1938's Germany was also much worse than 1934's Germany. So it is no point of saying, well, you did not complain about Hitler in 1934, so no right to complain about him in 1938.
Another geek datapoint: I travel to China often, and every year it gets harder and harder to access outside websites (yes, even with proxies).
This doesn't mean I'm supporting Xi. I'm just pointing out that China's direction had to change, some way or another, so it makes no sense to look back at previous administrations with rose-colored glasses.
The Internet filtering was already being introduced by Hu Jintao. But, admittedly, Xi is the Paranoid-Man.
If they had continued on the Hu Jintao trajectory, getting slightly more open while amassing economic and political power at the same rate, you'd see the exact same moralizing from Americans about how bad they are.
I knew Xi was a textbook dictator when I heard about him banning Winnie The Pooh in Chinese internet [0].
[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/china-bans-win...
Xi crossed into dictator territory when he was able to declare himself president for life. Otherwise, we’d be talking about his successor by now.
In China, you are given a list of 41 names and have to select 40 of them, that one not being picked not getting a seat. Ironically enough, Xi was in that position before but his status as a princeling meant he still got a seat anyways.
Under Xi, they have stoked nationalism a lot more, the same as Trump did here, at the same time as they have built a surveillance state like no other. Yes, the US isn't innocent here, but let's not draw false equivalences between what the NSA was doing, and installing cameras every 10 feet with deep neural nets to track everyone movement from the time they leave their home to the time they return, and even tag ethnic features (label video detected features as "uighur")
There's been a rise of nationalism around the globe, with fascists being elected everywhere. And that's why the West should resist China, not because China's rise is bad, but because China's rise with Xi at the helm is bad.
I wouldn't have said resist Germany prior to Hitler either, as there was nothing wrong with their economy improving after the horrors of WW1. It's all the other shit they were doing under the Nazis that called for a boycott.
Ditto for Japan and the US oil embargo. Japanese economic growth? Not a bad thing. Japanese economic growth used to invade, pillage, and rape China? A good reason for resistance.
This is something hard to get through to a lot of people, but criticism of the CCP is not criticism of the Chinese people, China, or Chinese culture. But the CCP has thoroughly convinced people that to oppose them, is to "insult China" and provoke a nationalist response.
The resistance we need is to fascism, of all forms.
If it was you’d see all the western oligarchs abandoning us in favour for better markets in a heartbeat.
Greed.
I think it fits rather perfectly into a narrative with 30 years of western investments into China with the expectancy of it opening up more. The money men are just rustling their swords because it’s not happening fast enough, maybe some are even beginning to worry a little about the past year of not being capable of exploiting their insanely long supply lines, but it’s probably mostly just impatience still. Either way it’s not like they won’t do anything to keep making what money they can at the same time.
Your statement is also based on a false premise. Companies don't invest in China to change China. They invest in China to make a profit. And making a profit, they did and they do.
Wanting to change China is, ironically, something which mostly non-businesspeople want. Which makes the narrative that "we're being hostile to China because they don't open up markets" all the more insane.
China has opened up. Walk down the street in China for 10 minutes and you see a ton of foreign companies. There are so much more foreign companies in China now than 30 years ago that the entire statement "China hasn't opened up" makes absolutely no sense. Not everything is open, sure, but that's still a far cry from "China hasn't opened up". China is also continuing to open up more parts of the markets.
This comment here is on point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27333819
The fact is, even if China isn't opening up as quickly or as much as you like, the trade agreement with China was never based on symmetry in the first place. It wasn't the goal, and more importantly, symmetry isn't needed for both parties to get what they want.
Both parties did get what they want. What the US now wants has changed. It's entirely possible to renegotiate and get what you want, without devolving into useless, illogical and dishonest aggression rherotic. This whole cold war is entirely unnecessary, but I guess people care more about making up an enemy and being able to moral grandstand, than to address actual issues.
The government that runs China may not be especially worse than any other authoritarian government in the world. But because China is a world leader, they rightfully attract the attention of the rest of the world, just like America has for decades and other great powers did before it.
I get the sense that the Chinese government wants to have its cake and eat it too - it wants to run the most powerful country in the world, but it does not want to accept the criticism that comes with that position.
China is a country on the cusp of development, they have the chance to go in the liberal society direction and it’s so sad to see them backsliding. That and their size is why they get the most attention, but because they are by any means the worst.
FWIW I don’t think 2 wrongs make a right but also to take the moral high ground a group must have the moral high ground consistently
The whole "they need democracy" and suddenly farmers have an absurd amount of AK47s - and talks of a coup - should not fool anyone really. But it does fool most people. Especially folks in "western industrial countries" whom one would think would see such a ruse.
But alas, who cares as long as we have netflix and iphones. Such is life. Such is dignity.
There is a real economic war against China and we play dirty against them.
Please. The West is only returning the favor.
It’s a bit like America being mad at Britain for burning down the White House in 1812. At some point you need to get over it.
That's not how it works. In Chinese history, 150 years is recent. As a Chinese, I'm offended at how you can so casually brush aside an important historic period just to suit your political preferences.
You're brushing it aside and painting it as merely a tool for blaming foreigners. And yet if you actually read Chinese media you will see very little foreign-bashing. Go ahead, read Xinhua with Google Translate, read CGTN. Now compare that with BBC, CNN. Go visit some Chinese schools and learn how they teach history or about the west. Chinese people have much, much more favorable views of foreign countries than westerners tend to have about China. Heck, not few Chinese become disappointed at the west after they've traveled, because the image of the west that they built up in China was too rose-colored.
How does all that possibly fit in the idea that the Chinese government uses opium wars to stir up anti-foreign sentiment? It doesn't. What is taught about the opium wars isn't "foreigners are the cause of our suffering", but "we must not be weak".
The US also supported China against Japan during WW2. Apparently that doesn’t matter.
As I already said, it’s only an issue in China because the government uses it as propaganda.
Unfortunately, that did not come to pass - their capitalism under authoritarianism is working (not to mention that CCP is trying hard to prove that their style of gov't is "better", and the trump administration, and the west's handling of covid aren't helping).
There's no real way to contain china. The only way is to let the future play out - the biggest problem china has is the demographics. Provided there is no war between the west and china, their inevitable rise cannot be denied.
This, of course, is known to CCP, and hence, why they are able to take hong kong, and increase their activities in the south china sea.
And what is the plan/assumption for Saudi Arabia? Is there an assumption that they will soon start respecting human rights?
Do the prediction tell if there will be internal struggles when the oil ends and who will end up on top? What if some more extremist leader/group gets the power?1
On the bright side, acting in self interest means we shouldn’t get involved in any messes either, and supporting intrinsically unstable authoritarian governments doesn’t make much sense either. There is definitely some overlap between doing the right thing and dong the thing that serves your interests the most.
It's great when they're doing what's best for the majority. But inevitably they start doing things for the powerful minority (themselves) at the expense of the rest.
In a democratic system (which can, in fact, have heavy socialist elements) there are ways to legally and peacefully change the government. The public officials are servants of the people (well, ideally).
In the Soviet/Chinese/other "communist" style system, they take all the power with the promise of bringing true communism/socialism later, and they keep that power and never fulfill the promise. Public officials are strong "leaders" (read "rulers") of the people.
It's not that different from monarchy or feudalism, actually.
Of course US leaders are famous worldwide for keeping their promises.
Are you able to describe Soviet democracy or any of the democratic systems that exist within China today? Generally people who say these kinds of things are not.