What makes a superpower? What is the definition of human rights?

> What's plaguing American academia, and America at large, is China's influence and bribes.

What is plaguing the US in money is not bribes but appeasement to the Chinese market like Hollywood superhero movies, Apple kowtowing, and newpapers refusing to critique it in a truthful way. Academia is more plagued by internal politics, publish or die, p hacking, and a desire not to be canceled. China supports sciences and people who don't have funding for their interests do not have laboratories that can support their kind of interests. The US needs to fund STEM better.

China has no ambition and no capability to control the planet. Why the hell would they bother?

No ambition is clearly false when we examine their recent actions of territorial claims and seizures from the entire South China Sea (the name has little to do with who it historically belonged to) to sword rattling for Taiwan to violent takeovers of land borders residing in India to straight up seizure of Tibet and the forced disappearance of the next Dalai Lama, literally the future head of the most peaceful faith on the planet.

Land and sea disputes with neighboring countries come from an ambition to increase national security by weakening local competitors and creating buffers as well as acquiring advantageous geography. This explains the invasion of Tibet, the disputes in the SCS, and the land disputes with India (of course, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Indian disputed territories also have a historical component).

This is very different from policies that attempt to control the entire world, from the US, the USSR and some European powers. By and large China doesn't care what you do in your own country, unlike the USA.

Also, Tibetan Buddhism is VERY FAR from the "most peaceful faith on the planet". The reason why the Chinese were able to take Tibet so easily is because the Buddhist elite were incredibly brutal with the majority of the population, with widespread slavery and massacres. They were absolutely hated. It doesn't justify their seizure but we don't have to whitewash one of the most horrific political systems for it.

> Also, Tibetan Buddhism is VERY FAR from the "most peaceful faith on the planet". The reason why the Chinese were able to take Tibet so easily is because the Buddhist elite were incredibly brutal with the majority of the population, with widespread slavery and massacres. They were absolutely hated. It doesn't justify their seizure but we don't have to whitewash one of the most horrific political systems for it.

These are common CCP talking points, in fact primarily devolving from Chinese sources, which seek to turn Tibet into a nation in need of saving by debasing it into barbarism. Whatever half-invented, invented or factual casus belli the invaders invoked, half a million Tibetans were marched last year into work camps by CCP occupiers. [1]

In terms of historical accuracy, I stand by my claim: the Islamic and Christian faiths each hold a history of violence that squarely puts Buddhism at the top for peace. I do not deny the violence by the Buddhist Brigade and other factions proclaiming Buddhist faiths in Sri Lanka and Burma happening today but on the historical whole, no major faith comes closer.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-forces-500-000-tibet...

Not to say that they are justified in doing so, but if you look at a map of territorial waters, it's pretty obvious why China might want to control land in the South China Sea for reasons other than an ambition to annex the entire world, because they are almost completely surrounded unless they can control some territory that has its own claim to territorial waters.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Territori...

>literally the future head of the most peaceful faith on the planet.

Tibet was a much poorer place that was mostly serfs.slaves before China invaded. They lived in worst conditions. It is only in pop culture is is a religion of peace.

https://medium.com/illumination-curated/the-truth-about-tibe...

Unfortunately I would advise you to learn more about Tibet's dark history. I used to think that Buddhists were all peaceful until they justified rape, killing, theft and other genocidal actions towards the Rohingya. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide

Religions can be good, but they can also make good people do evil things. There is not a religion I know that has never had been used for evil. Do not group relidions, see people as individuals.

>sword rattling for Taiwan

They do not want to destroy it, they want to capture its infrastructure. The weather will force China to take it over in basically 2 weeks or withdraw due to the weather too treacherous.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/25/taiwan-can-win-a-war-wi...

> Yes, the Taiwanese Army projects that it can only hold off its enemy for two weeks after the landing—but the PLA also believes that if it cannot defeat the Taiwanese forces in under two weeks, it will lose the war! Yes, the disparity between the military budgets on both sides of the strait is large, and growing—but the Taiwanese do not need parity to deter Chinese aggression. All they need is the freedom to purchase the sort of arms that make invasion unthinkable. If that political battle can be resolved in the halls of Washington, the party will not have the power to threaten battle on the shores of Taiwan.

> Tibet was a much poorer place that was mostly serfs.slaves before China invaded. They lived in worst conditions. It is only in pop culture is is a religion of peace.

I'm afraid the only pop culture at work to justify a violent takeover is the one invented by the CCP. No one denies the violence perpetrated by Buddhist-affiliated factions in Burma and Sri Lanka.

> Religions can be good, but they can also make good people do evil things.

There is one greater evil at work here, that of political atheism, which, when summing up the terrors of other atheist parties throughout time lead to the greatest human death toll committed by other humans in all of human history. I'm speaking of the Great Leap Forward, the Holodomor, and the Nazi Holocaust.

But controlling the planet is an american concept. They frame China as a competitor and China react with absurd misunderstanding because they're not seeing each other and the planet the same way.

Here in China (Im an imigrant), what matters is the forced march to progress at all cost, even human rights, under the guidance of the glorious leader Xi. Nobody in the party or the population gives a flying fuck about invading countries and all international propaganda is made not to submit to China as an individual but to repeat the glorious mission statement for the party internal work when speaking only about China. I disagree with the party's method because they forget that we ll pay the price of the crunch once the middle class is emancipated and need to start being politically responsible: as long as we ask monkeys to program computers we wont expand so we need to accept having free citizens or to not progress.

However the US truly aim at facilitating the expansion of its companies via cultural assimilation, MUCH more than what China does now (it could come later ofc), and entire countries are transformed via soft propaganda (movies and such) to adapt and start consuming american products that wouldnt matter otherwise. It's better than the Camps in Xinjian, but the camps are IN Xinjian, not in Normandy where I grew up under american influence.

So meh, balance. Both should compete until the end of time so they leave us alone.

One is forced, the other is chosen.

For the most part global citizens choose to watch Netflix and Disney and listen to Lil Wayne.

Different story with internment camps.

Put another way, Americans listen to K-pop and watch Parasite because it’s good and they want to.

I don't agree exactly with this. People in the west need to use VPNs to bypass bans, Chinese do too. Choice is said to be done of free will, but what is free will, and if you don't think outside influences can affect it, I disagree. If I have a subscription to videos, I am being given an illusion of choice, they are serving me what they choose for me, that is the same effect in China. Spotify, Apple, Pandora, Deezer, and Youtube are made of algorithms that give you their choices, you don't really have a choice, and now that YT took away dislike, its harder to even affect it.

>Put another way, Americans listen to K-pop and watch Parasite because it's good and they want to.

People listen to kpop because its played everywhere, its recommended in playlists, others play it, not because its good or they want to.

> People in the west need to use VPNs to bypass bans

No? Nobody does.

> People listen to kpop because its played everywhere, its recommended in playlists, others play it, not because its good or they want to.

So everyone is recommending this music to their friends and playing it... but they don't think it's good.

Something here doesn't add up.

Music liscening issues is when I do on streaming sites. Try uploading liscenfed music to Facebook, YouTube or instagram.

The algorithms are suggesting it. Is pop music good if radios play it all the time?

> China has clear ambitions to be the worlds superpower

That is not clear to me.

AFAICT they want the respect due to a super power.

> China has clear ambitions to be the world's superpower

>> That is not clear to me. @worik

>>> The “dispute” regarding the construction of 11 Chinese buildings on the Nepali side of the territory in Humla came to the fore after Indian newspapers reported Chinese encroachment in June 2020...

>>> The most recent skirmish - on 20 January - left troops on both sides injured. It took place along the border in India's Sikkim state, which is sandwiched between Bhutan and Nepal. The year 2020 was particularly violent. The June clash in the Galwan Valley - fought with sticks and clubs, not guns - was the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975. India acknowledged its deaths. China did not comment on reports it also suffered fatalities.

>>> Malaysia has said it has summoned China’s ambassador to protest against the “presence and activities” of Chinese vessels in Kuala Lumpur’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea off the island of Borneo. Chinese vessels, including a survey boat, were operating off the coasts of the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak in contravention of 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Monday.

>>> China's growing economic footprint in Ukraine may already be producing geopolitical consequences that put the country at odds with core European priorities. Zelensky decided earlier this year to withdraw Ukraine's condemnation of Chinese government crimes against the Uighurs of Xinjiang, in what bore all the hallmarks of a quid pro quo to ensure deliveries of Chinese Covid-19 vaccines.

... these are just tidbits of the overall overarching theme of China dominating everyone everywhere in everything. These and other incidents seem to put the lie to the phrase: 'That is not clear to me.'

Either you're the least informed citizen in your country, you don't /ever/ read news, or you're outright lying. None of those are good options.

In any case, just the tiniest bit of searching would reveal China's hostile intent world-wide. To state otherwise is to be willfully ignorant.