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Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by PeterisP on Thursday December 13, 2018 @05:37PM (#18676784)
China is a major and valuable contributor to the global economy, and instrumental in providing the first world citizens with cheap consumer goods.

Voters value bread and circuses above ethics or human rights of faraway people. In a democratic country, if a politician would implement impactful policies aimed to improve human rights elsewhere at the cost of local economic harm and inflation hitting their workers, then that politician would get voted out of office and these policies reversed - so they don't do that.

If some politician genuinely desire to help human rights elsewhere, then they'd still not implement such overt policies (since they'd get reversed and help no one) but implement subtle diplomatic pressure.

The same logic, by the way, explains the current situation with climate change.

Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by SubiculumCode on Thursday December 13, 2018 @05:43PM (#18676820)
Other nation-states in the Asia Pacific would be perfectly willing to start taking our orders for commercial goods. No doubt the trade war with China has been, or will be, good for their industrial economies.

It is not ethics however that is driving a wedge between the United States and China. It is China's efforts to solidify its power over the Asian Pacific seas (in)conveniently named the China Sea and their trade routes, their One Road foreign policy efforts, and China's efforts to remain outside of the international order while also participating in it (e.g. IP theft, etc).

Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by sonnyblarney on Thursday December 13, 2018 @08:52PM (#18677776)
"Other nation-states in the Asia Pacific would be perfectly willing to start taking our orders for commercial goods."

They would if they could. Most other nations are nowhere near the level of sophistication of China on 'making stuff'. It's not just cheap labour, it's a myriad of other things related to it that China specializes in.

China is not trying to take over the world, they just want to be the 'superpower' in their sphere, and to be the centre of their Universe.

Which is fine in some ways, problematic in others.

Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by SubiculumCode on Thursday December 13, 2018 @08:59PM (#18677808)
Agreed. But I suspect that their sophistication is not so exclusive or far ahead that other countries could not move into their place over the course of a decade.
Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by sonnyblarney on Thursday December 13, 2018 @09:23PM (#18677936)
It is.

The list is long.

You need tons of people with tons of little bits of specialization, tons of factories run by experienced people, tons of workers for those factories willing to put up with rubbish, you need all the support: capitol, financial systems, export sophistication etc..

Surely, any group of people well enough organized could build maybe one such city of a few million people in ten years, but that's small.

In the meantime, in India, they can't get the electricity grid to work. Factories? No way.

Which is why we see a lot of software outsourcing in India, factories in China.

For assembling Nike shoes or something, other parts of Asia might already start to make sense. But for real manufacturing of most things ... it's China for the foreseeable future.

Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by ShorsHammer on Thursday December 13, 2018 @07:53PM (#18677529)
Can you name one with the appropriate morals for Western sensibilities?
Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by SubiculumCode on Thursday December 13, 2018 @07:58PM (#18677561)
South Korea is a good example maybe of a country that was happy to become technologically advanced and wealthy without trying to dominate its neighbors, and who was willing to buy into international systems of rule and trade.
Re:China harvested organs from political prisoners, says tri... by mango7283 on Thursday December 13, 2018 @10:41PM (#18678285)
Almost any major Asian economy you can name, including SK relies on China for key parts of the supply chain or owns factories in China... Or does that not count as "doing business with China"?

Also...SK was for a long time a authoritarian American client state and being a neighbor of China and Japan was in no position to "dominate it's neighbours" even if it wanted to