There is a simple solution. If most of western world allowed Taiwan embassies China would have to relent. They can't afford having entire western world stand against them.
Unfortunately, that would require western nations to agree on something.
Unfortunately, that would require western nations to agree on something.
Seems like nobody in these corporations or in politics has a spine anymore and is willing to say, "Yeah, I understand, but No, and fuck you for even asking."
Now all that said, I think if they saw some real unified push-back Xi would drop that shit in a hot second, but for now it comes at very little cost.
Surely that's a joke, right? China, which still has the audacity to call itself a "Communist" nation, which is basically much closer to a Fascist system, with their authoritarian and state-directed control of capitalism?
China has one primary governing principle, which is to keep the CCP in power. Their primary way of doing that has been ensuring that bargain of "we get 8-10% annual growth, the populace is happy enough not to revolt", but they've also been phenomenally successful in using the Internet to stoke nationalism and Xi's personality cult.
> China has one primary governing principle, which is to keep the CCP in power.
Yes, which they place above profit motive. It seems like you agree with above
The kind of censure that Jack Ma had for example would be impossible to imagine to say Elon Musk in the US .
Sadly, people misunderstand those two basic concepts.
Autocratic systems are better in some ways. For example, they can be very efficient. CCP says something and it is done. Is it good/right? It is completely different topic.
We’re talking past each other a bit, but this is evidence of principle driven behavior rather than government capture by the wealthy like we have in the west.
Airline bailouts last year were good because they saved subcontractors and union contracts.
> Surely that's a joke, right?
Nah, it's just an obvious truth.
> China, which still has the audacity to call itself a "Communist" nation, which is basically much closer to a Fascist system, with their authoritarian and state-directed control of capitalism?
That's pretty much what "communism" worked out to in the Soviet Union -- well, in the entire Warsaw Pact -- too. So in practice, that's pretty much what "communism" means nowadays.
> China has one primary governing principle, which is to keep the CCP in power.
Yup, exactly.
And they sure do stand by that principle, don't they?
Q.E.D.
You say "put principles over the profit of a few constituents", and that is a very widely held slogan or catch phrase.
Whose constituents? I, as a constituent, very much like not having a war going on where I could be drafted and sent to die for some people I do not know or really care about. I, as a constituent, very much like not having to pay 5k for a phone or 10k for a computer. I, as a constituent, like the cheap products that trade has allowed me to buy.
Whoes principles? America's manifest destiny principle is to take everything you can take and then fight weaker neighbors to take some more. Is it fair that we, Americans, got to do our dirty work in the past and make our country whole while other countries have to be plagued by a civil war?
The only actual principle that maters when it comes to countries is might makes right. The US was mighty so it could crush the Indians, the Mexicans, the Spanish and take what was "rightfully ours". The US was mighty so it could crush the CSA during the civil war. The US was mighty so they could use the threat of force to protect Taiwanese independence or de facto-independence. The UK was mighty so they could crush China and take HK. Now that China is (questionably? maybe?) mighty, they want to take back HK, they want to take over Taiwan. Now when other countries are mighty, the rules of the game suddenly change so that it is no longer might makes right but human rights and democracy and peace and sham pretending about principles?
I like human rights and I would generally support people being free (whatever that means), but is it not hard to see the hypocrisy in it all? Where were the principles when we beat up the Indians and Mexicans and grabbed up all of California? Where were the principles when we beat up all the LATAM countries who tried to have democratic elections. Where were the principles when we drone striked every adult man and called them all combatants since they were within the age range?
>>> So, they've really effectively backdoored our politicians. Not just politicians, they have backdoored hollywood, wallstreet everyone of em. They will suck up to the CCP and pander to any of their demands
As such, China would rather fight the entire western world than to let Taiwan go. They would rather destroy all their relationships with the west than to let Taiwan go. It doesn't matter whether they will actually win or not — they are prepared to, and that's what we don't understand (or for some people: don't want to understand).
They already do. But now they do it via trade wars, strongly worded letters, Olympic boycotts. They ensure that the fight is China vs the enemy of the day (Today Lithuania). It’s unbalanced. The “fight” vs the whole world wouldn’t be a hot war. It would be a more balanced diplomatic and economic conflict where China can’t bully one state at a time.
Yeah, sure. So do I... Only I'm rooting for the "good" side in the Chinese civil war -- the side currently holding Formosa.
And so should you, and everyone else too.
Politics is what it is, and the diplomats role is most often not to combat, but to ease communication.
For the same reason the UN may often seem toothless and not able to execute. But it is just a reflection of world politics. It is hard sometimes.
The precursor to UN was the League of Nations. And they were much better at condemning. Germany. That didnt work out much better.
Don't blame the empty plate if you are hungry.
And getting rid of the plate will not help you if you want food.
However, this will be tougher than other countries that are newly formed like Kosovo. China will surely use its influence to make sure it won't happened.
Obviously they don't want to be careless, since China could try to invade them if they did that. So they would need quite some military backup from USA and Japan to make China accept their defeat.
PRC wants ROC on the same map as indistinguishable
easy cop out for the rest of us then
I would say still notice that visa policy is handled separately, and that requires continual education
But as far as public recognition its super easy to just show one country, no need for grandstanding
Maps are just political theatre. The vintage ROC map you are referring to also includes Mongolia and parts of Russia (Chinese territories that Mao/CCP ceded), but no one in Taiwan is seriously making those claims. Note the CCP lays claim over the SCS based on an old 9-dashed map made by the ROC.
I get that the current head of state and majority party in the ROC doesnt extend its territorial claims beyond the island they are on. There are some people that hold on to the prior claims.
The rest of us really need to just build additional pylons so we don't have any manufacturing consequences when that matter is resolved. Because thats the only reason we care right now (aside from how brutal the reintegration will be).
The West will not go, and die without one xmass season, and a new Iphone 99.
But Western elites all holding stocks of companies valued in trillions will do.
I requires a healthy conversation in society about this. It will come to a time when people will have to decide what to do with these people.
Potential adversaries now do things which just 15 years ago would've meant a real hot war with the whole Western world by leveraging their financial influence on Western elites, and a threat of bankrupting them.
Not selling to a citizen of China regardless of race (not all Chinese are from the same race) is much different than not selling to anyone who has a Chinese gene.
The nation state you think China and the US to be doesn't exist.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12...
As the article already mentions: "While Biden performed well among Asian Americans, the data suggest that Trump didn't lose support with the group, either."
If the support didn't go down doesn't that mean the level of support hasn't changed? And this election wasn't an outlier for this group?
I think you are being a bit too idealistic and have quite honestly drank the Kool-Aid and forgot about the original purpose of why America dislikes China. They are a rising power seeking to disrupt the current one. Good playing American jobs have been cut and Chinese jobs have sprang up in their place. People who had those jobs are now experiencing a reduced quality of life.
I'm not a fan of the heavy dependence on Chinese manufacturing as it comes at huge human rights/ecological costs (in that order), but companies typically care about the bottom line above all else. How the product is made is less important typically than whether or not it __is__ made.
And it's a simple truth that right now a lot of companies are heavily dependent on China for production of goods, and if the US/UK unilaterally were forced to drop Chinese Manufacturing without time to plan, it would be pretty devastating to a lot of businesses.
Please don't misread this as "no action should ever be taken against China", as absolutely that is not my position; moral stands sometimes have a significant cost. Same with changes for a more sustainable future, you might need to have a higher upfront cost than you may want.
That doesn't mean these changes are bad, it just means that there is a non-trivial cost to consider. For me, this is a no brainer, as I like to look more towards the future and have the comfort zone to do so. Many businesses do not have that comfort zone, and regardless of the reason they're in that position, it's a reality for them that losing their chinese suppliers is a deathknell for them.
I'm not trying to propose anything except that I can understand why some businesses are against taking strong stances against Chinese manufacturing; I don't action _shouldn't_ be taken if China is not behaving well, just to be clear. But I can understand where people are coming from if they are opposed to it, as they don't want to bite the hand that feeds so to speak.
China is just as dependent on the clients of those factories.
But I don’t imagine Western nations will ever remove their embassies from China, as OP suggests. Those are useful for both official and backchannel communications, and have no bearing on nation’s leverage over the other.
Your suggestion is that the rest of the world should play nice with China, and accept an invasion of a free nation (Taiwan) and its people because not doing so would hurt Chinese nationals within China?
Chinese people suffering due to the CCP is bad, certainly. But what's worse is another country (having nothing to do with the CCP) suffering for it.
So if EU got its shit together and formulated a coherent unified foreign policy - it would be at the very least on equal terms with both US and China. Hence why everyone (from Putin, to China to even our allies the US) are so invested in breaking EU apart (and even succeeding - the Brexit).
Unfortunately (?) not. By nominal GDP the US is the largest. By PPP-adjusted GDP China comes first.
> So if EU got its shit together and formulated a coherent unified foreign policy - it would be at the very least on equal terms with both US and China.
On approximately equal terms, yes, probably.
Second largest, at $17.1tn, after the US ($22.7tn), but ahead of China ($16.6tn).[1]
> is by far the wealthiest region on the planet
North America is the wealthiest region, with the United States alone having a total wealth of $126tn. European wealth is around $103tn.[2]
1. World Economic Outlook Database, April 2021
2. https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...
The ones who can't afford to be without China's manufacturing are big tech companies like Apple. Perhaps they will take a huge hit but it's hard to imagine them going out of business. I remember the Apple of the mid 90's and how close they came to going out of business. Now, with the enormous cash hoard and other capital they've accumulated, I can easily imagine them surviving for many years even if they were cut off completely from all their manufacturing in China.
In the past I would have said "there's no way that we would tolerate that," but for the last two years we have seen substantially diminished standard of living already due to [redacted], the monetary response to [redacted], and the policy response to [redacted], but now that we've seen that it is conceivable that the US would go a more austere route now. I also have seen now that no one in our leadership believes in anything or has any principles, so radical shifts really are possible.
With Vietnam, a lot of its recent development is related to expansion of Chinese foreign direct investment with substantial percentage increases every year in recent years. A lot of the notions about Vietnamese hostility to China and Chinese business is out of date and becoming more out of date.
There's virtually no US industry that is not heavily dependent on Chinese industry for refined materials, intermediate goods, and consumer goods. A lot of substitution could conceivably happen at higher prices, but really the way that we get out of it is defaulting on the government's medical obligations to the boomers and rededicating the money that was slated to giving them their to-the-grave care to industrial redevelopment.
The pandemic has forced technology companies to push harder on communication products and development of virtual places.
Severely diminished trade with China would require an acceleration in manufacturing technology on a scale that could only be borne out of necessity.
Recognizing that robotics technology is orders of magnitude more challenging than an improved Zoom interface, It won’t come easy. But the demand will be there and so would be the creativity to overcome the challenges.
I think when it comes to articulating this to the public and to the government, I would never say "robots are replacing all skilled labor," because that would predispose the legislator or the staffers supporting the legislator to think about what they could do to quash it.
Fwiw, I see only a downward trend in the effectiveness of governments larger than cities to contain or regulate technology. What is possible is changing too fast.
Note that the last major riot against China in Vietnam was way back in 2014. As long as China doesn't do anything aggressive in the SCS, the Vietnamese should come to like China again, however the chances of the former happening are very slim.
Cutting off all reliance on China would be economic suicide for any individual nation unless every one mutually agrees on it. Best of luck getting that to happen.
Nah, you need to read/watch Secret History of Silicon Valley to understand this is false. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
Obviously, not having to rebuild your country helps. But thinking this is the only or even main reason is very shortsighted, IMO.