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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

China is publicly saber rattling? Must be a day that ends in Y.

You would think given the situation they'd say "no comment". It's incumbent on China given that they violated US airspace to not make the situation worse. They have to know that it is an impossible situation for the US to back down in. They're basically ensuring we get locked into an escalation cycle.

Edit: And by loosening their censorship on nationalist commentators to say incendiary things means neither side has any room to maneuver. It's like adding in dynamite.

Then why would we assume they want anything other than an escalation cycle? Didn't foreign orders fall by some massive amount over the past year? One narrative for why the Chinese people tolerate their totalitarian dictatorship is the economic growth and prosperity they believe that it has bought them.

This is not likely to remain constant given the above, and thus the tolerance of the totalitarian dictatorship is similarly unlikely to remain constant, and what does a dictator with a slipping grip on power want to shore it up? A nice foreign skirmish.

If this cycle gets momentum, with the war in Ukraine going on, there is no way to control where it goes. It's the ultimate gamble. I thought they would be more careful than to roll the iron dice.

If you're a one man dictator shop and you're guaranteed to lose unless you roll, I guess you roll. To hell with the collateral damage, if you cared about that you wouldn't be a dicator to begin with.

Nationalism is a hell of a drug.

I think because, to most external viewers, why China would want an escalation cycle makes no sense. It only harms China.

China wants a common enemy to distract their population from problems at home.

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