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Comment by noobermin | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, the use of the word "enemy" is far too strong, it sounds like we are at war with them while they somehow supply half of our goods at prices we've grown accustomed to. "Adversary" is a weaker word that is more apt (which you use later), where the US is not on the friendliest terms with China but isn't in an outright war with them.

Words matter, at the very least to avoid starting nationalistic flamewars here on HN.

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> "Adversary" is a weaker word that is more apt

> Words matter, at the very least to avoid starting nationalistic flamwars here on HN.

I agree!

Back in Arcade Machines time, when a player is busy playing a fighting game, Street Fighter, I guess, and another person inserts a coin to play against him, the game pauses and a message that reads "Here's come a new challenger" pops up, so I think challenger would serve the purpose somehow!

I don't want to compare life to video games and I think comparing a genocidal dictatorship that ruthlessly suppresses its citizens and occupies foreign lands (Tibet for example) a challenger is a bit of a downplay

> I don't want to compare life to video games

Not that this is relevant to anything, but if it were: no one was doing this.

The US has an official list of enemies and that includes China. I believe the list was introduced under Trump and is determined by the sitting president:

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-A/part-7/subp...

Your link names them "adversaries". Its an official list of adversaries.

Yes. They make it sound much nicer.

It is about connotation. I play Go against you. You are my opponent or, if it is a tournament, I could also call you my adversary(connotation is a bit stronger, less matter of fact like opponent, more around competition now). After the game, we sit down and have tea and laugh.

Now let's explore the connotation of enemy. Playing Go against you calling you my enemy is outright wrong. However, if you were my enemy, I would not drink tea and have a laugh with you afterwards. I wouldn't even be playing a game of Go against you, but rather trying to do other not so nice things to you.

Such is the nature of connotation. Being erudite helps here ;) .

The word enemy is not used on that page at all. It says adversaries

Others are calling this out but they're not able to state why:

They're listed as adversaries and not enemies because aiding an enemy country suddenly unlocks a litany of other crimes.

Enemy is very specifically defined: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/2204

Adversary is very specifically defined: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-15/subtitle-A/part-7/subp...

The US is in a cold war with China as long as China is open to the idea of the use of military force on its neighbors, including Taiwan. A cold war is the only alternative to surrendering the free Taiwanese people to communist rule, and a hot war.

US is also open to the idea to use military force and not only on their neighbours but also on countries far away.

US is in cold war with China because China might soon be economicaly getting upper hand.

I don't get your first paragraph. Of course the US is open to the idea of using military force against, well, pretty much anyone. I don't see how that's relevant, other than as some form of pointing out hypocrisy? Or are you actually saying that "because the US is prepared to do its own military action, it categorically doesn't enter cold wars with other countries based on which military actions the other country could do"? I don't understand.

Hypocrisy mostly. You can’t tell others to stop doing what you keep doing.

The US considers all of LATAM as his own back yard. Why can’t China consider all of Asia as its own back yard?

This is what upsets people, the sheer size of hypocrisy.

So two wrongs make a right?

No the GP, but their point is that the US can't complain about how China treats the rest of Asia when it looks so similar to how the US has treated Latin America.

That doesn't mean either side was right, or that one justifies the other. Only that the pot should into call the kettle black.

>or that one justifies the other

That is absolutely the implication here.

I definitely read it differently, but maybe I did misunderstand them.

The commenter's focus on hypocrisy reads to me more like they take issue with the US calling China out for this rather then justifying what China is doing because they aren't the only ones.

If your military is powerful enough, yes.

The point is that the US has set a precedence on military power around the world. The US told the world that using military power for your own country's benefit is ok to do. So why can't China?

I was more interested in their answer, I don't think you have much more insight into what they meant than I do

Hypocrisy mostly.

The only way that China gets an upper hand economically is by selling products to the US and the Western world.

If they enter into a conflict where they are cordoned off, their export oriented economy would crash immediately.

A war between China and USA is impossible to win for either sides, due to both military size, budgets, interdependence, and nuclear weapons arsenal. And this is why it's a cold war.

Not really. China has so much manufacturing power that if they limited exports and focused on manufacturing for inland it would have major economic shifts for both china and the west. That's the problem with the world putting all of their manufacturing eggs in one basket

Sell domestically to whom? Domestic buyers ain't buying. That's why they are exporting.

> The only way that China gets an upper hand economically is by selling products to the US and the Western world.

I am not a geopolitician, but this looks like a little too simplistic perspective, doesn’t it? I mean China diversified its wallet, including by helping to create infrastructures in Africa where there is still a largely growing young population (in contrast to the general trend in the occidental countries, or even what the long standing single child policy led to in China).

If western demand goes away, you think African demand can compensate for that? Domestic would be more realistic, and even there China has nowhere near enough domestic consumption to keep the system running, let alone sustain historical growth rates.

Without the West, China would collapse economically. I mean literally collapse, ever heard of tofu-dreg?

Exactly. It’s Cold War 2.0 this time we trade with them …

The two blocks traded in Cold War 1.0 - there was even direct trade between the US and the Soviet Union - although no denying that trade was a lot smaller than US-China trade is today

No I meant what I wrote. But I meant it about the CCP not the average Chinese person.

China wants to replace the US and the west as the global power. This will lead to upheaval and likely a war. When that finally comes to pass it behooves the west and the US to protect itself from anything that could undermine its own protection. In order to win a war you need hearts and minds. Not a populace that is being programmed to think despotic neo-communist-capitalist-when-it-suits-them rulers in China are somehow paper tigers.

Let’s compromise here: they are adversaries now but I think they are preparing to become enemies in every sense of the word. If they invade Taiwan, shed blood in the conflict over the breached rusting ship in the Phillipines, continue supporting Putin in his illegal attempt to annex Ukraine then yes they will eventually become enemies.

Even in the times of the Great Empires, there were always other great powers - perhaps not peers, but powerful enough to be truly independent. This era most of us grew up in where the US was this unchallenged global hegemonic power was a major outlier in history, owing exclusively to rare circumstance. That being that after the USSR suddenly collapsed, there were not only politicians in the US that wanted to be rulers of the world, but also no other powers that could even remotely compare on a technological or economic level except Japan. But Japan itself also began a rapid economic collapse just about the time that the USSR collapsed.

And now not only were these circumstances rare, but they were also inherently liminal. Technological and economic edges fade rapidly, especially in light of major population level differences. I see no reason to think China imagines they could or even wants to be anything like the US was 30 years ago. The world is returning to its more natural multipolar state, as it's more or less always been.

If my reading of history is correct while there might have been more than one power or more or less equal powers they all vied to be the one most powerful one. I think that’s the natural order of things and the question is do you want the west lead by the US or one of her allies to be that leader or China or her allies.

How exactly do you think China is going to be able to "lead" the US? This is what I mean. The era of one hegemonic power being able to be the sole judge and authority on every single action around the globe was an extremely brief and freak incident in history, and that time is over. It required an extreme economic/tech imbalance that has rarely existed throughout history, no longer exists, and will probably not exist again for the foreseeable future. So whoever calls themselves the 'most powerful' is ultimately irrelevant - it would just be a mostly meaningless title.

I would much rather live in a world with a balance of power than one with a concentration of one.

It’s by no means a given that a more even distribution of power leads to war or China ‘replacing the US’ as the only one. But an attitude where everyone thinks so, ironically, might.

History is bloody when there is no concentration of power. Historically peace happens when there is a strong hegemon.

The idea that your population can be "programmed" in the first place is the antithesis of american ideology. The whole point of freedom is you're free to think and say whatever you want and society has to deal with that. Society either rejects the ideas or accepts them but either choice still represents an active choice, an exercise of freedom. Saying that people are being "programmed" reveals a rather shocking lack of respect for the intellectual freedom and autonomy of their fellow man.

I’m pretty sure that I have been programmed. By my parents, by my friends, my education, my environment.

Change any of those things in a significant way and I’m sure I would be a different person now. I love the idea that I am an autonomous agent of my own that exists self evidently outside of those bounds, I just don’t think it’s true.

Then humanity today would approximately the same as humanity of its first era. I don't really understand the tendency to deny one's own agency. We were all once teenagers. And one of the first things we do as our brain starts to develop is rebel against the authority of a time. And, for some, that spirit of independence and rebellion never ends.

People are dumb, and like to believe the first thing they see, so "programming" a population is as easy as showing everyone something so often that it is all they see, tge human mind is incredibly malleable, and many big tech companies employ teams of psychologists to make best use of that, given china is a adversary or enemy or whatever you wanna call it, giving them a pipeline by which they can have direct access to tens of millions of American minds is a little silly to say the least, you do not win a war by winning battles, you win a war by breaking the enemies will to fight "Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting" Sun Tzu said that, and I'd say he knows a little more about fighting then you do pal because he invented it

Were this true then any of the countless authoritarian states which ended up in complete control of all media, news, and even the ability to enter or leave the country - would have had a nation full of fully misinformed and obedient people. Instead it's invariably the exact opposite. The USSR is one of the best examples. They not only controlled all media, all news, and even who was allowed to leave the country. Yet trust completely collapsed as the state of nation completely collapsed.

>The idea that your population can be "programmed" in the first place is the antithesis of american ideology.

The fact that you might be programmed to hate/dislike/fear China despite, I'm guessing having never been to China, is proof that America also programs you, just in another way.

Hint: Mostly through media.

With them picking Russia in their invasion of Ukraine, the term enemy is rather applicable at this point.

By the same logic with the Israel-Palestine issue, the US is currently the only state visibly blocking calls for immediate ceasefires and establishing a Palestinian state (which is essential for a two-state solution) at the UN and it can therefore be called the enemy of the most of the world.

Edit: improve grammar and wording

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