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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> Also, lots of people forget that Chinese who grew up in the 1990s tend to be fairly anti-American due to the Tiannamen Sanctions, the Taiwan Straits Crisis, and the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade...

Don't forget the propaganda around those things, which is an important factor. I was talking to a Chinese person about the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and they were certain the US never apologized for it. However, they had to concede they had been mislead when I found a old C-SPAN clip of Clinton apologizing for it during a press conference.

I bet Chinese media around that time deliberately cultivated outrage by selectively reporting on the bombing but ignoring the apology.

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Given what the gp is talking about- colluding with many major suppliers to stop food and commodities exports to China, and even blocking sea passages to prevent shipments from reaching them (an act of war)- I don't see why Chinese people need any propaganda to hate the US. Reality is more than enough.

> colluding with many major suppliers to stop food and commodities exports to China > Reality is more than enough

Except it's all hypothetical?

True, but how would the US feel about a country throwing around the possibility of cutting them off of global supplies and even blocking their shipping routes? Do you think US citizens would feel good towards such a country? Not to mention that of course the US have been waging a commercial war with China already for several years.

> but how would the US feel about a country

You mean about anonymous individuals (who might or might not be citizens of that given country) throwing around that idea on an online forum?

But I'll try not being facetious. I do of course understand your point, even if I do think you overdramatizing it.

Yes US has been waging a commercial war with China, just like China was waging a war with the US. I don't really see how is the US the clear aggressor here (of course it mainly has itself to blame for entering into this unsustainable relationship with China to begin with; however I still strongly believe that in relative terms China benefited significantly more from US/rest of the developed outsourcing much of their industrial/etc. production to China than the other way around, though).

And obviously China is a clear aggressor in certain aspects (e.g. how would as British citizen if Germany/France/etc. started threatening to invade your island over Brexit?). If that's not a good analogy we could use Ireland and Britain instead.

> possibility of cutting them off of global supplies and even blocking their shipping routes

Anyway, this is sounds extremely far fetched. Orthogonal to what the US was and is still doing; I don't think any country did more to keep global shipping routes open for the 50+ years or so. Blockading China would be the equivalent of purposefully shutting yourself in the gut (even if we ignore any potential military reaction)

China can see the West imposing sanctions on Russia and pressuring other countries to join with secondary sanctions.

And they missed the West imposing sanctions on Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, South Africa and many other countries in the past?

Russia's position in the global economy is radically different to that of China's. Especially from the perspective of the US, which lost almost nothing by imposing sanctions on Russia (the brunt of the costs was borne by Europe), arguably it actually benefited from them. In China's case it would be very different.

Of course if US and its allies managed to somehow economically untangle themselves from China well. That would depend.

In any case.. If China is really concerned with this they could just start by leaving Taiwan alone, that would significantly reduce any tension.

"And they missed the West imposing sanctions"

The scale is unprecedented.

"If China is really concerned with this they could just start by leaving Taiwan alone"

Yeah, "if you are really concerned with the gun pointed at your head -- do as we say." China prefers doing something about the gun itself.

> The scale is unprecedented.

Relative to the geopolitically important of the target country? Yes. Looking at the scale of the sanctions themselves? Hardly. I still think the other factors I listed are more important.

> "if you are really concerned with the gun pointed at your head -- do as we say."

No, it's if you randomly make unprovoked threats to neighboring expects consequences and general behave in an aggressive way (politically and economically) expect that other countries will react.

China is the one pointing the gun for the most part.

>Looking at the scale of the sanctions themselves? Hardly.

Apparently China has different opinion.

>China is the one pointing the gun for the most part.

PRC and ROC have the unfinished civil war between them.

> PRC and ROC have the unfinished civil war between them.

Because the PRC doesn't want to finish it, peacefully anyway... At this point it's 90-95% one-sided.

Who do you think isn't allowing Taiwan/ROC to renounce its "claim" to the rest of China by constantly threatening to invade it even if they start seriously considering that option seriously?

Seriously seriously, how People's Republic Of China's claim on Republic of China doesn't allow ROC to renounce their's claim on PRC? And why it isn't vise-verse?

Is this sarcasm?

Only way the ROC could do that is by declaring that the ROC no longer exists and that they are now an independent state of Taiwan. Even if they didn't frame it exactly that way from PRC's perspective any attempt by the ROC to renounce its claim on the rest of China would be the equivalent of them declaring independence.

> And why it isn't vise-verse?

You mean why ROC/Taiwan isn't threatening to invade the mainland if the PRC changes its policy of considering Taiwan to be an inalienable part of China? It's hard to tell..

Not at all.

Taiwan? While it is strategic (and strategic for both sides) Taiwan is an excuse. The problem that the US has with China is that it doesn't want it to acquire technological supremacy or to become a superpower. It doesn't matter if China is good or bad, what matters is that the US controlled most of the world in the past 35 years (and half of it before that) and it doesn't want this situation to end. All the rest is details and pretexts.

> All the rest is details and pretexts.

Not really. The details matter much more, in fact the overall policy in the US in recent years has been almost primarily shaped by the sum of those details. Look at EU/US vs Russia, overall nobody had any significant issues in maintaining peaceful and mutually beneficial economic ties with it until it started behaving in an ultra-imperialist and unpredictable manner.

Also US has time on its side. Long-term there is no need to be over aggressive towards China, US is in a much better position demographically.

> US controlled

Well... define control. I don't see how is that true unless we use an extremely lose definition of the word.

>until it started behaving in an ultra-imperialist and unpredictable manner.

That's a good description of American actions in 2014 when they said 'fuck the EU'[0] and 'mid-wifed' the coup in Ukraine.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

So you're saying that Russia has some inherent, indisputable & permanent claim over all theory territory of every single country that surrounds it? And attempt by the people living in those regions to do anything about that is an unprovoked and direct attack on Russia...

(just like Germany in the 30s)

There is no connection between your comment and what I said

I’d venture a guess that there are some folks that are more mad about the bombing itself than the perceived lack of apology for the bombing.

Moving goalposts. The claim was they never apologized, and they did.

They moved the goalposts from “mad about not apologizing for the bombing” to “mad about the bombing itself”? How does that work in linear time considering the bombing itself happened before a window for apology?

> They moved the goalposts from “mad about not apologizing for the bombing” to “mad about the bombing itself”?

I think the GP was saying you moved the goalposts.

And the perceived lack of apology was an important factor in this person's (long past) anger.

I mean, think of it this way: if someone hurt you by mistake, would you feel the same if 1) they apologized for their mistake or 2) didn't apologize (showing a lack of care towards you). For me, at least, I'd only get mad at the latter, and I wouldn't be so mad about the harm itself, but rather the disrespect of not apologizing.

> I mean, think of it this way: if someone hurt you by mistake, would you feel the same if 1) they apologized for their mistake or 2) didn't apologize (showing a lack of care towards you). For me, at least, I'd only get mad at the latter…

If somebody bombed my embassy I would be mad at them. If they didn’t apologize, I would probably be more mad at them. If they did apologize, I could reasonably be less mad at them for bombing my embassy but I could be reasonably forgiven for still being somewhat mad. Because my embassy got bombed.

Correct, thank you.

You contend that no individual Chinese people have negative feelings about the bombing and three deaths themselves? The only Chinese people that could harbor ill will about it do so because of some sort of internal propaganda about apologies?

It was in 1999! Surely there are people alive today that remember this event that have not decided it was hunky dory because Bill Clinton said sorry on television?

That's not what I contend, no.

What I contend is that if someone starts with "they never apologized", and then shown wrong, and then goes on to say "yeah ok but they did kill them", that person moved the goalposts of "reasons to be upset". Furthermore, their grievance is probably motivated by something else that they don't know (or don't want) to articulate, and so use "they didn't apologize" as a shorthand for whatever their grievance is.

The first post in this thread mentions the bombing, not the apology.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41073744

The second post made the argument that it’s not about the bombing but about the apology. This was a change of topic by tivert.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41073828

My response to that was that it’s actually reasonable for people to be mad about the bombing. This was the original topic in this thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41073953

Then you showed up and accused me of moving the goalposts for not agreeing with an opinion you share even though that was not the original topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41074059

Seeing as I never changed my opinion or wording on this topic, there does in fact seem to be someone rewriting history in real time to justify their opinion going on in this conversation. Unless of course you view “disagreeing with you at every point” as “moving the goalposts”

Edit: Also it does seem that you do contend that Chinese people are only mad about the propaganda as you responded “Correct” to this:

>I'd only get mad at the latter, and I wouldn't be so mad about the harm itself, but rather the disrespect of not apologizing.

There is a load-bearing usage of the word only that you endorse. Unless you didn’t read it?

I'm convinced what I said was clear if someone is coming in with the intent of understanding. (And the proof is another commenter tried explaining me position and nailed it)

I don't have the patience for this.

So if someone starts shooting on the street and kills your brother, you won't be mad if they claimed it was a misteke and apologies?

>ignoring the apology

US apology was plastered all over local news. They did delay broadcast for a a few days, by which time protests against US embassy already began. Delay got protestors to get rage out of system. I was in BJ at the time, very few locals believed apology - this was few years after clinton sent 2 CVGs through TW strait.

Also important to note, PRC gov also unlikely to have believed in apology if background that PRC using belgrade embassy to move downed F117 material. In which case US apology insincere, attack was purposeful (reports mission coordinated by CIA not NATO), but PRC weak at the time, not much can be done, same with 95 TW strait drama. Saying US gov apologized to Belgrade is like saying JP gov apologized for WWII, but kept going to Yasukuni shrine. Flip side of PRC weaponizing propaganda to ferment anti-US sentiment is US propaganda / selective reporting / decontextualizing pretending PRC didn't have good reason to. Everyone uses media to direct influence propaganda on foreign policy. Ultimately, Belgrade just another US intervention effort against PRC interest, queue Hainan EP3 drama a year later.

> I bet Chinese media around that time deliberately cultivated outrage by selectively reporting on the bombing but ignoring the apology

Yep! The government even turned a blind eye to anti-American protests at the time - barely a couple years after Tiannamen.

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