European Parliament removes curbs on lawmaker meetings with China | Hacker News Reader

European Parliament removes curbs on lawmaker meetings with China

yahoo.com

11 pointsakyuu11 comments

While I'm not too happy about the influence of a de-facto dictatorship on my region in the world, recent events have shown that the turbulence of a democratic government, and its private interests, brings with it its own share of trouble. Let me know when a Chinese private citizen takes out newspaper ads for a European political party or becomes powerful enough to directly influence a war in our borders.

Interesting and telling that European lawmakers actually don’t have issues working with a dictatorship that shares almost no values with the European order. But it isn’t entirely surprising either given European leaders support things like censorship and socialism. But to me the reaction to America pulling its wasteful spending on Europe is hysterical. It is far better for Europe and America to reset relations than for either to help China in any way.

Views like this is why Europe, and other nations outside of it, are looking to move away from close ties with the US, and then becoming closer to China.

That’s circular. You’re saying the fact that I am observing, as in this linked article, countries become friendly with China unexpectedly, is the reasons why they’re becoming friendly with China unexpectedly? If that’s not what you mean, can you be more specific?

If you think that this move is "unexpected", then you must not know much about what has been happening between the US and its ex allies in the last two months.

We have abandoned Europe, why should we expect them to stay loyal to us?

I've seen you far too often with a strongly anti-China viewpoint on HN posts to take your points seriously at this point...

The frequency of what you see isn’t a reason to take something seriously or not. A more specific argument might be helpful. To be clear, I like China and its people. I strongly dislike the CCP and how it operates, for a long list of reasons that are easy to find on Wikipedia or elsewhere. In the context of this discussion, I am simply pointing out that it doesn’t make sense for the allegedly free and democratic societies of Europe to increase their ties with the Chinese government at this point, unless they aren’t actually as free and democratic as previously thought.

I think this is a very sane and sober line of reasoning.

I'd actually go further and actually say that there is actually very little that European counterparts can offer to American interests. Even less in the ways of sensibilities. The only negative emotion I feel about Europe is chagrin and lament at their utter loss of legacy due to their commitment to globalism at any costs. Truly a shame.

I'd say the key here is stability. The post-WWII Pax Americana was at least stable. The USA each day moves towards a Putin-esque 'might-is-right' oligarchal model, and that transition to their new world will be painful for them.

Meanwhile China and Europe can agree to be frenemies and note that they're both going to make the least crazy/unexpected bat-shit decisions of the big 4 geopolitical regions.

Socialism is not an insult in the developed world BTW

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