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Comment by woooooo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many Chinese-manufactured goods the state of Montana bought yesterday while issuing this statement.

"the People's Republic of China is an adversary of the United States"

- sent from my iPhone

They threaten regularly to go to war with us over Taiwan. People before WW1 thought war was impossible thanks to how the economy was so interconnected.

Russia invaded Ukraine despite how tied they were to Europe economically.

To suggest China can't be an adversary just because we trade is a blunder made many times in history, and it fails, time and time again. Don't fall for it.

No one is saying that China can't be an adversary. People are saying that maybe US politicians shouldn't be blatantly labeling them as an adversary just to score some sinophobic rageporn points with Fox News viewers.

> No one is saying that China can't be an adversary.

I think anyone who says they aren't is lying to themselves.

This is a far bigger trend than just some fox News viewers. Opposition to China has become bilateral and is very well supported by most in America.

You can only spend so long pretending to be a friend while also opposing the United States in basically every possible way until the United States wakes up and calls the quacking thing a duck. Seeing reality, we are burning bridges.

TikTok is one of those bridges. The chip export bans are another. Expect them to continue until China's trade with America resembles our trade with the soviets in the 80s.

They're mostly the same country they were 10 years ago. Compare the media coverage then and now -- they didn't change, we just ran out of war on terror and needed a new enemy.

Then don't compare the media coverage. Instead look at the actions of both countries. Read proposed legislation from US lawmakers going back almost two decades addressing the game theory between both nations. Read about the rampant IP theft that China has committed over the years, particularly in US-tax funded institutions. The US is simply planning ahead and severing ties which have kept us in a compromised position.

Sure, maybe some people are warhawking but most of the concerned people are focused on trade dependence and worried that China will take over Tiawan's production as a last resort. Is that an unreasonable view? What happens if they do decide to do that? Just let them do it?

> They're mostly the same country they were 10 years ago.

Oh, I strongly agree with you there. This was obvious in 2013 as well.

Xi and his arrogant actions on the world stage have been a big help in creating opposition though.

China is an adversary and has been for a long time for many countries. They don't say that for no good reason, and yes, it's not about sinophobia.

sinophobic rageporn

Yes, if the genocidal tyrants in Beijing were white we'd have no problem with them.

Don't worry - as soon as the american war machine gets the green light everyone else will become hawkish sinophobes too. Many such cases.

> People before WW1 thought war was impossible thanks to how the economy was so interconnected

That is not why everybody thought war was impossible. The reason they thought war was impossible was the King of England, the Kaiser of Germany, and the Tsar of Russia, i.e. the major belligerents in WWI, were all cousins. They were Queen Victoria's grandchildren. Those weren't the only grandchildren on the throne who ended up taking up arms and entering the war. Given how a total of seven of the belligerents were related, including the 3 largest belligerents, nobody thought the family would go to war with one another.

They thought wrong.

Nukes are a reason why China won't go to war with the US, same as Russia. Unfortunately for Ukraine, they gave up their nukes.

Taiwan lacks nukes and China is rapidly building out it's nuclear umbrella. I believe they absolutely intend to try to use that same nuclear threat to enable their invasion of Taiwan without American intervention.

If China successfully invades Taiwan, using nukes or not, nothing and nobody will be able to stop Japan and South Korea from building their own nukes.

I'm certain both countries could get at least one working nuke within a day if they had to.

Notwithstanding that Japan already "has" plenty of nukes, they just happen to be on American submarines.

Trading with your adversaries is a good way to not start a war.

It can cut both ways, though. If your primary source for a crucial resource is a country that could potentially benefit from harming you, that can be strategically intolerable and eventually lead to finding an excuse to start a war.

A $250b/year trade deficit will weaken you over time while you might just be kicking the can down the road. The generation having to fight the war will have lesser chances of winning it.

Trade (especially massively imbalanced trade) with a communist dictatorship is not a good idea.

“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” - Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania

I've you've never had to do business with people you don't like, color me impressed

People you don't like =/= adversaries

Sounds like a problem.

I guess we need more laws like this then to solve it, then.

Things are changing. Today I went to buy a water bottle. Name brand, made in China: $8. Generic, made in USA: $4.

I'd love to see what would happen if Walmart got banned in the same way.

The $5/dozen t-shirt has little possibility of collecting private data and sending it to the mother ship

How does a hypothetical data collection warrant a ban, while a real illegal data collection associated with illegal voter manipulation and illegal campaign financing, like the Cambridge Analytica—a British company—scandal, doesn’t?

I suspect there’s at least some “think of the children” motivation behind this, even if it’s not explicit.

Well, Cambridge Analytica has been disbanded since 2018 so there would be little use in banning it.

Chinese subsidy and abuse of global trade systems is a big part of what makes them an adversary.

Can state how your wondering is relavant or what argument or point you are alluding to?

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