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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

People are taking action now because the West spent decades underestimating China, probably for xenophobic reasons. I'm willing to bet a lot of people assumed they weren't as capable as westerners and now it can't be denied.

IMO, it was a classic mistake of underestimating a potential rival while stroking our own egos about how smart, capable and powerful we are in comparison. Reality finally trumped hubris.

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It has nothing to do with xenophobia.

The Chinese government doesn't play fair, and the West has been letting them get away with it for decades. They take full advantage of open markets available in the rest of the world, but close their markets to outsiders; at best, outsiders can get a piece of the action, but only through the oversight and partial ownership of a local company. The idea that China is still a "developing nation" and should have special status and privileges is a joke.

While I won't claim that Western nations don't have issues with censorship and freedom of speech, the Chinese government punishes foreign corporations (economically) that say anything critical of China or its government. The Chinese government exports its propaganda and censorship policies through informal economic sanctions.

I'm not particularly interested in allowing an authoritarian government that pushes pervasive propaganda and censorship to become the next world hegemon. (I'll freely admit that the US is no saint in that role, but I think it should be obvious and defensible why I'd prefer the US in that position rather than China.)

Note that this is all about the Chinese government. I have no problems with Chinese people; by and large, those I've met on my few trips to China (granted, my last trip was over 10 years ago) and those I've met who travel to and live in the US have been good, friendly, intelligent people. It's perfectly reasonable to be against the constant, widespread actions of a foreign government without being branded a xenophobe.

> The Chinese government doesn't play fair

No government or organisation does, and I wouldn’t fault any state for doing it’s best to edge it’s bets.

The expression is "hedge its bets" and that doesn't make sense in this context.

Oh, my bad. And while it does make sense, it indeed doesn’t mean what I intended to write.

So "stack the odds in its favour” then?

The parent comment isn't saying anti-China actions and suspicions by the government are xenophobic. It's instead saying more or less the opposite: that the delay in these kinds of actions is possibly down to policymakers seeing China as lesser and not worth concern.

That also sounds like the opposite of xenophobia.

And the US befriended China for important strategic reasons starting with Nixon. If they underestimated anything it was the ability of an authoritarian regime to retain power through such a period of economic growth. Middle classes tend to want western products and media. But the economic growth itself was a deliberate goal of US policy.

I was going to add some about at least several decades of US/Western approach being from a playbook of having the market kind of lead to liberalization on its own, and the Chinese government's ability to reap the rewards while maintaining control, but I didn't want to bloat the comment.

As for xenophobia being the opposite, I imagine the comment being referenced (now several levels above) was using -phobia in the common modern sense of including bias or prejudice and not literally fear.

If you go through my comment history, you'll see that I am critical of the CCP for many of the reasons you've listed.

However, my argument is that the West, in general, underestimated China because of beliefs of cultural, economic, political, intellectual, ethnic, moral, etc superiority. Those beliefs were ultimately weaknesses.

I don’t think it’s xenophobia. The US helped China into the WTO. The dispute is really about the status of China. The wto allows developing countries to impose import restrictions and various other protections. China—number one by gdp ppp, or #72 by gdp ppp per capita- says they are still a developing country and don’t have to give other countries equal access to their market. The US disagrees.

I know there are other complaints, but this is the core issue.. and I strongly suspect the us would look the other way on those issues if there was equal access, like they have in the past (to maintain access to the market).

The US isn’t a single consistent entity. US basically enabled modern day China by opening trade, but now that they are catching up it’s no longer advantageous to help them forward.

The US benefited from opening up to China. It returning to the dominant economy in the world was an inevitability with or without US support.

Being on good terms with them and dealing with inflation by using their labor force bought the US some time but US politicians just acted more irresponsibly (warmongering) instead of capitalizing on the temporary windfall.

It wasn't xenophobia, the West has been gradually waking up to the realization that their idea of converting countries into more ideal partners by building strong trade is not really working as the countries they're trying to influence will just take the benefits and not reciprocate.

It has become especially clear over the past few years, first with COVID highlighting the fragility of supply chains dependent on such one-sided relations and now with the invasion of Ukraine showing that such relations may also not be as strong of a deterrent against war as previously hoped.

The traded deals are very far from the charity of the west.

The traded deals by the west were based on the benefit to the western countries. It is not a charity. The low inflation, the record profit of the western companies and bonuses are from cheap labour and resources from more desperate countries.

Of course they weren't charity, they were mutually beneficial. The entire point being that offering mutually beneficial deals would lead to reciprocation with more mutually beneficial deals, building a dependency on maintaining such mutual deals.

In the same way that the US and EU going to war or even just breaking off diplomatic ties is extremely unlikely to happen due to how much they have integrated with each other on the back of mutual benefit.

I wish this this true : "deals on mutual benefit". The Relationship are based on leverage though. There is no way my country able to ban US product or prevent US taking over strategic company based on security concern. Election interference and fake news from the West is also a normal things.

Imposition of market liberalism, to me at least, feels like an extension of that perceived Western superiority, especially combined with the hubris that The End of History drew from.

It reminds me of how the U.S. and Britain underestimated Japan just before WW2. They thought Japan was a bunch of funny little men, not really competent at fighting. This led to a very rude awakening in Dec 1941 and throughout much of 1942 when the Japanese Navy proved to be extremely competent and, together with the Army, seized a lot of territory across the Pacific (Singapore, Philippines, etc)

in what sense is a rival?

A rival for hegemony in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. The current hegemon in this region is the US. It is the strongest APAC power by far due to its numerous military bases as well as its network of strong allies (Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea). China seeks to displace the US as the hegemon in APAC. Naturally, the current hegemon doesn't take too kindly to that. So they view China as a rival.

China—so powerful that they believe they can rival the US… but also so weak that they should qualify for WTO protections for developing markets.

At a certain point you have to question whether they believe in free trade at all.. or just paying lip service to it to make themselves rich.

> they believe in free trade at all

More than US seeing how PRC has significantly less disputes (normalized for acession time), both as initiator and target per WTO stats and generally abides by WTO disputes ruled against her favour. Even PRC's accession protocol was made extra onerous via US objections who still got outplayed - it isn't/wasn't PRC paying lip service while blocking WTO dispute resolution system. PRC believes in free trade more than US because she's learned to play the game better vs US flipping over the gameboard. Which is fine, globalism no longer in US interest, but lets not pretend US isn't systematically the worst exploiter of free trade even while being the most influential rule writer, and increasinly worse when as those priveleges erode.

You’re talking about the China who recently put trade sanctions on Korea for installing missile defenses (who has a now-nuclear neighbor) and Australia for dare mentioning that COVID originated in China?

>If Beijing keeps breaking free-trade rules to make its foreign-policy points against rival nations, it will hurt domestic markets and lose international stature

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2083166/opini...

> Beijing’s attempt to bully Canberra has been a spectacular failure.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/09/australia-china-decoupl...

Yes and?

You eating biased media diet doesn't invalid the statistical reality that PRC, relative to her signifcant trade volume and relationships is objectively one of the better adherents at WTO relative to countries that whine about PRC unfairness. From TWO DSS database:

- PRC 65 disputes, 21 as complainant, 44 as respondant

- USA 279 disputes, 124 as complainant, 155 as respondant

- SKR 39 disputes, 21 as complainant, 18 as respondant

- JP 42 disputes, 26 as complainant, 16 as respondant

- AU 25 disputes, 9 as complainant, 16 as respondent

- EU 190 disputes, 104 as complainant, 86 as respondent

Another apt comparison: India 56 disputes, 24 as complainant, 32 as defendant, while 1/5th smaller than PRC.

Normalize for trade volume and accession time (PRC has been WTO member for 21/27 years, with again, more onerous accession requirement than typical) PRC is better than all USA, SKR, AU. In fact substantially better than other major powers. And as US has demonstrated, historically, it's completely normal to jetison trade rules for national security / foreign policy.

The whole point of free trade is a no rules game to make yourself rich.

No. There are definitely rules.. like equal access to markets, limits on tariffs, etc.

Forcing equal access to markets is a limit on sovereignty (freedom). That's why the TPP got shut down. Equal access to markets in many cases just means total economic subjugation of weaker nations by commercial interests like the whole India colonial period.

Yeah sure… the worlds largest economy is too weak to import roughly 300b a year in goods to balance us/China trade. 300b/yr is enough to subjugate a 27 trillion/yr (gdp ppp) economy. rofl

My point is rather than deciding which economy is large enough to decide for itself how to tariff, you let everyone decide for themselves. And in fact this is how the world works by default, and even the US chooses selective tariffs… so what does it mean to selectively cry “fair trade” only when it benefits your local corporate interests?

Think about the opposite of what you are suggesting… should China now start subsidizing US businesses by buying made in USA when they don’t have to? If we make good products, they have no choice but to buy it because their citizens will demand it.

They agreed to wto rules when they joined.

And your last sentence is wrong— Chinese are not free to buy us made goods if they think they are better. China places heavy tariffs and other protections on imports.

Since you seem to be unaware.. that’s what you’re arguing for: the right of China to place heavy tariffs on foreign goods, while using wto rules to prevent other nations from doing the same to Chinese goods.

Counties agree to wto rules so they can export more.. those rules apply in both directions. If China doesn’t like wto rules, they can withdraw and do as you say: everyone applies whatever tariffs they want on Chinese goods; and China does the same.

Yes that is what I am arguing for… the right for sovereign nations to place tariffs. I mean, the US has tariffed Chinese goods as well now so it’s fair game. And if tariffs are so great why don’t countries do it all the time?

Despite tariffs iPhones still sell well and take a majority of profits in China, because it’s a superior product. Tariffs are just a form of subsidy and subsidies protect companies but make them less competitive. Apple wouldn’t exist if America was protectionist.

My (admittedly US-centric) understanding of the TPP's demise was that it simply found itself politically untenable in an time where globalization was very unpopular, and concerns about the influence of China were not top of mind. Both 2016 US major-party presidential candidates came out against it (though you could reasonably argue about whether Clinton really meant it).

Ironically, speaking of freedom, the Libertarian candidate was the only one to support it officially.

I can’t comprehend the confusion of ideas that would lead someone to believe that a communist country believes in free trade.

What about the rest of the West

What about it? The US is also the hegemon in Europe. The "West" just means the US and its network of alliances. Other Western countries may want good relations with China, but they need to take US views into account because the US bankrolls their defense and is also a very important trade partner.

Large, strong countries do what they want and small, weak countries do what they must. That's the way it is and the way it's always been.

Don't you think that 's a bit too arrogant? Why should germany support the US domination over Japan, when all they want is industrial materials through the indo-pacific route.

I think the world was more fair during cold war, having 2 superpowers pushed both of them to keep each other in check. This one state world, seems worse

Since you brought it up in your example: US, Germany and Japans interests are aligned against China regarding the indo pacific trade route… china’s ambitions to claim all of the South China Sea seek to disrupt the trade route.. and the us helps protect that route by performing freedom of navigation exercises (which have a very real chance of sparking a war that the us alone would be responsible for).

In the sense that it is official US government policy to describe China as a rival, as distinct from even the neutral "partner". Most recently this is said in the US national security strategy from October, which declares that it is a central task of US foreign policy to oppose Chinas vision for the world.

Another examples is that the DoD has for quite a long time declared China as the primary adversary, or as they politely say it "pacing challenge".

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