There are deposits of these rare earth minerals elsewhere. There are always more deposits, it’s just that they’re untapped until we deplete our cheaper sources. If China withholds its minerals, we will use more expensive sources, but we will still get the minerals.
Nuclear weapons created an era with highly concentrated destruction. Major wars are much less frequent, but the next world war will be cataclysmic. Up until the next world war one should expect unprecedented peace and prosperity. Hopefully we can avoid undoing all of those gains and more in the blink of an eye.
Just because a country is a democracy does not mean it will be a reliable trading partner. Democracies can easily swing from free market to protectionist trade policies -- and back. Outsourcing a very large fraction of all manufacturing for half the world to any single country is an incredibly risky idea.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
Sanctions are crystal clear thanks to the IEEPA [1]. The president needs only declare an emergency, which is typically done in the exact same executive order imposing the sanctions. We're currently under at least 42 different national "emergencies", of which 34 are to impose sanctions. [2] The legal basis for tariffs is less clear, but in effect no different. Trump's tariffs [3] were all passed unilaterally, appealing to all sorts of acts that grant the president conditional tariff powers, but where the condition is framed in a broad enough way to include nearly any rationale.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_i...
In China, Xi can decide to impose tariffs or sanctions, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
The NPC has immense power. They can override anything Xi Jinping does, and even have the power to completely recall him, or amend the constitution. But of course this won't happen. They have a one-party system with relatively minimal internal conflict. So even though the NPC is genuinely powerful and has every check and balance imaginable, they will not be using them.
They didn't declare war, which is unfortunate but congress did approve.
1. Democratic countries that mostly abide by international law and the rules-based order.
2. Non-democratic countries that also mostly abide by international law and the rules-based order, because they benefit from it more than not doing so.
3. Non-democratic countries that reject international law and the rules-based order.
The US trades with #1 and #2, and was hoping to make China into #2. But unfortunately it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, China is in the grey area between #2 and #3 and probably trending toward #3.
Democracy is also much more beholden to corporate interests as much of the US government has already been infiltrated by big business.
I think the US has grown up. We are well past the time of worshiping the idealism of democracy and we are now actually seeing the raw truth. That democracy is simply one side of a coin. It is just one side of debate between monolith and micro services.
There are lots of "dictatorships" where living is better then in lots of other "democracies", but this is not something you'll figure out from your internet feed, you really have to actually travel.
There are other, more recent and more fitting examples you could choose if you want to use a specific politician.
You could also have used research that shows that people in general support or reject policies based on what party they think came up with them and not based on the (sometimes quite obvious ahead of time) consequences of those policies.
Trump instead lowered taxes for the rich. He was one of the rich, and he served himself. It was his rhetoric and dramatic conversational style that essentially caused people to unknowingly vote against their self interest.
I apologize for using the word "stupid" here. People and voters aren't stupid. Trump, however, was indeed an example of people not using the best strategy in the name of their self interest.
In democracies voters can fix their mistakes without risking their life and freedom.
They understood that building cheap and in great numbers is the key to success. They did this with the J-7 and now the J-10.
I can't seem to find anything in news headlines, probably because the event I remember hearing about likely happened before Google's founding (I think it was the 1990s or 1980s?); but at a point in time the plastic used for either all or a lot of ICs was manufactured in one single facility. That plant happened to catch fire and it was a major supply issue. Even if that event was really a hypothetical recounted by a professor years later just to educate the class, it does serve as a good example.
Markets are more stable with more than one single manufacturing site, more than one supplier. Economics will still push towards as much consolidation as possible, so for the good of countries and consumers, regulators must press on the scales and ensure _competition_ remains. Ideally every big country can at least pivot manufacturing centers to be entirely self sufficient if they need. Maybe superpowers have multiple facilities even for small items. Maybe groups of countries (E.G. the EU, NATO, etc) pool their resources and distribute manufacturing accordingly.
Shipping also isn't free and externalities like pollution should not be allowed; they should be part of the cost to ensure that smart decisions about production happen.
"Semiconductor Industry Faces Problems After Resin Plant Explosion"
https://apnews.com/article/8fe2925b68d34d33f19a53e4892c74a2
It caused a significant spike in DRAM prices:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-08-06-930806...
Today's low personal computer prices, particularly those on machines made by smaller companies, are likely soon to shoot up more than $100 per machine because of a panic in the world memory-chip market.
Prices already have doubled for computer owners who want to expand the capacity of their machines to handle memory-hungry new programs based on Macintosh System 7 or on Microsoft Windows or the OS/2 operating system for IBM compatibles, industry officials said.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-08-06-930806...
An expectation of surge pricing may also work here. Figuring out some standard contract wording that quickly pushes the price spike all the way down the supply chain to the consumer and publishing it might help.
> Shipping also isn't free and externalities like pollution should not be allowed
Hard to regulate that without a world government.
You do realise that a sizeable chunk of the world's oil and gas are sourced from "non-democratic" countries in the Middle East, yet somehow we leave them alone to openly torture, abuse and murder their citizens? And on top of that they're left alone to operate a cartel (OPEC) that holds the world to ransom when they decide one day to cut production and push up prices. Feels like there's a whole load of double standards on display here.
Huh, like maybe "a sizeable chunk of the world's oil and gas are sourced from "non-democratic" countries in the Middle East" is the problem, and the reason those countries get a pass? So like we shouldn't be outsourcing manufacturing, we shouldn't be outsourcing energy production to terrible countries.
Where it matters is they can impact the global prices and thus what people pay at the pump. Though the actual profits from such spikes in American gas prices end up going to suppliers in America or Canada.
For now and whilst those extraction costs are cheaper domestically. The US needs the Saudis as a backstop and for infill of the types of crude oils the North American continent doesn't have access to or is in limited supply.
They're also a handy client state to do the US's dirty work in the Middle East, see Yemen for example. The US also needs the Saudi's and their non-democratic allies to keep buying weapon systems to prop up Lockheed, Boeing et al. You need to look at the bigger picture.
The big picture is that the US needs middle east countries to price their oil in USD. Everything else is just a bonus.
The petrodollar is an interesting theory, but it doesn't really hold up to very much scrutiny.
And since FidoBucks are now directly tied to access of a critical commodity, it will have also have a guaranteed minimum "value" that's tied to the cost of oil. So people can feel pretty comfortable holding and trading Fidobucks. In fact the new stability of your currency means you'd likely see people starting to trade it for far more than oil, to the point that gas becomes just a fraction of its trade.
This is essentially what the petrodollar did, but it of course started from a far higher point than zero of course. Once we ended the fixed convertibility of the USD to gold in 1971 [1], demand in the dollar started rapidly declining, and its relative value began decreasing. After the petrodollar this all reversed, hard. It's to assign a specific value to any of these changes, because it's all dynamic - just like in our simplified FidoBucks example so much would depend on the dynamic scarcity of gas, how many FidoBucks you print, the total value of outside trade, and a million other variables. What is safe to say is that it dramatically strengthened the position of the currency, and is a large reason that until extremely recently, if China and Russia were trading - they'd settle that trade in USD. Now they're trying to create the next FidoBuck backed by a combination of land, gold, and other finite resources.
What actually props up the USD is the US taxes being paid in USD. Even transactions like selling burgers for Bitcoins suddenly force someone to not only get dollars to pay their taxes on that sale but set it aside for significant periods. This is the basic mechanism which forces all fiat money to have value, which then causes it to be used for loans and whatnot which further increases value.
Beyond that, this is all about international issues. Those gas stations are oil producing countries, and the people buying from them are countries. Being the person who can "print" the world reserve currency gives you immense geopolitical power, and an inability to economically fail regardless of how hard you try. When foreign currencies are no longer so closely tied to the USD, and demand for the USD declines, its international value will likely start to sharply decline, exactly as it did in 1971. But this time I don't really see anything we'll be able to cling onto.
[1] - https://www.dailyfx.com/usd-cad/link-between-canadian-dollar...
As to US Canada currency that relationship would be mathematically identical if oil was traded in Canadian dollars rather than USD with the exact same changes to each currency as oil’s value spiked. It’s a result of the balance of trade not the specific commodity being exchanged let alone the currency the transaction was valued in.
Oil happens to have high price volatility and significant value, but wood or maple syrup has similar effects though on a smaller individual scale.
You're absolutely right that balance of trade plays a part in this, but not in the assumption that the currency is irrelevant. If countries were paying Canada in CAD instead of USD, then Canada's reserves of CAD would be constantly increasing while the rest of the world's would be decreasing. The CAD would become extremely strong, extremely quickly. The realistic scenario is that countries would simply stop buying oil from Canada because of this, but if they couldn't (for instance if Canada somehow convinced oil seller's to sell only in CAD...) then the result would be a never-ending and effectively uncapped appreciation of the CAD, subject only to the discretion of Canada itself.
This is literally exactly what happened with the ruble. Russia used to sell their oil in the USD. After we did our sanctions stuff trying to tank their economy, they started selling oil only in the ruble. And the value of their currency not only immediately reversed all of the sanctions inflected weakening, but rapidly became even stronger than before they invaded. It led them to the bizarre scenario of having to actually have to try to weaken their currency, while facing 'nuclear' sanctions, to make sure they didn't (as above) price themselves out of the oil market, by having too strong a currency.
You can use the same physical 20$ dollar bill to buy a soda several times over a year. You hand it to the 7-11 on Monday, they take it to the bank on Tuesday, the bank puts it into their ATM on Wednesday, you get out of the ATM on Thursday, and then take it back to that same 7-11 on Friday.
Digital currency can cycle the same way just faster. Mexico Joe trades peso’s for OilBucks from Dubai Bank at 9:00AM, use them to buy oil from someone in Bolivia at 9:01. At 9:02 Frank in France trades Euros to Bolivia Co at 9:02 to get those same Oil Bucks for a trade at 9:03 with someone in Saudi Arabia…
Anytime your pet economic theory results in some asset spiraling to infinite value it’s inevitably wrong. There’s always a point where people say no and do something else because they simply can’t spend infinite money on anything. Instead there’s always some factor not included in your model that moderates the impact you simply aren’t including it.
Until recent times, keeping inflation up was difficult in spite of all of this - which is why we've had 0 interest rates desperately trying to devalue the currency. The big inflection point was 1971. That was the end of the USD being 'hard backed' (fixed exchange rate) by gold. The 'soft backing' (unfixed exchange rate) of oil would begin in 1974, organized by no less than Kissinger. You can see many of the measures we took here [1]. A critical table [2] that site is missing is the trade deficit.
Ultimately the test for all of this will come imminently. BRICS has been developing a new backed (presumably 'hard backed') currency, set to be announced as early as August of this year. And IMO, BRICS as a whole is making their move at this exact moment precisely because the USD is in a situation where this will have maximum impact. Something to keep your eyes on if you're at all genuinely interested in these things!
[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
[2] - https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/trad...
That's a local Saudi/Iranian conflict.
You'll note that after Biden called Saudi Arabia a Pariah state, he was forced to reverse course and head over, hat in hand, and beg for more production. Not because of the 12% (or 10% or 8%), we directly consume, but because of the impact on inflation and the world economy.
So yes, we are beholden to middle east oil, not because we directly consume it, but because of the impact on energy prices and inflation. If we were maximizing our own energy production, not just for domestic consumption but for export, we could lessen that impact and the influence they have.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
“About 9% of U.S. total petroleum imports and 9% of U.S. crude oil imports were from Persian Gulf countries in 2021.” However the US produces 20 Billion barrels of oil vs 8 Billion barrels of imports. So that 9% is really 2.6% of the US’s total oil supply.
Further that 8 Billion barrels of imports almost exactly equals our 8 Billion barrels of exports. There are many reasons to imports and export oil over the course of a year for example seasonal demand varies.
Accidentally mangled the quote while cutting and pasting.
We are causing a lot of trouble by shoveling money at bad countries run by bad people -- the Ukraine war wouldn't have happened if large (and important) parts of Europe 1) hadn't bought so much Russian gas and 2) made itself so dependent on the ability to keep buying it. This provided Putin with 1) the ability to wage war and 2) the feeling, bordering on certainty, that it was safe to do so.
There are many such issues worthy of attention, perhaps they are indeed being opined about... on other threads?
The human mind functions better when focusing on a single problem at any given moment.
Who's going to vote their government out or jam things up with filibuster? For better or worse their government just 'does'. You cannot seriously compare a system like this to US/UK democracy paralyzation during things like COVID.
I do not think their system is better or worse, it's just not subject to any kind of politics internally that would get in the way of whatever the hell their national intentions of the now are.
Losing an election in the US just means you are out of a job - and lose all its perks.
Losing power in an authoritarian government could mean you are arrested for “corruption” and sentenced to death.
The paranoia (and occasional country sabotaging acts) of CCP critters are justified as it’s a no holds barred fight for power and survival.
But if you give them enough rope and fall out of favor, ya, you will be made an example of. It is difficult to make it very high without creating lots of rope, however.
The US is nearly there.
If you are arguing that the Communist Party of China is not subject to internal politics, I don’t think that argument will withstand much scrutiny. Think about how much internal politics there are within the Democratic party or the Republican party of the US. Having a one-party state does not inoculate a country from internal politics.
There are pros and cons to each approach. The US system is certainly slower and more infuriating but is also less prone to shooting itself in the foot. China's system works well when it works, but it more easily produces giant missteps like the Great Leap Forward or zero covid.
Strong economic ties are the only way to align interests and prevent destructive wars.
Even now all parties are restrained and make deals: Ukraine still pumps Russian gas to Europe, receiving payments from Russia.
It didn't mention restriction on export of mineral or magnets themselves. Pretty sure US would restrict similar technology export to China.
BTW I don't think China ever exported such manufacturing technology. Formalization is likely due to the desire to show some ability to retaliate against western SME export ban.
It's more the classic leader-for-life problem. China's problem right now is Xi Jinping. He's been in power too long. He changed the rules to give himself a third term, as Putin did. He's centralized power around himself. He's created a cult of personality around himself. His decisions are much worse than they used to be. A decade ago he was seen as doing a good job. Not any more.
If China holds the minerals and the west finds another way then China would have to sell it Cheaper to non-western emerging nations like india and brazil even cheaper, improving their relations in the long term with those nations.
You can be an incompetent fool and lead a western nation so long as you can smoothtalk. But cleverness and competency are not optional if you want t o politically wrestle your way to be the leader of the CCP and almost half the planet's population.
Same thing if you with-hold semiconductors. Somebody for sure is willing to sell general purpose chips to China second hand at a more expensive price.
>I am less convinced that China is really good at playing the long game, and more convinced that China is subject to many of the same political struggles that we see in the US.
Unlikely. China is subject to different struggles but they are much better at playing a long game given that their power is more centralized and has longer terms. Xi Jing ping is likely here to stay. Bidens term is almost up and the next guy may just undo everything he did.
The US is stopping people from selling high tech chips to China. Have you not heard of this policy?
I tenat to agree that Xi Jing Ping is distracted with retaining power like all the other democractic polticians are. Instead of left vs rights, its ultra left-ist faction against faction, corruption and profiteering in the CCP is rife. Every day enough figure gets sent to death it would seem after falling out of favour.
China is a fairly conservative country, so calling them ultra leftist also feels wrong, since any actual leftists would get kicked out of government very quickly. It’s more like the reformer wing (was headed by ex-premiere Li Keqiang) and the more traditionalist wing that Xi represents.
Similar to how the US illegally obtained titanium from Russia for development of the sr71.
The main difference is that China is good at ensuring that the state is not run for the benefit of a handful of companies and investors.
Which is not an endorsement of many of the other things the CCP inflicts on Chinese citizens.
Like I have little project and needed an enclosure made to order. Nothing fancy. Tried three rather known Western vendors and none could manufacture it to an acceptable standard. It was also very expensive and customer service seemed annoyed that I even want to order anything. I lost a lot of money on this, simply because I didn't want to support China.
Unfortunately had to hold my nose and go with Chinese. It's a night and day difference. Customer service was helpful and guided me through everything - and the quality. Damn. All dimensions exactly on point, no gaps, no off angles, no chipped paint, just perfect. The price was very similar to what I paid to more expensive Western company, but the value for money - no comparison.
It's even worse with PCBs. There is one company in Europe that I could recommend, but they are rather expensive and I wouldn't use it for larger quantity - the cost of the end product would mean you wouldn't be able to compete.
So it's China again. Amazing customer service, advanced options, short lead times.
We are so f.
I just don't get the anti-China hate. Is it racism?
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1101096166?spm=a2g0o.detail...
It is 100% possible to see China as a long term economic (and possibly military but I doubt that) threat, abhor their human rights violations, love Chinese people and despise the CCP all in one go.
There are plenty of reasons for anti-China sentiments, some don't like to deal with China because of animal rights abuses, others because of mistreatments of the Uyghurs, what the CCP did to Hong Kong etc. I would rather buy the same item when it says Made in Vietnam/India/Thailand over the one that's made in China, and that's not because of bad craftsmanship or racism.
Yet I never hear people cancel Switzerland for animal right abuse
[0] https://guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com/
[1] https://strandbergguitars.com/
[2] https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-headless-guitar.html
This falls apart quickly when you come up with a product that would profit others through mimicry.
Those local manufacturers suddenly become a lot less expensive when you're cruising through Alibaba and you see the product you designed for sale in multiple colors at 2/3rds the cost you could have ever hoped to sell them for, through multiple vendors.
tl;dr : I could tell my story, I could tell my dad's story from 30 years prior, but here's the moral instead : taking IP overseas -- especially should that IP require special tooling that gets shipped around -- is crummy for a lot of reasons that may or may not come back to bite you.
Local manufacturing does have advantages, even if they may not apply to your specific needs.
No need to look far, two comments removed from yours is this one:
I think if product can be copied easily, then it will be copied. It's just a fact of life.
What can't be (easily) copied is the firmware. Someone determined could still do clean room implementation anyway.
The more complex and innovative your project is, the more time you can sell it for premium until someone copies it.
On one hand this is good, because it forces people to innovate on the other hand it makes projects less profitable in the long run.
That being said if you have your marketing and price right, your target audience is unlikely going to choose a cheap copy and those who do probably wouldn't be your customers anyway.
It's not the dictatorship that makes china a problem needing the trade wars, it's power, and countries with power operate outside of the rules based systems. Countries who don't submit to the rules based order shouldn't benefit from it
In the world overall nobody actually perceives this as China overplaying its hand, but as a consequence of the US weaponizing trade, and the result all over the world economy will be a shift away from the US with the exception of its core military allies. The shift is already obvious in the Middle East and Africa. France(!) just settled an LNG trade with China in Yuan for the first time[1].
The American behavior is bad for everyone. The US will lose its pretty comfortable position in global trade due to the prominence of the dollar, everyone else is simply hurt by the economic fallout of trade wars.
[1]https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/china-completes-first-yuan-s...
What are your thoughts on China's treatment of the Uighurs?
And yes people have prematurely talked about the end of the dollar mostly for ideological reasons, but now the situation is very different. If you had told me a few years ago that over the course of weeks France will settle gas trades in the UAE in Yuan while Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations brokered by China with Washington sidelined I would have looked at you funny. This time the world has changed. It's not gonna happen tomorrow or next year, but if the US continues to weaponize its economy to enforce its own politics on other countries, it's a matter of when and not if.
From my POV dollar is losing value nearly the same rate as the euro.
the strength of the dollar is exactly why people want to move away from it.
financing domestic purchases with a foreign currency is expensive.
Some Americans are worried about their strength in the world, some are concerned about the Uighurs.
https://redsails.org/the-xinjiang-atrocity-propaganda-blitz/
I don't know what's more incredible: that anyone actually bought the "genocide" allegations, or how quickly the media has forgotten about it and moved on to the next hot-button China issue, Taiwan.
Even the accusations of "destruction of culture" are incredibly fuzzy. I think most people who believe in the "genocide" accusation would be very surprised to learn that the Uyghur language is still extensively taught in schools in Xinjiang, and is, in fact, still the primary language of education for most Uyghur children. They might also be surprised to learn that some of China's most popular celebrities are Uyghurs, and that Uyghur culture is actually pretty popular in China.
The "genocide" accusation is simply made in bad faith. One could actually talk about real political repression in Xinjiang, but that would be much less shocking and sensationalist than making up false accusations of "genocide."
On the one hand, you have political repression of the sort that is common throughout the world, including in democracies like India (see Kashmir). On the other hand, you have the mass murder of millions of people. Somewhere in between, you have the sorts of bloody wars the US has engaged in throughout the Middle East, in which hundreds of thousands of people die.
.. i'm hoping people get these references. Risky.
I do wish the more serious charges had been filed first. The reason it was unprecedented was because previous presidents hadn't committed crimes like that, en mass, at scale, and then on top of all the other things organized a rebellion against the next president's election.
Everyone knows other politicians are slimy agents of large corporations and Trump is getting in legal trouble BECAUSE he stands a chance in the upcoming elections.
It is clear to everyone that Trump was blackmailed and he seems to have done something illegal to try to keep his affair out of public eye, where it belongs.
As much as you want to pretend how much you care about the rule of law, these things don't exist in a vacuum and most people are smart enough to see what's up.
That is not what Trump was indicted for. It's like saying my neighbour should be fined for throwing trash in his yard because he killed his wife. Both things are totally unrelated.
> The reason it was unprecedented was because previous presidents hadn't committed crimes like that
Almost every presidential campaign (including Hillary Clinton's) has done campaign funds misuse. But again, Trump is not being indicted for giving money to Daniels from campain funds (which is totally legal, believe it or not!), he is being indicted for mislabeling it as legal fees.
Well, it would be legal if properly reported in campaign expenditure diaclosures, but... that kind of defeats the purpose of hush money payments to accurately and publicly disclose the amount, recipient, and purpose.
So, to make hush money from campaign funds work, you have to break the law, too.
Oligopoly is more of an economic term than a political one.
This is a false equivalence of democracy = partner. The US has been happy to trade with friendly dictatorships (e.g. Saudi Arabia) and has itself threatened, overthrown, or interefered in democratic and popular governments (e.g. Chile) that didn't align with its interests.
Since the end of WWII, the US has overthrown at least four democratic governments (more than China) and funded numerous authoritarian governments that were/are US-aligned. To much of the world outside the north Atlantic states the "democratic order" is viewed a lot more cynically. Especially ask someone from Latin America what they think of this.
Saudi Arabia was the key force that reverted the democratization of Bahrain and in general is a block for democratization in the Arabian Peninsula. That you don't think they are a threat to democracy belies what your "democratic order" really is: US hegemony.
I like America too, just important to consider a coin has multiple sides.
[1] https://truthout.org/articles/us-provides-military-assistanc...
The US will work with one-party countries as long as they're not a threat economically. How else do you think that Americans cheer when factories get moved to Vietnam, which is significantly worse in human rights?
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/vietnams-human-righ...
Our morals in international politics are always just applied selectively, and there are few examples of where our best interest and moral considerations clash - because morality is immediately ignored or downplayed when interest is involved.
Also China doesn’t let you go where the real human rights abuses are in Xinjiang.
>Based on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, it was established by the US International Broadcasting Act of 1994 with the stated aim of "promoting democratic values and human rights", and countering the narrative of the Chinese Communist Party, as well as providing media reports about the North Korean government.[12] It is funded and supervised by the U.S. Agency for Global Media[13] (formerly Broadcasting Board of Governors), an independent agency of the United States government.
Also, it may be worth dropping by much of the Middle East to get another reality check on this question.
The only thing economic development seems to consistently result in is a higher demand for imports.
[1] Well, the nice parts of it are much wealthier than they used to be. The provincial towns are dying, and all the productive industries have been pushed out by oil and services.
Please don't preach on hackernews. Instead try and communicate what you know and why you know it.
And? Do you want Xi Xinping in charge of global culture, security, finance? How is that working out for your average Chinese these days (and I’m not talking about the previous freeer era).
You want social credit scores? One man basically in charge of the global military?
You paint a picture of America as an evil empire, but what do the alternatives look like?
The nice alternatives don't have big enough militaries to be considered seriously, one could point at some European nations for a more measured approach, but it's hard to do it seriously when we only exist because the US saved us and continues to do so, as Europe pretty much has no military power if push comes to shove.
Yes that's whatabouttism but the world actually does suffer from the current state as well
China doesn't seem to try to enforce global policies (right now) nether do they claim the moral right for OUR society.
Being able to publicly censor foreigners who dislike your policies is a useful power.
When you control economic access to a billion people, you don't always need guns to get others to do that you want. (China does have plenty of those guns, though, if and when they decide they need them.)
In Europe nudity definitely is more normal than violence. America is forcing their different moral view on our media, normalizing violence and ashaming the youth with oldschool sexual views.
And so far I haven't seen any signs that china is trying to change that.
While visa and master banning all related to sex has real life consequences. Same with social media showing a skewed censored view on sexuality because of morality views that do not fit the society I live in. Until a few years ago you couldn't watch TV without something exploding and the US military somehow saving the day in every second movie.
We have to comply to rules that do not apply to our society.
Today we have several real time payment methods "better" than credit card. I still can't sell a dildo with paypal, but I do have options now (if I don't care about us customers who expect credit card payments)
Social media ist lost cause anyway.
Maybe that should be my point. America is losing its influence, and it's obviously afraid. I am afraid when America is afraid because history has shown in might react wildly.
Why not? Granted, I'm not an American. I haven't heard any Chinese Foreign minister goading of having killed hundreds of thousands of kids the same way as the US did [1], so why shouldn't the rest of the world give China a chance instead of the US?
As such, I'd need other sources than Western media to tell me what to think about what happens to the Uighurs (whom I'm sure do not have an easy life, far from it).
Chinese sources will be devoid of any information which can put a bad face on the party even in the second order effects.
Maybe go ahead and find those alternate news sources, explain why you believe they are accurate, and present a conclusion?
If the choice is between the US or China running the world, I'll pick the US, every. single. time.
Objectively speaking, the US history of genocide, slavery and global warfare and terrorist sponsorship even before becoming an uncontested hegemony hardly makes it look better.
> If the choice is between the US or China running the world, I'll pick the US, every. single. time.
Sure, but I would bet that you might just be privileged enough to live nearby the US inner economic circle.
This is your daily reminder that social credit scores don't actually exist. They're a myth, a meme.
To claim that these representatives don't make their decisions based on morality, or any other value that individuals have, is strictly false.
One might argue that only individuals who have opinions in line with national interests are electable, but that would be bullshit. If there's anything to truly be internalized about the elections of Barack Obama followed by Donald Trump, it's that individuals have a profound influence on American policy. If there were national interests that were solely responsible for US policy, they why was both foreign and domestic policy profoundly different across presidencies?
I'm genuinely curious how your worldview has an answer to this.
Thus it's perfectly valid to say that it's never about whether it's morally right to support dictatorships. China is disliked by the US because it's a threat to America being #1 economically, not because it's a dictatorship. The same is true for human rights abuses, of course.
Individual politicians might have certain morals or values. I really believe Obama wanted to close Gitmo but if you look at the results, they're absolutely predictable and not at all based on any morals the US claims to have.
Consider the Twitterfiles, the government is actively censoring speech critical of the FBI and politicians. Think of the Hunter Biden laptop story, do you think that if that speech was not censored that different policies would be supported by the masses and that they would elect different representatives?
People need to know information to make good decisions. If they don't know the information, obviously, they won't consider that in the decision making process
This comment gets thrown around a lot but oversimplifies things.
First, in the 90s, 2000s, and some of the 2010s ‘the US’ was China’s biggest cheerleader, investor, and supporter. Most US elites knew China would eventually become a bigger economy due to their 4x larger population, and were ok with it as long as they got to share in the wealth creation. To the extent those folks were the decision makers and thus ‘the US’, they didn’t dislike the idea of being the #2 economy.
Second, sure the US doesn’t want to lose control of the mostly peaceful, prosperous, and free rules-based order it created after the disastrous first half of the 20th century. And rightly so. There is zero chance that a cult of personality totalitarian dictator like Xi Jinping is ever going to make anything broadly better for the entire world than what the US created, despite its mistakes and flaws along the way. None. It’s completely legitimate for the US to not want to lose control of that, which would mean losing some or all of it to something worse.
I don’t agree with everything the US govt does - Iraq was a travesty, and I have no idea what went on with Libya, or what is going on with Syria, for example. But there’s a 0% chance that a world dominated by Xi Jinping and the CCP would be better.
Which has been the justification every hegemonic power has offered when working to undermine a rising power.
Whose rules are they, and who do they benefit? Who has most egregiously exempted themselves from the rules without consequence?
I agree that 'a world dominated by Xi Xinping' would be worse - though it's not clear they have any aspiration to global primacy, like the US did post-WW2 - but that's no reason to peddle myths about American exceptionalism.
- Have you ever considered how much of your stuff comes via shipping lanes protected by the US Navy? Somali pirates got to FAFO what the USN thinks of pirates and we all see how that money making scheme has resonated around the globe.
- No US support = no Ukraine today (full stop)
- Is Taiwan still an independent country?
Ask what’s left of the US middle class that, then ask the new Chinese middle class the same question. In terms of pure quantity of people benefiting, China wins - beneficiaries were hundreds of millions of Chinese who rose out of poverty, the capital owners in both China and US, and the CCP. Losers were the US middle class, which was one of the main reasons for the rise of Trump, and the US political system as a result of that.
You're way too confident. As a flawed democracy, the US has dropped bombs on 1/3 of the world's population. The US has no morals. The first instinct for the Americans is to bomb. The first instinct for the Chinese is to negotiate.
Also, is the "world" just the US and Europe?
Imagine the Capitol attack in China, it would be a massacre
The difference in behaviour seems more like an "is all you have is a hammer" thing. The fact that China can't decide to randomly bomb Nigeria is a big factor in it not randomly bombing Nigeria and the fact that France could easily bomb Lybia is a big factor in it actually bombing Lybia.
Perhaps you should ask the Uyghurs how their negotiations are going.
Not within China itself, no.
I think it is useful to judge a country, regime etc. by the ways it treats its own citizens when there is any disagreement between them and the government. The power imbalance between an individual citizen and the government lends itself towards abuse quite naturally.
By this standard, the US is not doing exactly great, especially towards certain ethnicities, and many European countries are better off; but China is much, much worse.
If someone wantonly isolates entire cities to stop the spread of Omicron and throws dissenters into prison or "reeducates" Muslims in camps, I don't want them to have any more power on the international scene than they already do. If only because that could inspire other countries and their politicians to behave more like Mr. Xi and his party.
> US doesn’t want to lose control of the mostly peaceful, prosperous, and free rules-based order it created after the disastrous first half of the 20th century.
> despite its mistakes and flaws along the way
"Mistakes and flaws" is one hell of an understatement.
The global suppression of any leftist or communist leaning/related movements (operation CONDOR et al. ). The funding of guerilla and other violent groups in order to install US-friendly governments, or simply exterminate leftists (Contras, Indonesia in 1965). The installation or support of many dictators who massacred and sacked their own people (Noriega, Pinochet, throughout South America). The outright invasion of a few countries who didn't play ball.
The modern US is relatively harmless, and yes, a world dominated by the CCP would probably be worse. But let's please not forget what the US did to achieve its current world order.
Beautifully spoken. Yet you still speak of peaceful, free and rules-based order.
The US likes dealing with democracies because the US has so much know how in how to influence elections. The government and CIA has a long history of meddling in elections to get the outcome that is most beneficial for the US.
Ultimately, this has built up many dictatorships around the world that violently suppress political opinions that are detrimental to the US national security.
If you don't know what was going on the middle east with iraq, libya, and syria, read this[1]. After 9/11, before the dust settled, the US wanted to force a regime change in 7 countries that they had no proof was related to 9/11. The US decimated an entire region and sent them back to the stone age for unstated reasons. Please note, all of those countries were not democracies, so they couldn't meddle in elections for more favorable leaders.
China and Xi have been smart enough to avoid a revolution/coup to become an American colony.
Foreign elections only though. They would never steer or nudge the people here that would end up being their supervisors. We know that doesn't happen.
Sounds a bit revisionist. Maybe you don't remember what Clinton called Bush Sr during his campaign. Back then the normal trade tariff was called "Most Favored Nation" status, a concept developed by the US in the 19th century and brought to Japan and China with gunboat diplomacy. China's status was reviewed annually by Congress and some members perennially threatened to take it away. So there was an annual wave of lobby effort on show to keep the status coupled with sweeteners from China like deals to buy Boeings etc. So they renamed MFN to PNTR to make it sound more innocuous, which it was. Only with Chinese accession to the WTO did the practice end. When Bush Jr. got into office, everyone was expecting him to get tougher on China, when Chinese GDP was one tenth of US. But then 9/11 happened.
What rules are those?
China has made no move to dominate the world as the West has continued to do throughout history. Even the Belt and Road Initiative is a trade initiative to benefit all participating nations. China isn't going to build military bases around the world, or force countries to adopt their political proclivities, unlike the US.
As a communist country, China inherently believes that if all grow rich, all will benefit. This is completely unlike capitalism in which "there can be only one."
The US and other Western countries are far far far from perfect. They suck in many ways. But I much prefer the West's values over that of the Chinese government's, as flawed as they might be.
Certainly another potential global hegemon could be better for the world than the US (or, perhaps, no hegemon at all). But IMO China ain't it.
What exactly does China dictate about your lives?
I see people treat this like a fact, but there doesn't seem to be an incentive for China to instill its "way of life" outside of it, does there? So far this seems like a totally western outlook on external politics.
Extra-territorial policing might be a good start to the list.
(Posted from Hong Kong)
That said, I disagree the US doesn't like China because it will be the #2 economy. The US doesn't care about that. What it cares about is a potentially hostile power.
This arrogant bigotry hurts, we (not only the US but the collective west) have shown everybody how to play this game, and were also not the first. Further, if a country puts up general taxes or protects it resources against all others's the same isn't it its good right? Hate the word war is used so easily, especially in the US, the term economic war fits more most of the uneffective and also wrong sanctions imo.
Or, you know, not do anything? I genuinely find it laughable that people are advocating all of this China hate because they're a dictatorship. So are the Gulf nations, I don't see anyone advocating for cutting them off. Also from a global point of view, U.S. foreign policy has caused way more harm to the world than the Chinese so it is bizarre for the U.S. to champion itself as a savior of the oppressed. I genuinely think Americans should stop drinking the Kool aid of their government being the good guy.
Overall, none of it really matters while everyone is making money. But China enjoys its preferential status as a developing economy while America wants it to increasingly play by the rules of a developed economy.
But China hasn't from the Huawei bans to the latest semiconductor blockade and I don't think they will do it here.
What China appears to be doing is to double down on investment in sanctioned sectors while keeping trade open. And I think they continue this strategy.
The motivations for dictatorships and democracies to behave one way or another are ultimately governed by the same principles & constraints[1].
The economy of the west would be devastated, but so would very likely be the economy of china itself. It sounds a bit to me like the concept of nuclear war, mutual assured destruction, so no one does it.
Just for a moment consider what it would mean if China arbitrarily stopped exporting consumer electronics or any other category of product and what the effect on the West would be. We really should pull back some of that manufacturing and deal with the resulting pollution closer to where the goods are consumed. And while we're at it we may be able to improve the quality a bit as well.