The problem here is that this is an obvious escalation with US as the aggressor and not all US allies are willing to follow the US into war as the current administration is seen as unreliable.
You even had the former and current (!) prime ministers of Australia warning of high likelihood of a war between China and the US within the next 3 months. Where the next 3 months of course is the period of the US presidential election indicating that they clearly see a connection between the US elections and increased China tensions.
What is more important is how it is being perceived amongst other countries around the south china sea. And as far as I can tell the US does not have the support it normally would have. Even from surefire allies such as Australia.
The "rules" were sovereign rules China applied and it's not as if other search engines or companies in China could get away without following those same rules... plus, such rules are now being applied to ByteDance and WeChat in the USA to make them "voluntarily" pull out as well and this of courses legitimizes China's past and present actions (which is fundamentally why I do not think we should be going down this route).
It's basically admitting defeat if we start using the same policies as China. China owns up to their policies of censorship and heavy-handed market control. They're not hiding that fact. If we start down that path too then we're just adopting their system and admitting we can't beat them with a free market and freedom of access to apps/information.
Keep in mind that Trump's rationale for blocking WeChat is that it is "allowing the Chinese Communist Party a mechanism for keeping tabs on Chinese citizens who may be enjoying the benefits of a free society for the first time in their lives." That's basically saying the people are too stupid and must have their information access controlled—which, as you may know, is exactly the communist part of China's modus operandi.
I don't see how US is the aggressor. The kind of control CCP has over these companies is well known and as someone who is not an American, I was surprised why the US admin had not taken stern measures till now. This standoff was initiated when China decided to kick out American companies for not subscribing to their censorship policies. And the way companies like WeChat feed into CCP's censorship framework is well known.
https://citizenlab.ca/2020/05/wechat-surveillance-explained/
I'm classing it as a certainty. Have a read of the Wolfowitz Doctrine and work out what it necessitates, and that to be done very soon.
Even so, I believe the US has 'missed the bus'. It needed to have initiated vigorous conflict earlier this year to be sure of victory in that coming war. It can't start anything worthwhile now until at least the next Spring-Summer campaign season. By then China will have had another 12 months of growth, and the US another 12 months of decline.
There is only one country in the world which is reliably able to afford being nuked, and has "surviving first, and second strike" as part of its many doctrines.
The only major country against which MAD is not so assured is China.
"Kill 300 million Chinese, still got a billion Chinese left. Kill 300 million Americans, no more America."
USA talks TikTak, but the world hears "the overall political arrangement of China"
But the Trump administration is very active in launching more attacks. If you follow the news on what they've been doing to Chinese companies, the past month has been absolutely insane. The attacks are only getting faster and faster, as the Trump administration gets increasingly desperate to win a reelection.
Another problem is that all these attacks leave behind permanent damage. It's not just a matter of ignoring the attacks. I fear that at some point, we get past some boiling point, and things erupt into a hot war.
Here is what he said two weeks ago about how much happened in the past two weeks. https://twitter.com/Tom_Fowdy/status/1285845346447499265
"As I noted a while ago, the US is on a roll announcing 2-3 anti-China measures a week. There has been one roughly every two days. It's just non-stop
-Closes the Chinese consulate in Houston
-Charges two nationals for hacking
-Adds more companies to the entity list over Xinjiang
-Bans federal contractors buying from Huawei
-Ups ante in the South China sea
-Blacklists officials
-Removes Hong Kong's special status
-Daily Cold War rhetoric from Pompeo
-Restricts Chinese student visas
-Ends fulbright scholar program Hong Kong
-Contemplating banning TikTok
Most of the above is in the past TWO WEEKS alone."
-Closes the Chinese consulate in Houston
>Allegedly caught spying
-Charges two nationals for hacking
>Conducting justice shouldn't be seen as a deliberate attempt to increase tension
-Adds more companies to the entity list over Xinjiang
>Black listing companies involved in perpetuating genocide against the Uighurs doesn't seem controversial to me
-Bans federal contractors buying from Huawei
>National security
-Ups ante in the South China sea
>Allowing China to claim that region puts a substantial amount of trade in jeopardy, due to many established shipping routes going through there. China is the aggressor here, regardless of what the media tries to portray.
-Blacklists officials
>You need to be more specific, but I assume you are referring to more Uighur genocide related sanctions
-Removes Hong Kong's special status
>Following the terms of the Hong Kong special status trade agreement that hinges on it being a self-governed state. (It no longer is)
-Daily Cold War rhetoric from Pompeo
>Sabre rattling, but could be taken as aggressive action depending on whether Pompeo was talking about any of the points above. If so, then it's warranted.
-Restricts Chinese student visas
>The world is in lock-down. Even countries heavily reliant on chinese student spending, have temporarily restricted such visas.
-Ends fulbright scholar program Hong Kong
>Why continue such programs when the status of such a country changes? Those programs and trade agreements have to be renegotiated.
-Contemplating banning TikTok
>Reciprocal treatment of western social media. So far the first and only deliberate escalation of tensions against China, on this list. Justified... but certainly an escalation.
Or maybe, just maybe, he is doing something which he believes is the right thing to do and will help Americans? The ratcheting up could just be a tactic to force the next administration into a position to actually deal with the dysfunctional relationship rather than always rolling over and hoping things will be different like previous administrations.
Honestly I think China has very little to gain from interfering on either side of the US election, and potentially a lot to lose. Russia, on the other hand...
-- Vice President Dick Cheney, 2005-06-20
1. A thoroughly mendacious character 2. A moron
A lot of people ascribe malice to him, but it’s clear as day that he was in over his head with the entire project. Basically 0 of his goals have been achieved 17 years in.
So I would say that while the appearance of competent war games was there, it was a charade.
Like it or not, kicking out white people isn't just symbolism.
To be clear, I agree that transfer of power was a classic neoliberal failure, and the situation is a travesty.
The Velvet Revolution comes to mind. Of course there is a possibility/threat of violent escalation in negotiating these things, but rational actors can make the calculus that getting a good enough deal guaranteed is better than fighting and potentially loosing a better one. However, it requires a non-totalitarian view of the world (i.e. the others are not enemies no matter what and must be punished for their bad deeds doesn't really allow you to negotiate in a de-escalatory manner).
There was an interesting book published about two years ago (I'm too lazy to search for it) which showed that wealth "re-calibration" only really happened as a result of violent change. I know I wouldn't be here in front of a computer writing this comment if it hadn't been for WW2 that brought communist rule to my Eastern-European country, which communist rule brought forced industrialisation with the help of mass education (that was of course free, unlike before WW2). That benefited my parents who could make the "leap" from the countryside to the city. Probably a new war could similarly eliminate the wealth inequality in countries like the US.
Actually I looked for it and I'm 99% sure this is the book: "The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century" [1]
[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691183251/th...
Perhaps just by destroying wealth. It’s unlikely that any violence could improve the US middle class since it’s already richer than the middle class in most other countries. Best you can do at that point is just try to eliminate the wealthy if you’re fixated on income inequality.
Not likely that Trump would inflict even more economic damage during his presidency just before the Election.
Then sit back and let China then make the first move. Might not work, but at this point I wouldn't put it past somebody in the White House having already gamed it.
There has never been a case in human history where one group of people voluntarily gave up their wealth, status and privilege to another group of people. Wealth transfer always leads to violence.