So how is China hostile?
Rather than take my word for it, though, I encourage you to do some research on your own - preferably not entirely through Internet sources. In particular, the current issue of the World Affairs journal (volume 185, issue 3) has several relevant articles.
Under the Bush administration, rendered persons were reported to have undergone torture by receiving countries. Journalists, civil and constitutional rights groups, and former detainees have alleged that this occurred with the knowledge or cooperation of the administrations of the United States and the United Kingdom."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition#:~:t....
"A Wedding That Became a Funeral US Drone Attack on Marriage Procession in Yemen"
https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/02/19/wedding-became-funeral...
"5th April 2010 10:44 EST WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff."
https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/
Plenty more where those came from, also enough to fill quite a few books.
This discussion is _not about the United States._ This discussion is about _China._
Let me give you a helpful link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
People keep making China out like they some kind of benevolent dictator. Keep in mind that all the shit talking everyone does on Hacker News and other sites is a no go in China. Ask Jack Ma about how well things go when you go against the China's CCP.
Playing Yoda clever doesn't you make.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/09/prison...
>concentration camps used to "re-educate" Falun Gong practitioners
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/survivors-troubled-teen-industry-s...
Although tbh the American way to "re-educate" religious fundamentalists usually means executing them from a safe distance.
It _appears_ that China is worse, but once you start looking at actual data instead of the rhetoric found in media, you'll quickly find that it simply doesn't check out.
So once again, how is China hostile, while the country that’s provably worse offender isn’t? Other than racism of course.
U2/SR71 spyplanes overflying other countries. This alone is considered "an act of war". what would the US do if someone flew over their country on spy missions?
Then there is the absolute rampant lying about things.
U2 is shot down, US president is told that should this happen the pilot wont survive. Surprise, Gary Powers is alive and the USSR exposes the US lies to the world.
"weather aircraft drifted off course" indeed.
Ron Reagan and his "Evil Empire" speech. USSR shoots down a commercial flight and Ron leverages this to the max.
US shoots down a commercial aircraft, refuses to accept responsibility and eventually caves under international pressure, offering peanuts in compensation?
You can somewhat see what took place with the USSR's issue. The US was flying spy missions right at their doorstep. They felt this was another spy plane and shot it down.
Why exactly did a US warship go into another countries waters and shoot down a commercial aircraft?
The "puppet governments" and overthrowing democratically elected governments alone could fill several books.
Lastly, Iran/Contra. Lets deal drugs and guns??
Yes, the USA is an aggressive and imperialist power with more than a few atrocities to its name.
However, this is not "how bad is China relative to the United States," but rather "how bad is China on an absolute scale."
that's a very odd metric, because in absolute the entire human civilization is bad right now. for itself and other living beings on the planet.
But you do point to an interesting problem and that is one of humans’ impact to earth (and hence our habitat). Whether humans can adjust course without a single government coming up with rules and regulations remains to be seen.
At least China represent 1/4 of global population and resemble a global government more than all western countries combined, including their power of influence over large scale events,like climate change.
If they bail out from climate talks and zero emission plans over, say, interference on the Taiwan issue, is it bad or good?
What is the best solution globally, pissing off China or human survival?
It's something we should ask ourselves, I think.
True, 20+ years ago. Today: Spy satellites that can hide and re-position on-command. "Spy planes" are mostly Tom Clancy'esque fiction these days, at least from the perspective of over-head visual light photography. (Radio signals monitoring is a different segment.)
Then you wrote: <<This alone is considered "an act of war".>>
False. There is no single, absolute defintion. In my experience, the Internet is "full of" posts like this one. Words and deeds are two very different things in the Real-Politik World View. Ultimately, no words matter until the "first shot is fired". See China's recent behaviour around Taiwan. Still, not a single shot fired, but a lot of potty/bully talk. (BTW -- I highly recommend China's PR mouthpiece "Global Times" as a parallel equivalent of "The Onion", vis-a-via US-China relations. Their English is but one step above Kim Jong-Un/NK media.)
Finally, you wrote: <<what would the US do if someone flew over their country on spy missions?">>
In the current context, the US military will probably trap the spy plane mid-air (surround with fighter jets) and force them to land in US (or US-friendly) territory. The pilot(s) would be captured as enemy combatants, similar to other spy planes downed over enemy territory over the last 75+ years. FYI: China did this in 2001. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
As a thought experiment (and I do think this will happen one day): What if China parks an aircraft carrier "one meter" outside US territorial waters (East or West coast), then runs constant military exercises, 24x7, for months and months? Think more brazen: What if Chinese military jets were speed-running over Midtown Manhattan during day light hours "daring" the US military to escalate? It can, and will, happen in our lifetime. Maybe London/Tokyo/Sydney too.
Which is exactly what US is doing with its stone aircraft carrier group Taiwan.
> What if Chinese military jets were speed-running over Manhattan
You’re assuming China is like US, in that it’s waiting for opportunity to invade. But the history shows the exact opposite.
What’s more plausible is American jets over Beijing. Hopefully China has enough nukes to prevent it.
Suggest you read the US governments OWN PUBLICATIONS
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/u2-incident
"It was important that the overflights be undetected, because normally an unauthorized invasion of another country’s airspace was considered an act of war. "
"False" indeed.
that's not hostility towards the west, that's simply China defending their interests, which is their prerogative.
Taiwan is still formally and technically part of greater China, human rights violations are not rare in (an by) the US military and non military personel, do you consider Ukrainian soldiers training in the UK [1] as the UK being hostile towards China?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/16/world/europe/ukraine-mili...
we like to think that everything we do is virtuos, but it's actually not true.
We defend our interests, they defend theirs.
Fun fact: the number of American components in Russian weapons is order of magnitude higher than the number of Chinese components: https://static.rusi.org/RUSI-Silicon-Lifeline-final-updated-...
So, I'm not sure which one is more hostile to Russia - in deeds, not words.
The United States' military presence in the region disagrees with your second sentence.
Russias man power has been so degraded they had to resort to recruiting people from prisons and forced conscription of Ukrainians in Luhansk and Donbas.
Russias heavy armour has been destroyed so badly that we are seeing T62s rolled out to the front lines. These T62s are so old they don’t even use the 3 man setup that all more modern Russian takes do because they don’t have a autoloader.
Russia is also incapable of protecting territory it has captured. The occupied territories of Ukraine regularly have car bombs and ammo depots explode, Crimea even has Russian air bases spontaneously exploding so much all Russian tourists fled back to Russia.
This really isn’t an answer to any of my points, it would be great if you could respond to the substance of the message instead of attempting to attack the person who sent it.
But if you want to think that being into month 6 of a 3 day war is going great I guess that’s up to you.
Nevertheless, here is an old article from back in April to get you started - https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukra...
https://dailysceptic.org/archive/how-accurate-is-jacques-bau...
It’s also interesting that article as far as I can see does not at all cover the current wars losses, all it seems to do is repeat a bunch of Russian propaganda.
It’s always funny to see Russia trying to involve NATO countries in this war in there propaganda, because it’s okay to lose to NATo where as it’s kinda pathetic for Russia to lose to Ukraine.
Well they are all more truthful then the Russian media who believes that Ukraine has genetically modified super soldiers and black magic battalions.
To be fair it doesn’t matter because your source doesn’t even cover anything I said it just tries very hard to justify the genocide of Ukrainians.
I was talking about the Russian armed forces performance in the war not about if it was justified or not(which it isn’t).
As I said, the education system in the West really needs a revamp. I just gave one example and already knew that you are going to post that one link as a retort (which does not provide any counter arguments to the points made by Jacques Baud at all). Hope your heroes from Azov were "evacuated" safely, as reported by the Western press. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that people can trust the Western press after the absolute nonsense they have reported so far and continue doing.
Your article didn’t address any of the points I made all it tries to do is justify the genocide of Ukrainians.
> Hope your heroes from Azov were "evacuated" safely,
I’d feel safer as a azov member then as a propagandist in Moscow right now.
> I find it hard to believe that people can trust the Western press after the absolute nonsense they have reported so far and continue doing.
I mean your telling me the press that said
“Russia will not invade Ukraine” the day before it happened
“Ukraine using black magic battalions”
“Ukraine using genetically modified super soldiers”.
Tells the truth?.
I don’t understand how you can think that a country that held a area (Crimea) for years and then started another war and has had 4-5 explosions losing half their Black Sea fleet aircraft is “winning”.
Is losing 1000 tanks and having to roll out T62s “winning”;
Is using soviet anti aircraft carrier missiles against malls “winning”.
Is having oil refineries and ammo depots hit in Russia proper “winning”.
Is having 20,000 troops caught in Kherson with no easy way to leave or resupply “winning”.
The situation is so dire in Crimea that there was a traffic jam of people trying to leave.
The PRC doesn't even get to decide who goes to Taiwan, who do you reason that they get to decide what is done with Taiwan?.
I thought I knew where Xinjiang was until CNN told me it was in Guangdong province.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/pjsyyv/cnn_once_chang...
Nowadays I'm not sure anymore, so I tend to add "/s" in all but most obvious cases, like this one.