https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1987...
"Are the Japanese picking our brains?'' a congressional staffer asks. ''Yes. They're doing it very well. They're doing it legally. The question is whether we have a two-way street"
Every nation does that. US likely does it less than most others, primarily because others have more to catch up.
Actually, the above quote is not Trump and not on China. It's Ronald Raegan on Japan in 1985. It's the same playbook being used against China.
All western media has convinced us that China is definitely the bad guy here and the US is the good guy. I don't buy it. No one is the good/bad guy. It's always grey. Most Americans swear that there is no anti-China propaganda going on because they have a "free" media. But Americans have drank so much anti-China propaganda that they consider anyone who isn't saying "China bad" is automatically a paid CCP shill. Meanwhile, they've only heard one side of the story.
https://harrisbricken.com/chinalawblog/china-joint-venture/#...
The US has never been invaded but has invaded countless countries. How do you feel about the US morally?
Or is this where “whataboutism” shields US actions?
I don't think you'll find a lot of people being caught in a gotcha when you ask about the US vs Russia as far as impinging on the freedoms of other countries without a right to do so. They will readily tell you that both are wrong.
You seem to have a very myopic view on the conflict, there’s a whole history leading up to the events in which the West carries a big part of the blame.
That said, I know whenever I post my views on this conflict I will get downvoted here (which I don’t mind). So in that regard it is certainly not true that the majority of HN supports my views on the conflict. Thus your “only on HN” statement misses the mark, I think.
FYI: I am not Russian, don’t have any Russian family ties or ancestry or whatever. Born in The Netherlands and perhaps the earliest ancestors I know of were likely French Huguenots [0] that emigrated to The Netherlands to flee persecution in France.
With that said I’d like to think of myself as having a balanced view on the conflict.
———
I think the moment you say this you kind of lose the ability to say that you have a balanced view of the conflict.
The west is often to blame (e.g. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel), but this is one of the few instances in which the west didn’t instigate anything.
Pre-war Russia was a hair away (one different president) from being accepted by the international community.
This Ukraine / Russia conflict could have been avoided. NATO could have respected Russia’s views towards expanding to the east.
USA has been warned time and time again this would cause a conflict at this point. Even USA state officials [0] warned against it. Yet NATO decided to ignore all warnings and keep expanding eastward until it became too close for comfort to the Russians.
In a way quite similar to the Cuban missile crisis.
———
[0]: https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-w...
Besides, say Ukraine joined NATO, how is the effect different from Russia taking over Ukraine. We’ll end up with a shared land border.
Obviously it’d be preferred by Russia that they occupy the place, but the war was a non-starter from the beginning. The end result is exactly the opposite from what I expect Russia was hoping to achieve (unless Putin’s aim was to make Russia a second North Korea). Ukraine has never been closer to NATO, and Russia never more reviled.
If Russia cared about this so much they could have either formalised there views and asked for an international agreement.
Or joined NATO itself, they did neither.
His arguments are easy to read if you're at all interested in different views: https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
Here's a very good article that criticizes his views:
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/09/tragedy-john-mear...
> Stephen Kotkin, the preeminent historian of the Soviet Union, and Michael McFaul, the US ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, acknowledged that Mearsheimer was “a giant of a scholar” and “one the clearest, most logical realist theorists out there”, but he was wrong to blame the US for Putin’s invasion.
Some of his statements in this article:
"International politics is a tragedy – it always has been, it is today, and it always will be. Those who believe that you can escape the iron cage, and transcend this Hobbesian world, are delusional. My argument disturbs liberals greatly.”
“The tragedy ... is that you could have two states who are content with the status quo and have no interest in fighting or competing for power. Nevertheless, because they cannot know each other’s intentions, and because they operate in an anarchic system, they have to assume the worst about each other and have to compete for power."
Even if you disagree with some of his arguments, I would think anyone with a rationale view of the subject will agree that there's at least some truth to it, and that the Russian government is not completely mad for thinking in those terms, as the West seems to so strongly believe in general (notice how governments always paint a picture of the "enemy" as being a mad, senseless thug - this is nothing new).
You doing the propaganda work for a regime that tells their people that they were fighting "the Nazi regime in Kiev" to ensure their loyalty.
My ancestors were also (if you don't just plainly lie about that fact, too) Huguenots and they would have not wanted you to cite them in this context after the had to leave their country not unlike millions of Ukrainian people have to right now.
So, wherever you lost that insight, I'd recommend to pick it up again and recognize the irony in you propagating the Kremlin's world view.
That'd be Yemen, a nation of 20 million people, half of them children, being genocided with Western military systems, under the watchful gaze of the suppliers of those military systems ..
Where is the outrage against the KSA, an ally of the USA that could be "brought to heel" the same way Americans' wish they could with Russia .. there isn't any, because American's play a duplicitous game of might makes right, and as a nation the USA doesn't really care about genocide, as long as the right side are doing it.
You comment on this issue a surprising amount, and clearly feel strongly about the US’ views on China. I’d be curious as to exactly how you feel China is being judged unfairly.
Censorship in China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China
Four Cardinal Principles (enshrined in the constitution): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Cardinal_Principles
Open Constitution Initiative (shut down by the government): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Constitution_Initiative
The issues are plain, endemic, and well-documented. It is not propaganda.
Feel free to read the yearly reports from the HRW:
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china
Random selection from the report:
> In May, a court in Hainan province sentenced former journalist Luo Changping to seven months in prison for a Weibo post that questioned China’s justification for its involvement in the Korean War.
Details on his case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_Changping#Arrest
> Sanya Ji'an Police Bureau summoned Luo for investigation into his "illegal remarks" suspected of "insulting heroes and martyrs".
Credit the "a billion being lifted out of poverty" to "China" (remember in this context we're talking about the government) is just like saying "the US" invented PC, network, lightbulb and the other thousands of good stuff we rely on today.
No, some smart people in the US did that. But it can't be simply credited to "the US".
Chinese people worked hard to lift themselves out of poverty. Did some policies help? Absolutely. But it's not "China lifted them out of poverty".
If it's true, we can even say the US lifted them out of poverty, since the China economy boom came in place when it became the major trade partner of the US. See? The US' foreign policy helped!
On top of which, they did such a terrible job of lifting people out of poverty, they unnecessarily killed tens of millions in the deadliest famine in human history:
If you look at removal of poverty China is unquestionably better. There’s simply no unbiased way you could say China is better or worse overall. Any weights you apply to certain things are inherently biased.
1. False Equivalence: Suggesting that economic progress and freedom of speech are interchangeable or mutually exclusive is intentionally misleading.
2. Relativism: By stating there's "no objective way" to compare, you are deflecting any form of critical evaluation.
3. Unfalsifiability: Your assertion that any evaluation is "inherently biased" is an unfalsifiable claim meant to immunize your argument from critique.
I don't think anyone is saying China has "more freedom". But that does not seem to automatically imply that's "worse", which seems to be your ground assumption!
If you believe more freedom is always better, do you agree that social media should have absolutely no moderation? If you don't, then it seems to me you concede that freedom is good, but up to a limit. Then the question become, does China have the right amount of freedom or the USA does? How about the EU, which is quite noticeably less free than the USA? I don't think the answer to these questions are nearly as obvious as you seem to believe by making such blank statements, which leads me to agree with the other person that this is something someone helplessly affected by good old propaganda would do without realizing it (good propaganda is like that, you have no idea you're affected, trying to recognize that is very important).
Instead, your post employs a series of rhetorical tactics aimed at stifling constructive dialogue:
First, you assert a false equivalency between China and the USA/EU by trivializing the qualitative difference in freedom levels, thereby attempting to normalize authoritarianism.
Second, you use a slippery slope argument about social media moderation to suggest that all limitations on freedom are essentially the same — equating limited, private content moderation with systemic human rights abuses by government.
Third, you engage in an ad hominem attack by accusing me of being influenced by propaganda without providing substantive counter-arguments.
Were I to adopt your approach, I could easily make similar sweeping ad hominem accusations based on your behavior here.
I did not assert any false equivalence, that's your mistaken interpretation. Given your poor reading skills, I agree there's no reason to continue a dialogue, actually.
If you can’t understand your own incoherent argument, I can’t help you.
So, what's the truth? I guess whatever one chooses to believe. I like to create my truths from many different, contraversial or sometimes completely opposing sources on same topic. Your links are all in english language, in en. section of Wikipedia.
If you put zero value on personal freedom (which isn’t objectively better, that’s just pure opinion) the equation changes.
This military junta has demolished countless other sovereign states around the world, deemed inferior by the oligarchic ruling classes that use that revolving door to enact evil deeds across the worlds' horizons.
This isn't a conspiracy theory - its how a significant percentage of the worlds population actually views the US empire, and its minion, puppet states.
You see? This kind of hatespew is equally applicable, and just as useless to those of us interested in peace.
Would you rather be a citizen of China or USA?
So would Australias Witnesses J, K, L, M, N and O .. who have been disappeared into a military Star Court, for the sake of political dissidence.
Be very careful with your castigation of China. We have far, far more political dissidents in our prisons than you know about. And that is by design.
What I mean to emphasize is that net net, one expects more of the semblance of a rule of law in western jurisdictions. It's why cases like Julian Assange are as controversial as they are, with public organizations in USA willing to make the case to support him and inquire on his well-being.
Our media is controlled but there is semblance of free press. You don't have even that in China. If you're a dissident in China you'd be hard pressed garnering support from any org.
I don't presume to have a complete picture. Maybe if I did it may suggest USA is in reality more like China. But from all that I've seen, authoritarian governments like China continue to have serious shortcomings in the kinds of freedoms we take for granted in the West.
This is a fallacy, though. There is nothing about Western jurisdictions which isn't also attainable in the "Eastern" ones, wherever they are. This moral altitude is a fallacy and drives so much enmity, disaster and calamity in the world. We do not have the right to demolish countless sovereign states in the world, and then call out China, which hasn't even come close to the level of calamity that we, Western citizens, support with our apathy towards our own governments. We might have a 'semblance' of rule of law at home - but it is absolutely not what we export to the rest of the world.
We destroy nations - China builds them.
China isn't illegally occupying 1/3rd of Syrias oil fields specifically for the purpose of denying the Syrian people access to the resources needed to rebuild their nation.
Has China bombed any innocent weddings or hospitals or medical units recently?
Where does China fit in the "bombing of innocent civilians every twenty minutes for twenty years" narrative?
I think you'd be better served in your desire to understand China by talking to some of the millions of people whose lives have been bettered by China's investment into belts and roads - and comparing those stories with the 34 million refugees from wars started by Western nations this century, and follow it up with some interviews of the terror groups currently using Western funding and weapons supplies to demolish sovereign states considered unsavoury by the ruling Western oligarchy.
They made them better. Yes, with policies. No, these were not Western policies. (You cannot take credit for China, American, while also castigating it for its faults.. that sort of duplicity is exactly why your nation is viewed with disgust, more and more these days..)
China has a middle class like no other nation - including that of the USA, which is rapidly demolishing its middle class and which provides no such care to its citizens.
China also provides free health care for its citizens - the USA, not so much.
See also: Western Democracy.
Remind me again which government was responsible for the deadliest famine in human history?
I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments–but we have to moderate based on the worst things an account does, and what you did in this thread is completely not ok.
Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Same for ideological flamewar and the other flavors too—and yes, the rules apply regardless of who you're for or against. If anyone would like confirmation of this, there's a counterparty to this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746593.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If anyone did the "lifting", it's the global markets with their conditional entry into the WTO. Almost all the conditions are still not met and reneged on.
See, it is easy to play this game.
In other words, I was answering to what I was understanding as: "Oh it's okay we invaded Irak, because China had Tiananmen".
The difference is that, in the American system, the political faction that engineered that invasion has lost most of its power through a democratic mechanism. The Bush-era neoconservatives are not the dominant force in the Republican Party anymore. Trumpism is clearly opposed to foreign interventions.
In the Chinese system, a similar reckoning about Tiananmen and other atrocities remains unthinkable. The one true Party must be on the correct path, and faith in that can’t be shaken.
As broken as American democracy is, a two-party system fueled by private money is still much better than a single-party system that also controls the money.
This is absolutely incorrect and proves the OP's point entirely.
The people responsible for the Iraq disaster are also behind the Ukraine disaster. People such as Robert Kagan, the PNAC, the Brookings Institute.
They are still running the show in spite of the vast war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale committed as a result of their policies, which are still in effect.
You're just not paying attention because you believe your political system is infallible after decades of propaganda designed to inculcate that view.
>In the Chinese system, a similar reckoning about Tiananmen and other atrocities remains unthinkable.
American citizens, reckoning with the criminal oligarch class which directs the resources of their immense military-industrial complex in order to demolish countless other sovereign states around the world in the last twenty years, seems also unthinkable.
Reckon with this: Your hatespew of China is designed to deflect from actual reflection of the crimes of your own state, which are vast and not ignorable - thus, the distraction.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/china
The only difference is in America, its quite well understood that no matter what you say with those free speech rights, the capture of both political parties by the real ruling oligarchic elite means that you can say whatever you want, but nothing will change.
The iron grip that Americas' ruling classes have over their state will simply not be altered by individual ideologues exercising their right to free speech - that barn has long left the horse - because the same people manufacturing bombs are manufacturing the news in the USA, and thus dissidence is rendered entirely ineffective through other, totalitarian-authoritarian, means ..
It is the intentionally distractive hatespew of other nations and the utter ignorance of ones own states' heinous crimes that is nuts. And yes, I do it for free - there is nothing worse than seeing ones fellow citizens degrade into Orwell'ian hatespew when there is far, far more work to be done on ones own states war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale.
Its nuts that we don't have Assange living free, exercising his rights to free speech, but we do have people such as Robert Kagan getting paid to appear on TV, advocating for the murder of millions of innocent people, for the sake of some self-proclaimed, utterly phony moral authority ..
Its nuts that Americans ignore the 34 million refugees from their wars, and the billions and billions of dollars of support from your own government towards known totalitarian-authoritarian, terrorist regimes, while whining about some perceived error in the ways of China, a state which is factually helping more people in the world lift themselves from the poverty states that the American people put them in ..
I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments–but we have to moderate based on the worst things an account does, and what you did in this thread is completely not ok.
Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Same for ideological flamewar and the other flavors too—and yes, the rules apply regardless of who you're for or against. If anyone would like confirmation of this, there's a counterparty to this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746615.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Please elaborate because this sounds delusional to me. Especially, please describe Putin's role in the Iraq invasion.
In a nutshell, the American policy "create the conditions so that they die in war, so we don't have to" has felled many a sovereign nation.
I’m a citizen of Finland. I’m certainly very interested to hear about those vast crimes perpetuated from this nowhere corner of Europe.
If I defend the American system in this context, it’s only because to me it objectively appears fundamentally better than the Chinese one.
I lived in New York for some years and enjoyed it. In contrast, I would never consider moving my family to Shanghai while the CCP rules the country. I wouldn’t feel safe there.
This ventures firmly into the realm of conspiracy theory.
Do you feel you are presenting objective facts, as opposed to participating in disinformation or propaganda?
Instead you jumped straight to calling anyone who might disagree “uninformed”, a “shill”, and finally you admitted that you don’t understand how someone can hold a different view than you.
It doesn’t inspire confidence in your analytical ability.
There seems to be a certain subset of the HN population that thinks that "morality" is somehow a bad thing.
Morality may be subjective and not "analytical", but it's also completely unavoidable to being a human person, and debates about moral behaviour are absolutely integral to human societies.
They also don't let anyone disagree with them unpunished. That's not at all what the US does, you're talking about 20 years ago by now.
China has much more sensitive toes and issues coming up are every year.
India, Taiwan, SK, Japan, Phillippines, Vietnam etc. All these countries can't be wrong and the last time I glanced at a world map, they weren't in the West.
> But Americans have drank so much anti-China propaganda that they consider anyone who isn't saying "China bad" is automatically a paid CCP shill
No, they don't. If you think US propaganda is bad, you haven't faced Chinese propaganda. Within China and its subjugated colonies (Tibet, HK, etc), it is so common you won't even notice it.
Like fish not noticing water in the ocean.
I don't think there are universally good and bad guys in this game. There are interests. If you live in the west your interest is for western economy to be the first which means for other economies to be, well, not first. If you live elsewhere the same applies.
As for me, I hate all of my overlords with passion. US EU Russia China, you are all the same to me. Not people, of course. Governments, armies and corporations. Well, almost the same. US and EU dropped bombs on me during my lifetime, Russia and China did not.
I literally had a list up there.
> India, Taiwan, SK, Japan, Phillippines, Vietnam etc
> As for me, I hate all of my overlords with passion. US EU Russia China
Of those overlords, the other two are much much much worse than the US.
> s. Well, almost the same. US and EU dropped bombs on me during my lifetime, Russia and China did not.
You do realize there are millions who will say the other way.
However when the US combines it industrial interests with its state apparatus it is a formidable force; media described the Japanese society as authoritarian, bitter and racist - eager to get back the Americans after world war 2 - with the everyday Japanese being mindless warrior drones in a strict hierarchy. (For examples of this sentiment see the movies Black Rain or Rising Sun - or lookup the tragic death of Vincent Chin - a Chinese mistaken for being Japanese).
The US justice system ran a series of entrapment campaign targeting Japanese firms. And there was buy-american campaigns and extra tariffs were put on Japanese imports.
Ultimately the Japanese yielded. The plaza accord fixed the Yen at a very high price point hampering Japanese exports. And quotas were set for US exports to Japan and Japanese car factories were setup in the US.
And then in 90es you had the rise of now competitative tech firms from South Korea and Taiwan.
It's the same in Germany. Up until 10 years ago or so, they still thought the future of their economy will be selling more diesel engines to everyone. Today Germany is still the world's leading exporter of diesel engines, but how long can that cow be milked?
It's what you get when your majority wealth holders, politicians and business leaders are well past their retirement and don't care about the changing world around them, don't care to empower the youth in wealth generation, gate-keeping it all for the existing gentry.
Oh, they know it. When I lived in Germany 5-10 years ago, this issue was regularly discussed in the media. Some companies do try to adapt. E.g. Bosch traditionally delivered a lot of diesel-related tech, but they are also investing a lot in batteries and fuel cells. E.g. a large number of eBikes in Europe (probably a large majority even) use Bosch motors and batteries.
Only time will tell if it's enough. Of course, companies will try to stretch the transition as much as possible so that they'll have time to catch up.
Fundamental difference between these two trade wars is that US had then and still has now military presence in Japan while none in China. Japan has a somewhat limited sovereignty that affected how they could fight the trade war.
A war that Japan decidedly lost.
Here is an article from Chinese state media drawing the parallels:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-11/Lessons-from-U-S-Japan...
What can we learn from U.S.-Japan trade war of 1980s?
It is true that the ongoing trade war between China and the U.S. is different from the one between the U.S. and Japan in the 1980s, but the two trade wars do have a lot in common. First, both involve the world's largest and second-largest economies; second, China is the country with the largest trade surplus with the U.S., the spot was held by Japan during the 1980s; third, China is highly dependent on the U.S. market, so was Japan. The U.S. approach and the intensity of the trade wars are also more or less the same.