You are dead wrong, China is an enemy of the free world, pure and simple. South Koreans and Ukrainians would agree with me here. Especially since China has declared no limit friendship with russia
I'm not saying America is the force of evil; it has done some nice things, and some other pretty horrible things. What I'm trying to say is: if you have a sitting superpower and a rising wannabe, and you view it as a fight between good and evil, then you are practically inviting horrible things to happen, "because otherwise the bad guys will win."
Think of all the horrible things that happened during the cold war.
This kind of behavior followed by this kind of rhetorics is exactly why half-the-world hates you so much. Disgusting, I can't believe you aren't trolling right now.
North Korea would relatively peacefully evolve from dictatorship if it wasn't for America's pressure. This is purely Newton's third law of geopolitics. Do you really think people would go like "yeah, please fuck us harder so we can topple our government" instead of consolidating around it against a much larger evil, that fucks with their livelihood much harder (you)?
Look at Afghanistan for example. Why do you think it reverted back to its baseline and why Taliban was able to assume control over the country so fast with almost no resistance just as soon as the US had withdrawn its troops?
Or take a look at practically the whole history of young Russian Federation, from supporting ISIS-like radical islamists during the second Chechen war, to most-recent achievement of turning so many hardcore anti-war people into pro-war just by letting them have a good look at your actions.
Cuba has little to none practical international support, and yet it is still "a communist dictatorship".
Or even a better example, that would probably be easier for you to process: take a look at WWII-period Great Britain. It was a total strict dictatorship shithole. And people were FINE with that, as long as it was an effective protection against Nazis.
To North Koreans (and so many other nations around the world) the US (and by extent, its allies) are the Nazis. Simply because you can't possibly dial your chauvinism down and ask yourselves some hard questions, like how come you feel like you have the right to fuck around on the other side of the globe.
Sadly, I don't even see a realistic scenario how things could change without triggering a WWIII: America + allies (15-20% world population) vs the rest of the world.
Aside from that more 'humanist' element, there is the geopolitical reality that your sovereignty is still depends on the US.
After a war - nations usually have autocratic leaders who oversee a couple of decades of reconstruction, that is normal, and for them to be 'pro American' in the contex that America literally saved your entire nation from being slaves, is understandable.
It's a bit hard to read what you have written, imagine what would happen if the US/West dropped support for literally you, either now or decades ago? Where would you be? Happy unification under democracy? My gosh.
If you can't see that Xi is operating on a different moral level than most of the free world including S. Korea, then I have bad news for you.
Putin invaded Ukraine because he thought it wold be a cake walk.
The best thing we can do to 'avoid war' is to project strength, not ambiguity. Xi is not irrational, and if Taiwan is extremely well defended he won't invade.
In fact, it's relatively easy to deter China if other nations just have some basic political courage and a basic coherent strategy, then we can mostly live happily together.
(FYI I'm not American)
Leaving politics aside, that's some very flawed alternative history thinking there.
The alternative world in which (say) Korean War era "Domino Theory" wasn't so aggresively pursued with military action and so many former Western colonies in Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia, etc) weren't defended from finding their own path post WWII is a world where factors that created an extreme North Korea, and Pol Pot in Cambodia, etc. are absent.
Who's to say where the world would be had Kissinger and friends not been so hawkish.
In Korea at least:
Nearly 5 million people died. More than half of these–about 10 percent of Korea's prewar population–were civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II's and the Vietnam War's.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded.
In this sense, the cold war against the Soviet Union was profoundly successful. Let's hope this will be the same for the ongoing cold war with China to contain its territorial ambitions in east asia, like for Taiwan (which it is actively threatening with force[1]) and all of the other countries which China is expanding its territory into (illegally, through the use of artificial islands)[2].
1. https://www.voanews.com/a/china-reaffirms-threat-of-military... 2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/china-has-full...
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
If anything, people aren't worried enough. Being overly sensitive about a egregious spy balloon is not the problem that should be called out right now.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991...
Power sharing agreements between the powerful who are not accountable to the people isn't something I'd classify as "democratic".
I'd consider term limits to be anti-democratic anyway. A functioning democracy has the ability to boot politicians out, and the people within the democracy, not the law should be trusted to make that decision.
As how the US president is selected by the electoral college. The system used today is a far cry from the original scheme. Look closely and the original doesn't look very democratic, even by the standards of the time. Democracy is an idea, a collection of principals. How it is actually implemented varies considerably.
But a better comparison would be the "election" of a Pope. It's only among Cardinals, who tend to vote for a Cardinal to become Pope. Even though a vote is taking place, we are not talking about a democracy.
As to which is closest to an ideal democracy in practice: America, Vatican City, or China, the contest in my mind is who is in second and third place, not first.
The Electoral College itself exists as a way to help keep the Executive Branch separated from the Legislative Branch. Congress (aka the Legislative Branch) can step in in place of the Electoral College if the electors deadlock to a point of no recovery, but this is considered highly unusual and an undemocratic act because it violates the Separation of Powers safeguard.
There is a body of representation in China which votes on the next leader, which has rules to limit power within that system.
In the usage of the term "democracy" meaning "a group of people voting on outcomes" - China has democratic traditions within it's political system involving voting and consensus and limits of power. Part of these traditions included term limits on leadership which has been removed by the current leader (again, not unlike the way Putin removed term limits in the precursor to military adventurism).
Basically not at all. There was initially gonna be democracy, but then it was just warlords/generals controlling everything.
I mean ffs chiang kai shek stayed as president until 1975 when he died.
Taiwan didn't really become democratic until maybe 25-ish years ago.
Ha! "Democracy" (only approved ideologies need apply).
You people are impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_modern_conflicts_in_th...
And if you think the IMF loans are so onerous, consider why Pakistan, which has allies in both China and Saudi Arabia, both of whom have lent it money in recent years, is going begging to the IMF instead.
And if the IMF is a tool of colonialism, why it is refusing to give money to Pakistan unless it agrees to measures such as the current administration not immediately using that money to fund a subsidy in oil prices right before an election. As opposed to the Saudis and Chinese who impose interest rates in the low 30%s, and acquire ownership of land and infrastructure when those payments are inevitably not made.
Where did you get 30% interest from?
I guess the colonialism has eased up in the last half-century or so. But the US definitely did our fair share.
EDIT maybe my fellow USians don't see them that way but they definitely were colonized - Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, Hawaii.
Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands are an unincorporated territory[2] of the USA and are sovereign American territory.
Simply put: Puerto Rico, et al. cannot unilaterally end their association with the USA because they are part of the USA.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_of_Free_Association
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_Stat...
China doesn’t want US military bases on their side of the Himalayas. It remained an autonomous region until a bunch of clowns proposed putting US military assets there.
It has similarities to Taiwan which is de facto independent but claimed by PRC.
Tibet has 3 million people, most of who are subsistence farmers or nomadic herders. Comparisons with Taiwan are a bit much.
I get that the Dali Lama is a really nice guy, but even he admits no one in Tibet gives a shit about him and becoming a feudal lord via picking objects as a child is a bit nuts.
that's because they can't do it, not because they don't want to do it.
Let's see what happens when the investments made with the belt and road initiative gets nationalized.
In other words the current Chinese government can trace it's power back about 70 years. For the US it's about 240. So it shouldn't be a surprise the US has done more bad things since it's in general had more time, especially as a major power in the world.
And US Cold war policy definitely had some serious missteps due to extreme paranoia about communism... US intervention in Iran (overthrew a democracy, paving the way for the revolution) and various Latin American countries definitely worked out poorly in hindsight, in addition to unethical methods (eg supporting the Contras). Honestly I'm shaky on most of the details, and I want to acknowledge these things happened. Most Americans have very limited knowledge of these past misdeeds - it's not something that's emphasized in schools, and happened before most of our lifetimes, and we don't see most of the consequences day to day... so the average American is content to be ignorant of it, and of course doesn't want to apologize or pay for it in any way.
I unfortunately don't see this changing. But I also don't trust China given their terrible human rights record; they just haven't had as much ability to operate around the world as the US has, in the past.
What about the great depression in the US? The dust bowl? Various bank runs in the 19th century? Hell, African-American deaths due to slavery? Civil war deaths? Deaths of native Americans in our various undeclared wars against them?
Probably China still has a higher number either way, but if we're going to do a fair comparison, we probably should compare percentages of the population. The US civil war killed a single digit percentage of US population at the time, so perhaps not as extreme as the great Chinese famine but still huge (it was the bloodiest war for US lives ever, by a huge margin)
As to all your examples, we could have a large discussion about each, but most are from the independent actions of the populace rather than government policy forcing deaths upon the populace at effective gun point. And none of them killed anywhere near the number that the great famine did. Most of them in fact killed zero people and just caused economic hardship. (Also while the American civil war killed 1%, the Chinese great famine killed over 10% in many areas.)
When farmers are dying of starvation and aren't allowed to eat the food that they're growing, you've gone seriously off the rails.
And western countries embargoing/blockading Chinese food imports during an emerging food crisis.
American educators tend to gloss over inconvenient truths like America's role in that famine.
And that’s a China that has had economic and military power at an international level for less than 2 decades.
All that being said, there’s no real point in comparing which one has been historically worse to determine who is destabilizing the world more in any given situation.
And while the political rhetoric in the US could be better, Chinese actions worldwide, are far more destabilizing than anything the US has been doing, especially since it got out of Iraq.
Interestingly, what’s happening in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) since the U.S. left Afghanistan shows that even what one could reasonably saw were clear negative actions by the U.S., such as its occupation of Afghanistan, may not have been as clear in hindsight.
This is a partial and partly formed view of mine. I don't have great knowledge of the history.
So please, educate yourself before making a fool of yourself.
https://www.powwows.com/issues-and-problems-facing-native-am...
They're not seeing the benefits of having "their lands" when those lands are still being exploited for resources by outsiders.
https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/culture-war-looms-for-r...
I'm not seeing much education or awreness in your comment.
As I finished my comment, it was a partly formed view and I don't have good knowledge of history. I was hoping for some more informed replies. I was hoping they'd come without insults too, so cheers for the disappointment.
> I was hoping for some more informed replies.
You didn't ask for any.
China, on the other hand, gives precisely zero fucks what wrongs happen to the peoples within its borders. All must serve the state and only the state, at the point of a gun.
I once again ask that you educate yourself before you make a fool of yourself. Basic knowledge and understanding are prerequisites to participating in worthwhile discussions. If you took that request as an insult, then that is your loss and certainly not my problem.
There are a lot of countries Americans might consider bad. But the news media isn't subtly and constantly hinting that we might want to go to war with them. The China rhetoric is starting to sound like the WMD justification and prep drumbeat that they used to hype up the American public about the inevitability of war with Iraq.
Ironically I think the Ukraine war has shown the best demonstration for China on why they shouldn't attempt a Taiwan invasion. Their rhetoric about Taiwan I feel has gone down since that war started.
The US is trying to avoid war, not start one.
And no, informing the populace that a country is a potential aggressor is not "war propaganda".
Have you considered perhaps there is a valid stance to oppose both PRC aggression on Taiwan & other neighbouring countries, while also opposing direct escalation between the PRC and the US?
How is urging caution against U.S. domestic jingoism contradictory to not allowing the PRC to start wars?
Thank you for leaving your comment here. You have many friends in the U.S. We are more resolved than ever to ensure your freedom.
1. One balloon with something attached to it
2. In American airspace
3. The US government, that has a long, rich history of lying, said some things
We have nothing else to go off of. We have no reason to trust statements by the US government of these situations.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-14/us-says-m...
Thank god we had two weeks of deranged, rabid reporting about China being evil
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.