4 ms·

What are you proposing we do? Cut off trade with China? Intervene militarily? Write a strongly worded letter?

• mattmanser 10y ago
  That's what you did with Cuba and Iran and Iraq and Russia and etc., etc.
  • the_ancient 10y ago
    Yes but Cuba, Iran, Iraq, and Russia are not willing to supply US Companies with near indentured servants to make our stuff,then use the worthless paper they get for the stuff, to buy a different type of worthless paper that allows the US Government to build more war machines, and other things.
    • Idontreddit 10y ago
      It isn't the "indentured servants" that make china attractive, it's their huge market. I love how the internet trash also spout the same idiotic nonsense. China may have a lot of workers, but they also have a lot of buyers as well.
• deepGem 10y ago
  You sure can do all of these.
• dogecoinbase 10y ago
  These all seem like pretty heavy-handed interventions. I'm sure funding could be found for some targeted assassinations, though.
• icebraining 10y ago
  What about Diplomacy? Increased recognition of Tibetan leaders and activists, sending diplomatic missions to problematic spots, etc. It would also not hurt to stop with the constant demonization of "China" as a whole, which just serves to downplay criticism as bigotry.
  • GantzGraf 10y ago
    Obama just this week met with the Dalai Lama in direct contravention of China's wishes.
    • dave2000 10y ago
      And Obama criticizes Israel sometimes by stating that the murder of thousands of civilians or the expansion of illegal settlements are "unneccesary" or "not helpful to peace" too, but it's just window dressing and not to be taken seriously. Certainly it makes no difference to the outcome whatsoever, and never will.
    • ohashi 10y ago
      Good thing I didn't elect a Chinese government in the US.
  • jerichois 10y ago
    And what if China tries to do the same with our Native American Reservations?
    • ommunist 10y ago
      For China it would be enough to acknowledge the Lacotah Republic to fire up the Civil War in the US.
• jacquesm 10y ago
  > Cut off trade with China? That would definitely be an interesting experiment. I suspect prices would rise slightly and we'd find out just how dependent we really are. After a week or two there would be a joint statement of the leaders of the Western World that they have unanimously decided to support the Chinese action, in fact they'll come to help to cart rubble personally.
  • xiaoma 10y ago
    I'm not sure I follow your reasoning... are you implying that trade with China is more important for the entire western world than international trade with the all the west is to China? I could certainly see leaders in certain countries such as France who have been actively selling weaponry to China going "to help cart the rubble personally" but there's no way Obama or his next successor would do that.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      > are you implying that trade with China is more important for the entire western world than international trade with the all the west is to China? Yes, we are utterly co-dependent at this point in time. Cutting trade with China would take a decade or more if it can be done at all at this stage.
      • giardini 10y ago
        "Cutting trade with China would take a decade or more if it can be done at all at this stage." But I could finally buy decent pliers made in the USA, like I once could 25 years ago.
        • jacquesm 10y ago
          You can still buy those. But probably not at a price that you are prepared to pay.
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
• wallace_f 10y ago
  By we are you referring to the US? The US has a lot of capability here. I'm not going to go into a long winded post going into this. I just wanted to point out that unfortunately this kind of hand washing taking place in your comment is very effective.
• anexprogrammer 10y ago
  > Cut off trade with China Why not? Prices would rise marginally if at all. There'd be some supply issues for a while. It was ok to sanction Iran, Iraq and South Africa and so on but not now in this globalised world? We put up with any old abuse from Israel and China because they're approved in some way? I'm no diplomat, but there should be some consequences of significance.
  • adventured 10y ago
    Prices would rise significantly and it would create a very large black market. There would be supply issues for more than a decade. The US does half a trillion dollars worth of importing from China. Every major US retailer is designed around imports from China. Most of that is relatively low priced consumer goods. Where do you plan to buy decently priced microwaves, by the millions, that aren't made in China? That doesn't exist, it would take years to bring that production on-line. The same is true of television sets. Hell, just about anything you can name that is mass consumer oriented. The disruption to supply would destroy most US retailers instantly. Walmart and Amazon, both suddenly lacking 3/4 of their inventory, would go bankrupt in a matter of months. Walmart would have to fire upwards of two million low income workers that have no possible replacement jobs. It would harm the bottom 50% in the US the most. That's enough reason to look at other options first.
    • anexprogrammer 10y ago
      I don't see the ramifications playing out remotely like that. There'd be a diplomatic tit-for-tat leading up to sanctions, they wouldn't just be turned on at 00:00 tomorrow. So there'd be perhaps a year. Sanctions tend to start with specific items and scale up. So it's a process, with a timeline, over perhaps 2 - 10 years. Plenty of time for significnt amounts of trade to move to india, Vietnam and the other developing economies.
      • lostlogin 10y ago
        China holds quite a bit of US currency, the risk of offensive use of this has been assessed by the US as not too severe, but 3.2 trillion is a lot. It might be better used hurting US interests abroad rather than devaluing the $US.