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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 6
by 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 agoThe US has been doing that for the past 30 years. It's not working.
- Aunche 8y agoThe 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 agoNot 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 agoExcept china has a population of 1.3B and economic progress is the only thing keeping people subservient.
- phreeza 8y ago10 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 agoThat’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.
- throwaway2048 8y agoNot sure why this is being downvoted, It was absolutely the case being made for why we should be economically involved in China, however it turned out to be dead wrong. https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2007/08/31/capitalism-and-democracytake-two https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2007/08/31/capitalis...
- Farradfahren 8y agoDoesent fit well in that Neo-Liberal Leaf of a ideology, that they basically brought their own version of the third reich to power. They are in that phase any good communist was at the start of the cold war. The Ideology is all right, but the implementation is flawed and thuse the various atrocities cant be put on their tab.
- rohit2412 8y agoI don't think so. China remained subservient enough during the cultural revolution and the great leap forward. It's going to be easy now for the party to remain in control.
- wintom 8y agoWhat exactly happened after the U.S. severed ties with Cuba? You make it sound like we lost something. They are still stuck in the 1960s, their economy is absolute garbage and the people are dirt poor, they lost multiple generations of opportunity. Have you been to Cuba? It’s like going back in time 70 years.. the country itself is beautiful if they had taken a different path they could be incredibly propsorous. A small country like Cuba could get by on tourism alone and do much better than they do now. Everyone needs to take their own path, if suppressing people’s religions and no freedom is that path the Chinese want to take then that’s their choice. Our government and our corporations should not support that.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoThey make it sound like they lost something. As in, if they wouldn't have been isolated it might have turned out better for the average Cuban.
- pm90 8y agoIt’s not certain that it would. But participation in the global economy is one way to get a country hooked on the economic crack that is the modern financial system. Once they’re hooked, economic sanctions (sometimes just the threat of them) are much more effective in achieving desired behavior.
- saagarjha 8y agoPerhaps the point was that if we had remained involved in Cuba, they wouldn’t be stuck in the 1960s?
- dgut 8y agoMy point is simple: If the US had not severed ties with Cuba and instead engaged with Fidel (as he initially tried to do with the US), chances are Cuba wouldn't have alienated itself with the Soviet Union, and Christians (and everybody else) would have been much better off. Repression of the Church didn't happen until years after the revolution and the Soviet Union had become its main ally. Cuba is worse off today than it was 60 years ago by the way, so in that sense, they aren't "stuck in the 60s". What did the US lose? An ally and a potentially strong economy to trade with a few miles from US shore. Cuban music had quite some influence on the music of New Orleans, particularly jazz. Cuban musicians would regularly travel back and forth from Havana to New Orleans before the revolution (and the other way around).