9 ms·

This is going to sound paranoid, obviously, but I was thinking if China ever wanted to start a war with North America, it has quite a sizable population in the

This is going to sound paranoid, obviously, but I was thinking if China ever wanted to start a war with North America, it has quite a sizable population in the US and Canada that could potentially contribute to that aim.

hkmurakami 9y ago
That's literally how we got internment camps, and how some citizens view brown skinned fellow residents/citizens of our land, just FYI.
analyst74 9y ago
On the other hand, a sizable of the elite class in China would really not want to start a war between two countries they are heavily invested in.
mistermann 9y ago
China will have substantial control of Canada within a few decades with no violence required.
TACIXAT 9y ago
Most people living in the US or Canada view it as their home. I don't think many would act as sleeper agents for a country that they left behind.
babesh 9y ago
You are a bigot.
CountSessine 9y ago
Much of middle-America (and Canada) was settled by huge numbers of German immigrants. At the start of WW1, there were similar concerns about German sympathies. It just doesn't work that way. These people have made their homes here and count themselves as Canadians and Americans. They might have sympathies for the old country (much as many of us in North America do), but the stronger these sympathies are, the less likely we'll go to war in the first place.
- loeber 9y ago
  German-Americans were, for a long time, the largest national-ethnic group in the US. After the World Wars, calling oneself a German-American went out of fashion. There are some interesting articles on the matter: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-happened-to-german-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-happened... [2] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-americas-largest-ethnic-group-has-assimilated-so-well-people-barely-notice-it https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-americ...
dragonwriter 9y ago
There are lots of people of Chinese ancestry in the US, sure, but there is no reason to believe any substantial number of them have any devotion to the present government of the People's Republic of China. Quite a lot of them are from families that have been American much longer than the PRC has existed.
sctb 9y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720162 and marked it off-topic.
abootstrapper 9y ago
Right!? And imagine if Ireland went to war with the US! /s

hkmurakami 9y ago

That's literally how we got internment camps, and how some citizens view brown skinned fellow residents/citizens of our land, just FYI.

analyst74 9y ago

On the other hand, a sizable of the elite class in China would really not want to start a war between two countries they are heavily invested in.

mistermann 9y ago

China will have substantial control of Canada within a few decades with no violence required.

TACIXAT 9y ago

Most people living in the US or Canada view it as their home. I don't think many would act as sleeper agents for a country that they left behind.

babesh 9y ago

You are a bigot.

CountSessine 9y ago

Much of middle-America (and Canada) was settled by huge numbers of German immigrants. At the start of WW1, there were similar concerns about German sympathies. It just doesn't work that way. These people have made their homes here and count themselves as Canadians and Americans. They might have sympathies for the old country (much as many of us in North America do), but the stronger these sympathies are, the less likely we'll go to war in the first place.

loeber 9y ago
German-Americans were, for a long time, the largest national-ethnic group in the US. After the World Wars, calling oneself a German-American went out of fashion. There are some interesting articles on the matter: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-happened-to-german-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-happened... [2] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-americas-largest-ethnic-group-has-assimilated-so-well-people-barely-notice-it https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21642222-americ...

dragonwriter 9y ago

There are lots of people of Chinese ancestry in the US, sure, but there is no reason to believe any substantial number of them have any devotion to the present government of the People's Republic of China. Quite a lot of them are from families that have been American much longer than the PRC has existed.

sctb 9y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720162 and marked it off-topic.

abootstrapper 9y ago

Right!? And imagine if Ireland went to war with the US! /s