It is a simplification, but it is mostly true. Washington has literally been trying to contain PRC's rise since it was born in 1949. Because duh, China has historically been the most prosperous civilization on the planet and they just got out from under the boot of Western/Japanese imperialism.
War in Korea (and almost over Taiwan). Deny access to 1st island chain.
Sino-Soviet split.
War in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. Scorched earth policy. Deny access to SEA.
Transition to hybrid war (propaganda-driven psychological warfare) as PRC opened up under Deng.
Tibet.
Tiananmen Sq.
(20 years of relative tolerance, Washington assuming PRC won't get uppity and will follow USSR's fate)
Obama's "China Pivot", anti-BRICS campaign.
South China Sea.
Hong Kong.
ETIM/Xinjiang.
Taiwan.
You can spin Beijing's responses to this containment strategy as "aggression", but frankly that doesn't make much sense unless you believe Washington is entitled to global hegemony.
The fact is that Beijing has been consistently outplaying Washington since Mao. And that makes Washington extremely nervous and irrational.
Other than that, China was the clear aggressor in most of the conflicts you mention.
China invaded Tibet with the excuse of “liberating” their people, which is essentially what the US has claimed to justify most of their foreign interventions.
The CCP violently squashed the Tiananmen protests.
China keeps claiming authority over large areas of the South China Sea, disregarding protests by surrounding countries like the Philippines.
The CCP backtracked on their promise of keeping Hong Kong’s system of government, putting more agreeable politicians in charge, and disregarding and/or squashing any citizen movements.
Taiwan is a de facto independent country whose mere existence is threatened by China.
I could go on and on, but pretending that China is not the aggressor here is almost laughable.
Frankly, this makes me want to stop reading right here. This is an outrageously ignorant comment. PLA participated in both wars, which bordered China, and backed the Northern factions. USSR did neither.
But don't take my word for it. SecDef McNamara to LBJ:
"1. US strategy. The February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain Communist China."
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v03...
You should not believe everything you read from Washington media or high school American history textbooks, as your comment implies you do. It will make you weak and exploitable.
Starting a full on proxy war in Vietnam during the Cold War era is a completely different issue. Same goes for Korea.
China wasn’t that big of a threat to the US. Pretending that it was, and that it was at the same level of the USSR, is ridiculous and close to historic revisionism at this point.
The Sino-Soviet split took place in 1960. Vietnam War took off later. The latter had virtually nothing to do with the USSR and everything to do with violently containing PRC. Read the linked White House memo above.
> China wasn’t that big of a threat to the US
Believe it or not, US strategists in 1950 were capable of planning more than 0-4 years into the future.
The war started half a decade prior. The US already had 50,000 soldiers stationed in South Vietnam by the time the Sino-Soviet split reached its point of no return, plus several thousand advisors and other personnel.
> Believe it or not, US strategists in 1950 were capable of planning more than 0-4 years into the future.
I agree. I also think they were a bit more concerned about an arms race with the USSR, and the fact that the Soviets were involved in half a dozen direct geopolitical threats in the 50s and 60s.
Anyway, let’s say that you are right. Supporting and arming the North Vietnamese regime would make China as much as an aggressor as the US. Funnily enough, China also turned against Vietnam and both financed the Khmer Rouge and directly attacked the country after the war ended. But I guess those don’t count as “aggressions” either.
We are specifically discussing American combat involvement in Vietnam, which did not meaningfully begin (beyond 100-1000s of noncombat advisors) until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. With the explicit goal of containing China.
> …until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. With the explicit goal of containing China
You are making a single phase the whole reason why the US deployed millions of troops to Vietnam, which is patently untrue.
I see you would not acknowledge either that China became the aggressor a few years after the US withdrew, and eventually the Chinese got their asses kicked too.
However, once the USD loses global reserve status, USA is in extreme economic trouble. In 2021 alone, it will have over $1T trade deficit in goods.
Did you see that the government hired thugs to beat up it's own people in HK? (and after used the police directly to do this?) It's said if a small irrelevant country is doing this, but if this becomes the standard of a global power, well I don't want to be nearby.
1. PRC has a very clear national security interest in Taiwan not being ruled by an unpredictable regime that may host American weapon systems pointed at the mainland. See Cuban/Soviet Missile Crisis. Coincidentally, similar situation going on with Russia and Ukraine right now.
2. If/when the DPP regime falls and is replaced by a more "independent" government, that government will naturally be favorable to joining the PRC as an autonomous province. Because the economic incentives are there and there is no real ethnic/cultural barrier to reunification (there is already massive brain drain from TW to mainland). This is the outcome that Beijing is clearly planning for and they won't have to fire a single shot to get it.
Uyghurs:
1. Xinjiang is a pathway to Central Asia and critical to the Belt and Road initiative. It's also a relatively undeveloped region that shares a small border with Afghanistan, with a history of widespread poverty and separatism/terrorism.
2. In the mid 2010s, Beijing was busy implementing two important policies in Xinjiang. A deradicalization campaign and an anti-poverty campaign. These are serious, fast-moving policies that involved a lot of heavy-handed action. Like getting millions of people enrolled in vocational training, Mandarin classes, and distant employment. Basically, Beijing wouldn't tolerate Xinjiang becoming Afghanistan 2.0, as much as Washington would love that. So they aggressively developed the region. Ürümqi in 2021 is probably unrecognizable to Ürümqi in 2009, when over a hundred civilians were butchered by ETIM-linked terrorists.
3. In response, Washington, through proxies like Adrian Zenz and WUC, launched a vicious propaganda campaign. Ordinary prisons for violent extremists and other criminals became "concentration camps for Uyghurs". Schools became "reeducation facilities". Vocational training and just having a job became "forced labor". Mandarin lessons became "cultural genocide". Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression". And so on and so forth.
4. The hypocrisy from Washington is mind-blowing. On the "forced labor" front, Washington implemented sanctions against any company that uses "Uyghur labor", in other words, virtually any company that employs Uyghurs. The goal is obvious: to push Uyghurs back into poverty and therefore destabilize the critical region. Because Washington does not care about the lives of distant Muslims; the last three decades make this abundantly clear.
"The mean old world is just lying about China." Kind of incredible that literally the whole world is conspiring against the truly good natured China because... Reasons.
> "The mean old world is just lying about China."
It is a literally a core theme of modernity. Opium Wars, Yellow Peril, anticommunist crusades in SEA... Chinese civilization is a historical threat to narratives of Anglo racial/cultural supremacy like nothing else.
1) On the Uyghur issue. If what you say is true, why is it difficult to get CSPAN footage in Xinjiang?
2) Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it?
> Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrate suppression".
It can simultaneously be true that the heavy-handed actions (as you put it) successfully lifted women out of poverty, and also violated their individual human rights. The words we use to describe these actions aren't mutually exclusive truths.
A good start would be a motive for why Beijing would do a Holocaust against peoples within China.
Hitler had a motive, you can read all about it in Mein Kampf. It was out in the open. There is nothing even remotely resembling such a policy by Beijing.
On the other hand, there is a very clear motive for why Washington would spread misinformation about Beijing. So to believe Washington's story is to put on my blinders towards Washington's interests and simultaneously accept that Xi Jinping is a comic book villain. Sorry, but that is ridiculous.
But that doesn't answer my question (2). Would you please answer it directly? Either there is some hypothetical evidence that would change your mind, or there is no hypothetical that could change your mind. Providing the affirmative to one or the other would help us understand whether you are open to changing your perspective at all.
For what it's worth, I'm happy to volunteer a hypothetical that would convince me to believe more in the narratives that you provided.
Anyways, please don't dismiss my comment. What is Beijing's supposed motive here?
Oh yes, I'll gladly dismiss it: You introduced it with a carefully weasel-worded "a good start would be"... So even if you got an iron-clad motive in reply, you'd just go on quibbling, because it was, after all, "just a start". So: Dismissed!
And the rest of the world? Why is the free press of the entire world conspiring against China? Or the free press in the US? Does Washington own that?
Anyway, we can only speculate on the motive. Ethnic cleansing? Perceived threat of religious beliefs? Who knows. You're gonna have to do better than "I don't think those are strong motives" to dismiss mountains of evidence.
Your long list if irrelevant facts is very impressive, there's no doubt you are well read on your history. The consistency with which you present these facts any time China's atrocities are mentioned is also impressive.
So fuck knows who this "you" (who was tricked by that) that you think (or pretend to think) you're talking to might be
2. Washington doesn't like that because it will displace the unipolar moment. USA has been in economic decline for half a century while PRC has been on a dramatic rise. Washington tries to break up PRC like it's a too-big company, via hybrid warfare. It tries everything possible to politically destabilize Beijing, with propaganda being a cornerstone.
3. Washington enlists anyone available to achieve this goal, including washed-up NBA benchwarmers and irrelevant Eastern European countries. They are encouraged to adopt a foreign policy that is in line with Washington's desire to preserve unipolarity and therefore hostile to Beijing. Who knows what they get in return, because it certainly doesn't make any economic sense in the long-term.
4. When Beijing responds tit-for-tat, answering sanctions with sanctions, harassment with harassment, downgrade in relations with downgrade in relations, it's a simple matter of spinning PRC as the aggressor who acted first.
Alternatively, "See See Pee Bad". Propaganda works and no one is immune.