China orders U.S. to shut Chengdu consulate, retaliating for Houston | Hacker News Reader

China orders U.S. to shut Chengdu consulate, retaliating for Houston

reuters.com

35 pointsamin36 comments

Apparantly Chinese TV has live video streams of the embassy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9E09BekUH4

Presumably as a payback for the fire brigade showing up at the Houston embassy.

To be honest. This is terrible. The US China-relations risk spiral out of control and idiotic unrestricted nationalism will rule the day.

> To be honest. This is terrible. The US China-relations risk spiral out of control and idiotic unrestricted nationalism will rule the day.

> Will

??? from my standpoint, it looks like it already does, and did for the last decade or so,

Its a well known dirty secret that consulates of all countries serve double duty as offices for foreign intelligence services. The two possibilities I see are either the US had intelligence of some particularly egregious use of this not-so-secret arrangement or the current administration has just taken an unthinkable sledgehammer to a serious diplomatic norm just to be "tough on china". The fact that biden is polling well in Texas and Trump's whole schtick in his ads is "Biden won't be hard on China", it seems likely to me that this whole thing is a reckless campaign stunt.

While the Houston fire department did show up, they respected Chinese sovereignty. In other words they did what a fire Dept is supposed to do for embassy calls, and the calls were not unfounded. The only other case I know of a consulate burning everything was the Soviets at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.

Yes. This seems to be an escalation on all channels driven by internal US politics. My worry is that a Trump administration faced with loosing an election is willing to take too risky bets.

Is hacker news a political news site?

Political submissions tend to get flagged and removed. It's partly a function of how hostile the comments are. HN doesn't want flame wars. If a submission provokes polite, thoughtful discussion, it's more likely to stay up even if the article is highly political.

Sadly yes.

Why sadly? Political education is very important.

Not everyone lives in a democracy where the tiny individual is to be concerned with national healthcare and defense. Some people just want to discuss state solutions for Flutter. Political discussion is very democratic-centric!

These times are very political.

Best to put it — "Do you want Flutter, or do you want to see your another day in a civil state?"

What is more important, your job/hobby, or being able to live/eat/breathe tomorrow?

There’s a lot of websites on the internet that are happy to discuss politics. This one was created to have a narrow focus.

From the guidelines: “ Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is a privately owned property by an early-stage investment firm. Either it is a property of whim or it is a property of business, or perhaps a combination thereof.

Also, politics is the negotiation of power. I'm not sure why people wouldn't want to discuss that, especially given the potency of tech to insert itself into democratic politics. People who aren't in tech are certainly using tech to discuss the intersection between tech in politics.

For better or worse, that has been mostly overridden by:

> Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Through the community (made up of at least in great part, hackers) deciding that politics is interesting.

I’m here for tech news and respite from politics. Can’t scan titles without seeing politics.

Chengdu consulate is a very peculiar place. It shows very well the schizophrenia of a communist state.

You could walk past it and not even notice there's anything special about that place. Yes it has tall, well protected walls around it, but so do many schools in Chengdu (apparently kidnapping is/was a huge concern). The place also has guards around it, but so do many office complexes. There's even one or two armed policemen -- a normal view around any bigger transport hub as well.

At least 3 years ago, when I went there, there was not a single US flag installed visible from the street. It's like CCP doesn't want (their own) people to see, "US is there".

The giveaway for me was the private via consultancy/advisory offices on the other side of the street. They all had USA flags in their windows.

Bo Xilai's defecting protege fled there. Chengdu was also a hotbed of cultural revolution where a lot of party leaders (including close relatives some of current leaders) were "suicided."

Other than that, Sichuan had a strong regional political culture, insular from on in the capital.

I've also heard from the locals, Chengdu is (recently) the "San Francisco" of China. You could be quite flamboyant without repressions.

It's also very liveable compared to other mega-cities I've been to.

Where do we go next?

Armed conflict against China? Nuclear warfare against China?

America has 5000 nuclear ICBM missiles. China has 300 nuclear ICBM missiles of lesser quality and precision.

Is America looking to exchange a few American cities, in order to destroy the entire Chinese civilization?

What American cities do you want to sacrifice, in order to meet your political objectives?

Most likely supporting other opponents of PRC.

India just had a bunch of its soldiers murdered by a PRC attack. That is one. Japan is the PRC boogeyman whenever they need to whip the mob up. Taiwan, Vietnam etc

PRC behaviour resulted in it being surrounded with enemies instead of friends.

Last year US coordinated a deal together with Japan to have MHI help build indigenous modern submarines for Taiwan. Prototype looks suspiciously like Soryu class. Taiwan get half a dozen of those and their ambitions with Taiwan are finished.

PRC has played hard ball for a long time. US finally starting to play by same rules, it’s about time.

> Where do we go next?

Some more empty gestures, then some more special commercial privileges from China for our President’s immediate family members, or maybe a political favor like a transparently fabricated stack of “evidence” against Joe Biden, then everything will suddenly be okay, probably.

> America has 5000 nuclear ICBM missiles.

That is high by 4,600.

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