Hacker News Reader

Comment by ram4jesus | Hacker News Reader

As an American this constant China fear-mongering feels so out of place; it's like trying to plug the Titanic with your fingers. Historically China has been one of the most important financial centers in the world; this is just a regression to the mean. Why are we trying to stop it when the Chinese clearly want to collaborate with us.

The train's leaving the station without us. There's a political, multipolar, realignment between the Global South, i.e. the non 'golden billion', and Eurasia - and we're not playing a leading role when we should be.

Unipolarity is a unique abnormality throughout history; why do we think the current status quo of the U.S. hegemon is the default for the future?

View on HN

Where is the evidence that China wants to collaborate with "us"? It seems like their standard playbook is to entice or force others to open their markets to them, but then refuse to reciprocate.

They are an isolationist authoritarian nation, with already-large and still-growing influence over world politics and economic matters. Perhaps what the West is doing right now to attempt to curb this is the wrong move, but I don't think the "fear-mongering" is unwarranted at all.

> They are an isolationist authoritarian nation, with already-large and still-growing influence

Your first part doesn't really go with the second.

I agree, China is very isolationist. But that's precisely why I'm not concerned about this "influence". They're absolutely not interested in converting other countries to their system, they will work with anyone who they can do business with.

What about Saudi? Is it an authoritarian but still US ally? Double standards?

> It seems like their standard playbook is to entice or force others to open their markets to them, but then refuse to reciprocate.

Foreign companies have a very large presence in China's internal market. It would be difficult to give a full overview, so I'll give a few examples to illustrate the point:

* Volkswagen has the largest share of the Chinese automobile market.

* China is Nvidia's 2nd largest market (nearly $4 billion in revenue, which is more than Nvidia takes in in the US or the EU).

* Airbus and Boeing dominate the aircraft market in China. Airbus just announced a $17 billion deal two days ago.

* Starbucks runs 6,000 locations in China.

There are countless examples like this. Suffice it to say that China is one of the most important markets for a very large fraction of multinationals.

It is important to understand that "the western world is conspiring against us" is a major tenet of state propaganda in Russia, China, Iranian and other totalitarian countries.

Moves like this only serve to confirm it.

>we're not playing a leading role when we should be.

if the success of the Tiangong space station is any indication, we're not playing a role at all. the Tiangong analysis on HN alone should serve as a sobering wake up call that things like the wolf amendment have basically neutered the US ability to engage with what is by many standards a parity player thats met or exceeded most western technological touchstones.

this chipmaking technology, its not magic or really even exclusive no matter how badly the west wishes it were. its predicated on the fundamentals of well funded STEM education, well funded research and development, intellectual curiosity and a collective motivation and morale to succeed. this country invented Artemisinin, Non-invasive prenatal diagnostic testing for Down Syndrome, synthetic insulin, and even discovered things like Chens prime and finite element methodology.

The last time the US shunned them from a space station they built one that was in many ways better than the ISS. I for one am excited to see what new chip technology emerges in the next few years.

This implies that China wants to collaborate on equal terms, but I don't think that's the case. Experience over the past several decades seems to suggest that Chinese "collaboration" is mostly one-way: "sure, you can buy our cheap goods, but we get to keep the fruits of our R&D for ourselves".

> I for one am excited to see what new chip technology emerges in the next few years.

Will you actually see it, though? Assuming new tech does come out, I expect the techniques and know-how required to manufacture it will only be available to Chinese companies. But hey, the West will be able to buy products with it for cheap, so I guess that's fine!

"Why are we trying to stop it when the Chinese clearly want to collaborate with us."

Who is "we"?

Not snark. A deep question.

Answering that will reveal a lot.

I'd love to leave it there as an exercise for the reader, but I can see it would be misinterpreted, or at least potentially so (this isn't about any particular characteristics of our leadership today, either hypothetical or real, my point is much more generic and world-historic than that), so I will expand with this bit: The leadership of the US has for the past several decades essentially been the most powerful leadership in the world. China challenges that now, as does Russia. Of course the leadership wants to stop that. You or I may not care in the slightest, because just because China is a peer force on the world stage or not may not impact our lives greatly, it's not like the only nice place to live in the world is exactly and precisely the most powerful one.But the leadership can care a lot more than the people they lead. This always happens when control and power fades. You can see many instances in history of such leadership of all forms and sources lashing out in rather predictable manners in ways that are oblivious to or even actively negative for the people they lead.

I think the citizenry of the US would generally be better off with a controlled welcome and some space given to these other up-and-coming powers, rather than fighting a war to hold on to power that they can't retain anyhow. I personally think even our military position would be better off, because it's better to retain your force projection ability and not fight, than to expend it uselessly and potentially enter into a situation where you have nothing at all. But a dumbass war on behalf of our leadership at the active expense of our citizenry is likely what we'll get even so.

>As an American this constant China fear-mongering feels so out of place

ask Chinese, they will tell you there is constant US fear mongering in their media. Every year they have a blockbuster where US are the bad guys and China has to fight them. Chinese media is 100% party controlled. They are grooming population for accepting eventual conflict, most likely over Taiwan invasion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com