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.