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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

> also deciding to escalate hostilities with China, the world second largest economy

After what Russia has done to Ukraine, I sincerely hope more democracies put values before trade. UK is doing what everyone else should be doing, but don't have the courage to. Not something to be ashamed of.

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As others have pointed out, Liz Truss has no qualms about calling Saudi Arabia an important ally[1]. Statements against China are a way to pander to the Tory base.

1 - https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1541894205274030080

While im no fan of Saudi Arabia, I wouldn’t go calling this pandering. China has long considered the West an enemy, and has been an abusive trading partner. It’s high time the UK stands up for itself.

this is projection - the hostility is pretty much one way from West to East. You can even see when the mood changed, post GFC, when China stopped buying US T-bills

Abusive trading partner in the strict sense of goods trading, not sure. But China requires or used to require (some / interesting / all?) foreign countries operating in the country to create joint ventures with Chinese companies. Probably done to transfer know-how, possibly profits, and to keep control. Volkswagen had the foresight to enter China early (as it did decades earlier in Brazil), and it had to do that.

protectionism of this sort is basically how all the East Asian tigers developed from being as impoverished as Africa in 1950's to where they all are now. It's a problem now because the unbroken period of 400 years + pf Western hegemony might finally be under challenge by a country who is big enough not routinely bend the knee

*foreign companies

This "democracies vs dictatorships" spin is just that, a nice story for the public. But this is not how countries operate and they have no values when it comes to international relations, only interests. You'll also notice that it's only some authoritarian countries that are 'problematic' otherwise are 'good friends'...

China is becoming powerful, so it is a threat to the established, Western, order and especially the supremacy of the US. That's the real issue. If tomorrow China became a democracy it wouldn't be any less of a threat, and in fact it might become a more formidable threat.

Well maybe the UK has a higher sensitivity regarding China because of Hong Kong, but realistically, if the West would really boycott all states with human rights issues, we would be starving soon. Not to mention that we would need to look at ourselves first before criticizing others...

Do you think breaking all trade with Saudi Arabia is a priority?

Democracies never put values before trade - UK is at this very moment selling arms to Saudi Arabia, who are currently prosecuting a genocidal war against Yemen. China has been remarkably uninvolved in military conflict for the past 50 years, unlike many democracies

I can think of a large democracy that fairly recently started two wars for bullshit reasons and fucked up two countries that, admittedly, were already well fucked up. But probably a large number of people died that wouldn't have died otherwise.

indeed, UK riding sidecar with no qualms whatsoever

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