11 ms·

This is why we need to sever economic ties with China. The more we support this the worse this type of thing will intensify, including beyond China's borders...

This is why we need to sever economic ties with China. The more we support this the worse this type of thing will intensify, including beyond China's borders....and it won't stop at just Christianity, they have targeted Islam and, Buddhists etc. as well.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
greeneggs 8y ago
Why will severing economic ties change it either way? Do you just mean as a matter of principle we should sanction China, or do you think it will be an effective impulse for change?
- tivert 8y ago
  One common refrain is that trade has massive material benefits to all parties engaged in it, but when one party is engaged in immoral behavior, one has to question if one wants to strengthen them with those benefits. Personally, I think a unilateral severing of economic ties would be extremely counterproductive. However, I think eliminating the policy compartmentalization between trade and human rights issues should be seriously considered. Basic democratic representation and de jure and de facto protection of basic human rights (or at least concrete and verifiable steps towards that goal) should be fundamental requirements for having an open trading relationship with any country. Then it's up the the human-rights abusing country to make the choice about whether it wants to trade or not. My understanding is that many of these trading relationships were liberalized with the idea that trade would bring political liberalization and human rights with it. That idea has been shown to be false, so policy that's based on it should be reconsidered.
- lgleason 8y ago
  both. I doubt it will stop it in China directly, but if you continue to support them economically this is more likely to spread as they gain more global influence. Ideally there should be none, but if you can't have that containment is the next best thing otherwise you expose a larger population to it.
dgut 8y ago
On the contrary. I think our leaders should spend more time together. Maybe they should even vacation together. The US severed economic ties with Cuba in the 60s and look what happened (only recently celebrating Christmas became legal, and property that belonged to the church was returned). There are countless examples like that.
- lgleason 8y ago
  The US has been doing that for the past 30 years. It's not working.
  - Aunche 8y ago
    The Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward happened before that. Up until Xi Jiping, China had been on track to being a freer country.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      Not entirely accurate - Tiananmen square was just under 30 years ago, and that was a particularly low point. Though I suppose one could argue that pretty much anything after that was an improvement.
- n-gate 8y ago
  Except china has a population of 1.3B and economic progress is the only thing keeping people subservient.
  - phreeza 8y ago
    10 years ago or so the story was the opposite: economic progress will lead to a rising middle class, which will lead to more political freedoms.
    - pm90 8y ago
      That’s exactly how it panned out in Korea, Vietnam etc. China is an outlier because of several reasons but size is perhaps the biggest. Chinese market is so huge it can support China specific versions of everything; the State realized this and used it to effectively control all the new sources of information (mostly internet stuff). No one thought they could do that effectively but hats off to them they did.
sodosopa 8y ago
Thank you for looking at the bigger picture - I have experienced first-hand, the persecution complex from a lot of Christians. They're not bothered by other religions being targeted but when Christianity is the last one being culled, they suddenly make it all about their beliefs.
- lgleason 8y ago
  Human nature being what it is, most people will look out for their interests first. That said, in this case it affects people of all religions so there is a common uniting issue. It is better when, in general, people of all religions can find common ground and work together on things, but you always have the extremist sects in most of these belief systems where the ideology is "there is only one true belief system and everything else is wrong and must be converted or eliminated". The key is having a moderate majority to counterbalance that. IE: I believe in Christianity, Islam etc., but I respect your belief in "name the alternate religion", see you as a good neighbor and am open to having respectful discussions about our differences if faith for understanding.
ayq 8y ago
As long as they don't target synagogues nobody in the US will bat an eye
- jaboutboul 8y ago
  Racist much?
kumarvvr 8y ago
> This is why we need to sever economic ties with China Then someone else will step in. What needs to be done is clever diplomacy. A carrot and stick policy and long-term thinking.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Diplomacy clearly does not work with China. The only thing that works is direct, aggressive competition. Hopefully this does not lead to military conflict but I worry that the US and China are on an inevitable path at this point.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    China has something like 4x the US population, assuming they’re equally smart and driven on average, why wouldn’t they attain 4x the gdp eventually?
    - joejerryronnie 8y ago
      I think the two primary things where the US has an advantage over China is diversity (largely driven by foreign immigration) and free information flow. This leads to greater rates of innovation. Maybe not enough to keep China’s gdp from eventually surpassing the US, but that’s largely a glamour stat. The real issue is global power and influence. As shady and domineering as US foreign policy can be at times, a world dominated by China is far more concerning.
kadendogthing 8y ago
Power, and if I may diplomacy, vacuums never work in the favor of the people who created it in the first place. The U.S. (and largely other Western) nations enjoy a hefty set of soft power and good economic relations with the majority of countries on this planet precisely because we have actively engaged with them. If you're worried about things getting worse or intensifying, then severing ties with these countries (and China specifically) is a good way to make those worries a very brutal reality. And if that's not enough the blunt reality is that our economies are too intertwined at this point. We can only play the situation as it is, not back out of it completely unless we mean to shoot ourselves in the foot.
deevolution 8y ago
China represents almost 1/5th of the world's population, you can't simply ignore Chinas global presence. I suggest visiting china for a few weeks, exploring each of their major cities to gain some new perspective.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
majia 8y ago
Severing economic ties at whose expense? Christians in China? Poor people in the US? It’s easy to claim moral superiority if someone else has to foot the bill. What is even more dangerous is to link religion freedom to the ongoing trade war. It makes good people who are fighting for a just cause look like pawns of the US. You may have underestimated the value of engagement. The spread of Christianity in China could not happen without the economic ties with China in the past forty years.
dgzl 8y ago
I used to listen to people like Ron Paul, and he would say something like... The stronger our economic ties and dependencies, the less likely we are to commit aggression against each other. I believe he supports the non-intervention policy. [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventionism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventi...
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  That was also the argument for why WW1 could never happen, yet it did.
  - dgzl 8y ago
    Could you explain this?
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
      https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Norman_Angell%27s_The_Great_Illusion https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Norman_Angell%27s_The_Grea... An excerpt from a book by Norman Angell, (Nobel Peace Prize winner, lecturer, journalist and MP) in 1910 as to why wide scale war could not happen between major powers. [War] belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another -- to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive. It was a fairly widespread view at that point in time.
      - lgleason 8y ago
        I guess the leaders at the time forgot to read his book ;)
Farradfahren 8y ago
They even target local mystic movements such as falun gong.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

greeneggs 8y ago

Why will severing economic ties change it either way? Do you just mean as a matter of principle we should sanction China, or do you think it will be an effective impulse for change?

tivert 8y ago
One common refrain is that trade has massive material benefits to all parties engaged in it, but when one party is engaged in immoral behavior, one has to question if one wants to strengthen them with those benefits. Personally, I think a unilateral severing of economic ties would be extremely counterproductive. However, I think eliminating the policy compartmentalization between trade and human rights issues should be seriously considered. Basic democratic representation and de jure and de facto protection of basic human rights (or at least concrete and verifiable steps towards that goal) should be fundamental requirements for having an open trading relationship with any country. Then it's up the the human-rights abusing country to make the choice about whether it wants to trade or not. My understanding is that many of these trading relationships were liberalized with the idea that trade would bring political liberalization and human rights with it. That idea has been shown to be false, so policy that's based on it should be reconsidered.
lgleason 8y ago
both. I doubt it will stop it in China directly, but if you continue to support them economically this is more likely to spread as they gain more global influence. Ideally there should be none, but if you can't have that containment is the next best thing otherwise you expose a larger population to it.

dgut 8y ago

On the contrary. I think our leaders should spend more time together. Maybe they should even vacation together. The US severed economic ties with Cuba in the 60s and look what happened (only recently celebrating Christmas became legal, and property that belonged to the church was returned). There are countless examples like that.

lgleason 8y ago
The US has been doing that for the past 30 years. It's not working.
- Aunche 8y ago
  The Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward happened before that. Up until Xi Jiping, China had been on track to being a freer country.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Not entirely accurate - Tiananmen square was just under 30 years ago, and that was a particularly low point. Though I suppose one could argue that pretty much anything after that was an improvement.
n-gate 8y ago
Except china has a population of 1.3B and economic progress is the only thing keeping people subservient.
- phreeza 8y ago
  10 years ago or so the story was the opposite: economic progress will lead to a rising middle class, which will lead to more political freedoms.
  - pm90 8y ago
    That’s exactly how it panned out in Korea, Vietnam etc. China is an outlier because of several reasons but size is perhaps the biggest. Chinese market is so huge it can support China specific versions of everything; the State realized this and used it to effectively control all the new sources of information (mostly internet stuff). No one thought they could do that effectively but hats off to them they did.

sodosopa 8y ago

Thank you for looking at the bigger picture - I have experienced first-hand, the persecution complex from a lot of Christians. They're not bothered by other religions being targeted but when Christianity is the last one being culled, they suddenly make it all about their beliefs.

lgleason 8y ago
Human nature being what it is, most people will look out for their interests first. That said, in this case it affects people of all religions so there is a common uniting issue. It is better when, in general, people of all religions can find common ground and work together on things, but you always have the extremist sects in most of these belief systems where the ideology is "there is only one true belief system and everything else is wrong and must be converted or eliminated". The key is having a moderate majority to counterbalance that. IE: I believe in Christianity, Islam etc., but I respect your belief in "name the alternate religion", see you as a good neighbor and am open to having respectful discussions about our differences if faith for understanding.

ayq 8y ago

As long as they don't target synagogues nobody in the US will bat an eye

jaboutboul 8y ago
Racist much?

kumarvvr 8y ago

> This is why we need to sever economic ties with China Then someone else will step in. What needs to be done is clever diplomacy. A carrot and stick policy and long-term thinking.

joejerryronnie 8y ago
Diplomacy clearly does not work with China. The only thing that works is direct, aggressive competition. Hopefully this does not lead to military conflict but I worry that the US and China are on an inevitable path at this point.
- chillacy 8y ago
  China has something like 4x the US population, assuming they’re equally smart and driven on average, why wouldn’t they attain 4x the gdp eventually?
  - joejerryronnie 8y ago
    I think the two primary things where the US has an advantage over China is diversity (largely driven by foreign immigration) and free information flow. This leads to greater rates of innovation. Maybe not enough to keep China’s gdp from eventually surpassing the US, but that’s largely a glamour stat. The real issue is global power and influence. As shady and domineering as US foreign policy can be at times, a world dominated by China is far more concerning.

kadendogthing 8y ago

Power, and if I may diplomacy, vacuums never work in the favor of the people who created it in the first place. The U.S. (and largely other Western) nations enjoy a hefty set of soft power and good economic relations with the majority of countries on this planet precisely because we have actively engaged with them. If you're worried about things getting worse or intensifying, then severing ties with these countries (and China specifically) is a good way to make those worries a very brutal reality. And if that's not enough the blunt reality is that our economies are too intertwined at this point. We can only play the situation as it is, not back out of it completely unless we mean to shoot ourselves in the foot.

deevolution 8y ago

China represents almost 1/5th of the world's population, you can't simply ignore Chinas global presence. I suggest visiting china for a few weeks, exploring each of their major cities to gain some new perspective.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

majia 8y ago

Severing economic ties at whose expense? Christians in China? Poor people in the US? It’s easy to claim moral superiority if someone else has to foot the bill. What is even more dangerous is to link religion freedom to the ongoing trade war. It makes good people who are fighting for a just cause look like pawns of the US. You may have underestimated the value of engagement. The spread of Christianity in China could not happen without the economic ties with China in the past forty years.

dgzl 8y ago

I used to listen to people like Ron Paul, and he would say something like... The stronger our economic ties and dependencies, the less likely we are to commit aggression against each other. I believe he supports the non-intervention policy. [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventionism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_non-interventi...

throwaway2048 8y ago
That was also the argument for why WW1 could never happen, yet it did.
- dgzl 8y ago
  Could you explain this?
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Norman_Angell%27s_The_Great_Illusion https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Norman_Angell%27s_The_Grea... An excerpt from a book by Norman Angell, (Nobel Peace Prize winner, lecturer, journalist and MP) in 1910 as to why wide scale war could not happen between major powers. [War] belongs to a stage of development out of which we have passed that the commerce and industry of a people no longer depend upon the expansion of its political frontiers; that a nation's political and economic frontiers do not now necessarily coincide; that military power is socially and economically futile, and can have no relation to the prosperity of the people exercising it; that it is impossible for one nation to seize by force the wealth or trade of another -- to enrich itself by subjugating, or imposing its will by force on another; that in short, war, even when victorious, can no longer achieve those aims for which people strive. It was a fairly widespread view at that point in time.
    - lgleason 8y ago
      I guess the leaders at the time forgot to read his book ;)

Farradfahren 8y ago

They even target local mystic movements such as falun gong.