are you prepared to send your children to die in a war over those logs?

Of course not.

However, this discussion is about whether we should be concerned that they’re supplying parts for the f35. Based on my firewall logs, that sounds fairly reasonable to me.

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