Yeah I don't have any sympathy for him or for the CCP. Appealing to nationalist sentiment to amass political power is making a deal with the devil, and we know how that goes. Let's just hope the US doesn't need to learn this lesson as well.
The sad fact is that when these kinds of authoritarian regimes rise to power, it takes years of abhorrent violence to tear them down. The West naively thought the "free market" would liberalize China (and Russia) and we were very wrong. We're reaping the consequences of that policy mistake on a global scale.
It's the rule of law and human rights that are liberalizing (which careful readers will realize is a tautology). The West needs to stop legitimizing and funding regimes that don't respect these fundamental ideas, and here I'm thinking of China, but also other totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia. Furthermore we need to build alliances against these regimes across the world.
We have all heard this idea thrown around now for some time. It’s only in the last few years it seems people have accepted that it wasn’t going to work.
In the context of the trade war and everything lately, I’ve really been thinking about this theory.
On one hand, we know the current reality. An ascendant authoritarian country looking to return to great power status. We have a trade war as a result of years of toxic codependency. It remains to be seen how far the trade war goes and wether or not it is the catalyst for some future war.
Now on the other hand, what direction would China have gone had Nixon not gone to China to open up trade negotiations in the 70s.
It’s impossible to know, but I can imagine quite a number of scenarios that are far worse than a trade war with China. Imagine a North Korea type situation where the country is much larger and influential and does not have such a co dependent trading relationship with the United States.
Is that really a better outcome?
Also important noting that China already had nukes when they began joining international trade in the 70s.
The situation could’ve been much worse.
- The US foreign policy of regime change and bullying hegemony was a complete failure, and totally counterproductive.
- We should have deployed soft power, like aid, diplomacy, and the Peace Corps, to places that were vulnerable to falling into authoritarian rule long term, and invested in the development of poorer countries.
- We should have more seriously considered deploying hard power to places that initially fell into authoritarian rule. I know Cuba was a failure and I know military action has serious consequences (especially for civilians), but compared to authoritarian governments wielding vast nuclear arsenals and ponderous economic weight... it's a tough choice.
- We should internalize that as the US goes, the world tends to follow. Whenever we violate sovereignty, human rights, or our own values and laws, the world takes notice. Like it or not, we're responsible for showing the world how a liberal superpower behaves. We need to take that responsibility seriously.
I'm impressed how you blatantly assume that marching into some foreign country, guns blazing, will magically turn them into a liberal democracy.
I mean, your track record is abysmal. There are exceptions (eg Japan) but generally when the US puts boots on the ground somewhere, the place turns to shit.
It is important to realize that experts believe the NK situation would be totally unsustainable without China.
Ergo, if China were like NK, it wouldn’t last long, because there is no big-brother economy that could support the (disaster) situation.
The free market did not turn either country into an efficient democracy, that's true. It did not improve the tolerance to dissent to Western levels (sadly, not a particularly high mark recently). It did not prevent an authoritarian regime in either country, too.
There's no silver bullet.
Isn't it ? I mean, I don't respect China much but this is not a false statement.
Obviously if you define "Western media" as newspapers providing a certain viewpoint then by definition your argument would be correct. But that isn't an interesting argument.
Moreover, using the Internet people in the US can read diverse points of view, including e.g. those of pro-China websites. This is not possible in China, except for a small minority who have access to VPN and similar technology.
The majority of American News can be traced back to 6 billionaires
http://www.tiragraffi.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/thebig6....
6 is more than one. A majority is not a totality. And not all Western media is American.
I want Beijing to have universal suffrage just as much as I want the Cantonese to.
At least SCMP still gives a truthful view: https://yp.scmp.com/hongkongprotests5demands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsWa9fieWSU
This interview was in Melbourne, Australia. Many of the interviewees were mainland students in Australia.
Not saying your associates and colleagues must be like one of them. Just offering one possible explanation.
You can also test their knowledge, by asking them about the Five Demands of Hong Kong protestors, and also Hong Kong legislative and government structures. Some of the answers can be found in the original article.
Props to China though for having a pretty effective system.
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21430000
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21288038
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20929962
...and so on.
If you step back and think about it, if this protest were to happen in the US, with subways burned, shops destroyed, road blocked, for 6 months. What is going to happen? Compare this hypothetical scenario with what happened in Hong Kong.
Where’s the gap? In 2019 we’ve been accustomed to export thinking to other people and import outrage from the cheapest source. And it doesn’t take a dictatorial government to push a narrative.
If the same protests happened in the US, with a quarter of the population marching peacefully on June 16 (as it did in Hong Kong), the government has to immediately respond to its people’s demands, for otherwise the current government will lose in landslide in the next election. And all the subway burning, shops destruction, etc will be avoided — these events happened at least three months into Hong Kong protests in September, long after the mega march on June 16.
Thank you for pointing out Hong Kong has no genuine democracy, which is directly related to one of the five key demands.
Well, it's not hypothetical, we already did it during WWII to Americans of Japanese ethnicity. And newspapers across the US spoke up against this atrocity [1]. Contrast that with China where the newspapers are forced to push the government's narrative, and invariably focus on the terrorism in 2014 that sparked the CCP's disproportional response rather than the barbaric violence perpetrated by the CCP.
The US government has formally apologized for the atrocities in the concentration camps where Japanese-Americans were held, and paid reparations ($42K per camp survivor in current USD). We vowed never to do something so horrible again. But in 2019 China is still playing with mass forced incarceration, and they even have the gall to call it a model for combating violence that other countries should follow. The CCP has replaced the Japanese empire in abusing their own population (but I think some in China are racist and view Uighurs as not part of the Chinese people, just like how Nazi Germany viewed the Jewish people, and how some in US during WW2 viewed Japanese-Americans).
[1] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/11/protests-against-in...
I'd argue that's not hypothetical at all, even with Xinjiang the US has by far the highest rate of imprisonment on the planet both of adults and children.
Most are black. Vast majority are not violent crimes.
It's entirely out of step with the rest of the developed world.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/uKLej0KwcfGN583uqvyfQ...
Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
I've noticed a massive apathy amongst Chinese towards Xinjiang, the vast majority don't care and think they deserve it. Perhaps you have a lot more in common than you think.
Both countries have horrendous records and many from there feel not the slightest bit of shame about it.
It's not hypocritical because the US has democratic avenues and Hong Kong (and China) doesn't, disruption is their only option.
When Hong Kong has universal free and fare elections I'll think about joining your condemnation.
Both in the US and in China people work in media voluntarily. In neither case they have freedom to publish anything they want, they have to push specific narratives coming from the top. In China narratives come directly from the government, in the US indirectly through the system of "manufacturing consent".
[1] http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/2011-04/13/content_12319455.htm
When the police come in and arrest everyone working for the China Daily in NYC and send them to jail and physically torture them like the CCP did to Simon Cheng or harvest their organs like the CCP did to Falun Gong followers, then you can make your argument. And many people in the US will fight just as hard for the rights of China Daily US Edition as they fight for freedom of speech and universal suffrage in Hong Kong.
Already on the international front, China is in trouble. The pro-China KMT party in Taiwan may suffer greatly in the next election because of what's going on in HK now (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3037040/tai...), making China's aggressive demands for forced unification even more unlikely in the medium term. This week, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a HK rights bill (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-usa/us-...) that, if it becomes law, will put China through an annual review, which will further erode the Sino-U.S. relationship for years to come. There have been calls for a boycott of the 2022 Olympics in Beijing which seems fringey now, but won't be if China sends in the troops.
There's also the internal question. Ordinary people in China are getting censored news, but some of the raw information about what's going on is getting through via social media. What does this mean for sentiment in Cantonese speaking areas of southern China, or for areas of China where provincial officials are resented for unjust or unfair treatment of citizens?