China pretending to be the victim of Lithuanian bullying really is a farce more ridiculous than usual.
If the country was a person, we’d label their personality as a high functioning manipulative sociopath.
We (the US primarily, but also the rest of the developed world) have a tremendous opportunity with a still productive labor force and cheap capital to boot up manufacturing capacity we offshored to China, and we won’t have the chance again when China decides to act against other countries (economically or militarily).
I feel as though the post-Obama era of US politics is oscillating around the best amount of caution WRT avoiding a hot war with China.
It is only now that we are afraid China will eclipse our spot on the global stage that anyone gives a crap about Chinese human rights abuses, because of coverage largely driven by the media.
We've also switched to spinning things that China does that we also do in a much more negative light, for instance, how the media discusses Chinese loan programs to Africa (compared to how IMF/World Bank programs are just not discussed) or Chinese attempts to build a military base on the Atlantic coast (compared to the dozens of military bases we have in the South China Sea area).
I'm not making any claim about ethics, merely that the perception that China is doing so many bad things all at once because they "want the rest of the world to hate them" is more likely driven by US media highlighting terrible things China does because we view them as a great power competitor now, and it is important that our populace is rallied against them.
> It's like they want the rest of the world to hate them.
is a pretty incendiary comment, but I will avoid fanning the flames in the future.
(sarcasm about China’s extra behavior)
As for how real the threat is - I'm not an expert, and I don't know you calculate threat, but NK does have nuclear weapon and it's probably the only reason why the are allowed to starve millions of human beings. They also literally, well, threatened to use it. Iran doesn't have one yet, but are lying about their status of development, enriching way more then required for civil purposes, and kicking out international watchers. Oh, and at the same time threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Saying there's no threat sounds like nitpicking to me.