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Comment by eplanit | Hacker News Reader

I get the impression that we're now in an undeclared Cold War with China.

This is certainly not a cold war - it's a trade war, it's competition, it's different cultures... but it is not war frozen in place by the threat of annihilation.

It's more than just a traditional (import/export) trade war. It's very economically driven, with government-backed businesses buying up businesses all over the world and then trying to exert (economical) control via those, while they barely allow businesses to do the same in China.

One-sided cold war perhaps. China has no interest in turning the US communist. Because of Chinese exceptionalism, it doesn't think that's desirable or even possible. Can the US picture a future where it coexists with a communist China though? Based on comments from most Anglophone commentators, that doesn't seem to be the case. Their only two end goals for China is eventual democracy or eventual collapse.

The Cold War had regular threats of nuclear annihilation as well as constant military testing of each other's response times and perimeter. There are no Chinese nuclear bombers violating US airspace forcing USAF jet scrambling.

This is far far less antagonistic. ...at least for now.

Well considering China's been harassing Philippino fishing boats and starting minor skirmishes along the Indian border. Both countries are trading partners and have ties with america and America's now sent naval forces to the south China sea.

The threat of nuclear war isn't the only thing that makes a cold war. It's the constant small economic, social and military pushes by these countries against eachother.without ever formally declaring war.

I think there's a pretty big psychological difference between harassing a fishing boat and threatening nuclear war.

Canada also harasses US fishing boats, fyi.

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/13/us/fishing-boat-dodges-gu...

I'd not heard of this incident and found it interesting. Here's more context.

https://www.csmonitor.com/1989/1219/afish.html

Maybe not with US territory directly but China has been extremely aggressive in the South China Sea. Despite this being international waters, Western aligned nations and US ships have been directly harassed and threatened. The Chinese island military bases are a direct move to allow area denial. They [the CCP] also export Chinese-style internet controls and ideological ideas around censorship and the acceptability of mass surveillance and targeting of dissidents. The loans given to countries by China are often neo-colonial in nature, tying African countries to China by debt.

This is definitely Soviet-Era style cold war tactics. Could be ripped out of the 60s with the names replaced.

Are you calling Vietnam a western-aligned nation? I'd say it just looks like China versus whoever stands in their way as they invent new claims to resources in the region.

I was thinking more of the Philippines / Taiwan / Indonesia, but fair point. Vietnam has also received a fair amount of Chinese aggression despite being "socialist brothers".

Vietnam and China have never been "socialist brothers", and even just brothers. They are adversaries on the civilizational level, 17 big wars during the last 20 centuries, half of them for Vietnamese independence. The last armed conflict happened in 1989, when China occupied disputed islands in the South-China sea. Vietnam would side to anyone against China (source: I live here)

Vietnam at this time clearly an ally of the US and other Western countries, against China of course. There was a plan to create a naval base in Cam Rahn, but new US administration cancelled this.

China’s been in proxy wars with the US for maybe seventy years or so if my numbers are right.

It’s not the same exactly as Russia, but there are parallels.

The same could be said for any two major world powers with conflicting interests.

How does a country declare a Cold War, anyways?

Serious answer: its national media starts saying there is one.

More to the point, how does a country end a Cold War? Hot wars have a formal end via truces and armistices; undeclared wars may continue unabated in other theaters and fronts, as well as different domains entirely.

The most famous one ended when the soviet union collapsed (fatigue, economic stresses, random misunderstandings). I'm looking forward to the same thing happening to CCP/china in about a decade or so.

Here's hoping the US isn't the one that collapses in on itself this time. My perception of China is that it's government makes life pretty terrible but it seems better organized over there (because of state control).

A lot of what they're doing is BS/Potemkin villages. Imagine everything being built with the attitude that the only thing that matters is time and price. In a country with 1.4B people. Same shitty "if it looks good on the surface it's good enough" ideology everywhere, at every single level in society. Then imagine this has been going on for decades.

No wonder the CCP banned the construction of very tall skyscrapers recently.

> seems better organized over there

Until the cracks start opening up. What you see is just them showing their best side all the time. This is not "organization". This is theatrics. You should differentiate between the two!

If we define a "collapse" as the rulers getting deposed by the opposition, then it happens in the US pretty often.

When it happens in China things may get very messy.

A "collapse" in the US would be civil war 2.0. That's what a "collapse" in China was from 1916 to 1949.

Still, a civil war requires the civilian government to lose control of the military or a central military to splinter into regional militias. That doesn't seem likely in the US or China. Another scenario for a US "collapse" would be a military coup or some other end to the democratic experiment.

I don't think a routine election counts as a collapse. A govt collapse in the US would mean some combination of elections failing, leaders keeping or gaining control through force, and a breakdown of rule of law with a lot of chaos, violence, and disruption.

I very much do not want to see the US collapse; it would not be a pleasant experience. I don't think it's too likely in the near future, but it's certainly possible and these sorts of developments often only seem obvious in hindsight.

You obviously haven't lived in a communist country. It's merely just pretending to be better organised, and yes, state control. People will do things out of fear and because they're forced to but when the central power collapses everything becomes dis-organised and a few opportunists helped by X outside power take control and/or profit.

I sincerely hope that the US doesn't collapse because we'd be left at the mercy of Russia and China.

I think both you, I, and the person you commented on agree on that.

(You probably misread a negation.)

I do wonder if that cold war did indeed end with the fall of the Soviet Union or if it's in fact still going on, but the US and some of its European partners aren't aware of it.

>How does a country declare a Cold War, anyways?

Simple, just don't cooperate with western capitalists looking to plunder an area, a Cold War will be declared shortly after.

Alternatively there's been a cold war with communist China from the beginning.

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