I love the world we live in: everyone has an opinion on severely complex matters and proffers it in an absolutely confident way that their opinion is the truth.

I don't like China's behavior (toward us and it's own). I don't believe for a minute that I know how to solve the problem, because every solution is bound to have unintended side effects, some which may be worse than the original problem.

Your opinion is also problematic, specially when politicians hold it (which is not uncommon), as in "This problem is way too complex, let's do nothing and pray that it will fix itself"

If I were a politician, which I am not, I would do this:

Gather the experts in the fields (there are likely more than one field at play) and manage their discussion. I would ask them questions and observe how they discuss. If I felt that one or both were not intellectually honest, I would replace them with other people, and repeat.

Once I felt an intellectually honest discussion had reached a conclusion, then I would act (vote, provide legislation, etc).

It is sad to me that we are moving away from a process like this and not toward it.

You came and continue to come for everyone there where no one ever invited you. Not Russia, not China. You.

Yeah that sounds like a great idea. Ensure even more that no one inside of China will have access to information about human rights. And then the Chinese government can get to use propaganda against their own citizens even more effectively. There’s no way that could backfire. And there are no ethical problems with what you are suggesting either!

Maybe we should play the propaganda game too? Block most services and traffic but selectively allow things through that have propaganda value.

Given the amount of suspicious Chinese devices and traffic, you'd imagine we should be doing something though?

> Maybe we should play

Who is 'we'? Chances are you live in a country founded in democratic principles. This means after each election, priorities change, based on the politicians that are voted into office.

Take the USA as a good example. The priorities of the 2008-2016 administration were undermined by the 2017-2020 administration, and the priorities of the 2017-2020 administration are being undermined by the 2021-now administration.

Both sides think they're right, and were doing what was right for the country. Both sides think the other was an existential threat to the nation, and use similar rhetoric to justify their actions.

Our Pentagon certainly doesn't change tactics every new president but hey you got this nice reality going for you where you think one person is in charge of the whole country, I am over here still waiting for a clear picture of Sasquatch. Sucks to see but it's what happens when our voters only get their news from Elite Western MSM. No sarcasm on the elite part, just look at this fairy tale world we got.

> Ensure even more that no one inside of China will have access to information about human rights.

That ship sailed long ago.

Please feel free to suggest alternates.

If the only alternate is status quo, then it's not working very well is it for:

1) Tibetans, Uighurs and other minorities

2) Taiwan, India, and basically any country that shares a border which China, since China has border issues with every country that it shares a border with

3) US, and Western world whose IP is being stolen everyday and is being constantly under attack from China

A curious side effect of globalization is mutual dependence, which prevents wars. Full scale hot wars might not happen because of nuclear deterrence, but cold wars attacking financial systems or utility grids could be prevented... Actually, that’s what’s happening, so maybe it doesn’t deter cold wars at all? I came here to write one thing and now I’m doubting it.

We need to make sure that companies take security seriously. Perhaps frequent pen-testing by independent companies should be mandatory.

> China is a hostile nation

I really have no idea where this narrative comes from. Chinese government is evil, hostile, and cruel even to (some of) their own citizens. However, China as a nation are people - just like you and me. Why should we treat them as "hostile"? It makes no sense at all. This kind of crooked reasoning and blurred thinking is one of the main causes of all wars in the history of mankind.

Is anyone really of the view that most Chinese are evil? I don't think that's what calling them a hostile nation is meant to mean.

The problem is that the Chinese government, who ARE hostile, take advantage of the fact that we treat most Chinese as non-hostile. Nobody knows how many Chinese students and workers in the West are essentially spies for the Chinese government, but we do know it is enough to be worried about.

I'm not sure what we can do about that but I don't think we can pretend it's not an issue.

>Nobody knows how many Chinese students and workers in the West are essentially spies for the Chinese government

But we do know how many of them are contributing domestically. A growing percentage of American PHD graduates came from China and the vast majority of them are planning to stay.

https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/CSET-Trends-i...

If you believe that most Chinese citizens are in support of their government then calling the government evil is an indirect attack on them. If you don’t believe the Chinese support their government then that’s an entirely different topic you may have to educate yourself on.

Yes, I'm sure every workers' love of the CCP is genuine... Actually, their outward support is partly a function of how well the government treats them and partly a function of pressure to conform, of which there is quite a lot in China.

Maybe the word evil should be thought of as “characterized by a value system of sufficient difference as to be in conflict with our own, either mutually or asymmetrically.”

By that logic at WW II, Germany was also a nation of German people, so am assuming per the above definition Germany was not a hostile nation?

A nation is generally its government, CCP in the example of China and yes it is hostile against every non-China nation. Chinese are people just like every other people.

> A nation is generally its government

This is exactly the argument I object to. As per definition, "A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or a common culture." Keeping this distinction (between the government and the citizens) is crucial because the discourse influences actions.

The people of China don't control espionage; the government does. So you'd better think about the government when the topic is espionage, which it is in this discussion.

Agreed, and that's exactly why I hate it when someone hijacks the discussion about the government and espionage by adding the nation to the equation.

"The nation" in this context is the government, no matter how much you keep trying to change the definition.

It's possible you have a custom, non-standard understanding of the term. According to Merriam Webster, it has 5 meanings, and none of them refers to the government.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation

Read the news. You see headlines like "US sends two carriers to Persian Gulf". Not "Government of the US", but "US". That is, in external affairs - military and diplomatic and espionage - it is a normal, customary usage to refer to the government of the country by the name of the country. It's used that way, whether you agree or not.

Now, the point you're making - that there is a difference between the government and the people, and we need to remember it - is a valid point, and an important one. But you're splitting the wrong hair to make that point.

> it is a normal, customary usage to refer to the government of the country by the name of the country.

And this is more or less fine. Not just in the news, in normal conversation we do the same. Not just "China is doing this" but also "Chinese are doing this." That's also logically true, because some subset (however big or small) of Chinese is doing this.

However, I object to this particular expression - "China is a hostile nation." I don't know why it's even a point of contention. Maybe when people use the term 'nation' they actually mean 'state'? Because 'nation' by and large refers to people the country consist of.

> Maybe when people use the term 'nation' they actually mean 'state'?

Yes, they do.

> Because 'nation' by and large refers to people the country consist of.

No, it doesn't. We keep telling you this, over and over and over, and you keep not listening, but I'm going to say it one more time: No, it doesn't. When you're talking about international things - things between countries - "nation" by and large refers to the government, not the people.

False.

Definition 1.b. in your link includes the government explicitly.

None of them exclude the government, and they can all reasonably include the government.

Of course the nation as a community of people in 1b also includes the government, but you can hardly say the nation understood in this sense is hostile. What you can say is that the government is hostile - we have proofs of that. We can also say that some minuscule percentage of the population is hostile - we can see some evidence of that. But to say that a nation is hostile is really crossing a red (no pun intended) line.

I'm discussing this apparently insignificant issue ad nauseam only because repeated conflation of government and citizens in discourse, media, and ultimately our minds are not without consequences.

> but you can hardly say the nation understood in this sense is hostile

I don’t see how you can make this claim so strongly.

The government is not independent of the people even if it is authoritarian.

Any hostility enacted by the government will necessarily involve the people. Governments need people in order to do anything.

A government without people can speak hostile words, but can’t be hostile, because by definition it can’t do anything if it isn’t governing anyone.

What you say is of course true of democracy, but has nothing to do with totalitarian systems and dictatorships.

I can’t see any way what I said doesn’t apply equally to totalitarian systems and dictatorships.

You will need to explain.

Yeah, this. Chinese culture is much older and more widespread than the CCP. The Chinatown here in San Francisco is older than the state of California. We had our first Chinese New Year Parade in 1851.

The Communists are the problem, and even then not unqualified: the CCP has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of relative poverty to economic prosperity, even as they do terrible things to Tibetans, Uighurs, and Falun Gong, among others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Chinese_New_Year...

This is the hardest part about discussing this issue, for sure. The rapid technological and economic expansion achieved by CCP is the most impressive in all of human history in terms of numbers. It’s brutal, for sure, but that achievement means a lot of Chinese people are willing to look past the bad things, and look forward towards goals of further technological development.

The important difference between the “West” and China is that everyone knows CCP is going to look out for China. It’s not immediately clear that governments in the west do the same for their own.

I think you can argue the US government at least looks out for its own stakeholders, but one thing for sure is that the US government isn’t looking out for the interests of people of other countries. So when you stare wide-eyed wondering why some foreign nation doesn’t just do what the US says don’t be amazed.

>...looks out for its own stakeholders

Right, and increasingly those "stakeholders" don't include the actual citizens of those nations.

An equal, by some metrics greater, growth in living standards occurred in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam. The great success of the CCP was getting out of the Chinese people’s way.

Please don't assume that "we" are all the same people. "We" include a lot of people from outside the US, including China. I imagine our fellow hackers in China would feel pretty alienated reading this comment.

> a Greater Firewall outside China, right on all fiber cables, blocking/filtering all traffic from China.

How do you propose to coordinate hundreds of countries to cut one country off the internet?

I really don't see #2 being feasible. What about networking over phone lines? Or hacker groups just physically being moved outside the border?

Sanctions lead to widespread suffering & even death among the civilian population. Why do you want the Chinese people to suffer or die? Sanctions are scarcely less psychotic than bombing a school or hospital. The violence is just hidden in life expectancy reduction & many other metrics instead of "N civilians' bodies ripped apart by bombs".

Oh, and targeted sanctions - aren't. Entities will view any sanctions as a legal risk and find it easier to just stop trading with the country at all. See Iran with medical supplies during the pandemic.

This idea that sanctions are a peaceful or nonviolent alternative to bombing things needs to die. In the 90s the sanctions against Iraq led to the deaths of half a million civilians and caused multiple successive UN humanitarian coordinators in Iraq to resign, calling the sanctions regime "genocidal". How anyone can continue to view sanctions as a favorable option is beyond me.

>Oh, and targeted sanctions - aren't. Entities will view any sanctions as a legal risk and find it easier to just stop trading with the country at all. See Iran with medical supplies during the pandemic.

The sanctions on Iran aren't targeted. They're blanket sanctions with specific exceptions. The problem there is asking international companies to do a bunch of stuff otherwise forbidden by the sanctions (financial, logistical, etc) which I assume is either a pain to get approved ahead of time or frightening to justify after the fact.

A better example of targeted sanctions is what's happening in response to the poisoning of Navalny. Specific Russians were sanctioned. That doesn't hurt uninvolved citizens nearly as much.

What alternatives do you propose, and do you have the same view about the recent sanctions on the Saudis?

Why must there be alternatives? Why do anything at all? This bias toward a manufactured vague "do something!!!" feeling has just led to the deaths of countless civilians around the world.

Do you think not interfering in the Rwandan genocide was the best move?

The ethnic tensions were created by western interference in the first place. Perhaps intervention could have mitigated the scale of the tragedy, but it also could have made it worse by prolonging it.

> Sanctions lead to widespread suffering & even death among the civilian population

So does doing nothing.

The status quo also leads to suffering and death in the civilian population and it's hard to predict which future would be worse

Has more suffering and death occurred in China before or after China opened up to the rest of the world? If they remained closed off to this day, they would much more closely resemble North Korea.

Before, for sure, Mao policies were pretty ruthless.

Actually it's quite easy to predict! We can simply look at the track record of Western intervention since WW2, see that it comes down so squarely on the side of "please USA just leave the world alone, my god" that it achieves the platonic definition of a square, then call it a day.

Why exclude WW2?

I'm assuming you're saying this because you want to compare China to Nazi Germany, which is strange when the USSR is a much more apt comparison that existed in the postwar period.

Maybe you shouldn't assume. Maybe you should take Rebelgecko's question at face value, and actually answer it. If you're going to claim that the rest of the world just wants the US to leave it alone, why exclude World War II?

I'm just curious about people's reasoning whenever they cherrypick arbitrary start/end dates

WW2 marked the birth of America as global superpower, as it was the only developed nation to have its infrastructure basically untouched by the war.

Why do you think so? China is acting very much like Nazis in many cases. That they both call themselves communists doesn't mean much, actions matter.

There are parts of the world like eastern Europe that would've liked US intervention, on the other hand.

Too funny to hear this when there is a hostile nation that has fought wars that lead to millions of deaths since ww2 in the name of freedom, a nation that uses exactly the same methods to spy on absolutely everything - the US has accessed the secret communication of the Soviet Union for many years -, a nation that has led to chaos in the middle east and in post soviet republics.

Sorry, but it is time that the world is sanctioning the united states in the way that you propose to sanction China that is finding back to its old strength.

best regards from a white person from europe, not a chinese.

It's not my intention to make this political, but it's odd to me that the current administration sanctioned the Saudis over the murder of a journalist, but has little more than stern words towards China over the Uyghur situation and cyber espionage. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll eventually do something.

There are no sanctions on Saudi Arabia, only on some minor officials.

I'm aware of that, but shouldn't we expect something either on par with that or something that goes even further than that when it comes to China?

The exact same kind of sanctions were imposed much further up the chain in China, yes.

And they are quite ineffective.