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This might sound alarmist, but do you think China is the biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? For two reasons: 1. China has a totalitarian rul

• dev_dull 7y ago
  Yes I absolutely do. It’s especially frustrating that politicians speak endlessly about Russia when China is clearly the larger threat to US dominance. Even stories like “senator’s driver of 20 years is Chinese spy”[1] are basically ignored. 1. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-spy-who-drove-her-dianne-feinstein-and-chinese-espionage https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-spy-w...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• api 7y ago
  China is the world's #1 carbon emitter, the top emitter per GDP, and has over 200gw of new coal still planned. (For scale, California consumes about 50gw on a hot day.) So they are not even unrelated problems. China is also the top source of plastic in the ocean. Tangent but: the way China turned out has IMHO been the major factor in the collapse of the post cold war neoliberal narrative in the West. The idea was that freedom and prosperity are a reinforcing cycle has been disproven. China shows that at least the business parts of capitalism work just fine without human rights and that therefore prosperity and totalitarianism are compatible. The collapse of that narrative has in turn unleashed a revival of hard right fascist and hard left socialist ideology in the West.
  • wysifnwyg 7y ago
    Before your tangent, I agreed with you.
    • andrepd 7y ago
      I agree with everything, including the tangent. China is living proof of how horrible the capitalist "dream" can be in reality, when what flimsy veil of democracy that still existed is stripped away.
  • paul_milovanov 7y ago
    That carbon emitted is largely from the manufacturing of cheap products that you consumed. Western countries have offshored both manufacturing and the associated pollution to a country more concerned about pulling its people out of poverty than about its environment. The ocean plastic is partly from these industrial processes and partly because western countries have exported most of their plastic waste to China for more than a decade. Also, according to this, China's per capita emissions are half that of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
    • roganp 7y ago
      I think per capita emissions are not the right measure to describe the worst polluters. You are right, prices paid for "cheap products" we consume don't include the costs associated with CO2 emissions, but if they did they wouldn't have much to do with a producer's population. A better measure is emissions per dollar GDP, where emissions (a cost) is relative to what gets produced (the benefit).
    • wysifnwyg 7y ago
      A market for a product does not justify the GHG produced. They choose their method of manufacture. Additionally, wasn't China supposed to be recycling the plastics that were shipped to them?
    • api 7y ago
• kiba 7y ago
  Am worried about China imploding(relatively soon) due to their totalitarian system deleting feedback loops and accelerating negative ones.
  • markus_zhang 7y ago
    I'd rather worry about EU as there is already a large gap there...
• gnode 7y ago
  > They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984. With advancements in technology (particularly machine learning), I'd say more like a cross between 1984 and Minority Report. E.g. https://mashable.com/2017/07/24/china-ai-crime-minority-report/ https://mashable.com/2017/07/24/china-ai-crime-minority-repo... It doesn't get much worse than thought-pre-crime.
• parliament32 7y ago
  I'm usually not a huge fan of the US rolling in and stomping out governments (and installing their own, of course), but this is one faux-dictatorship where it sorely needs to happen. Some actual democracy would be amazing for these people. With the recent "trade war" and whatnot the stage has been set pretty well for a US intervention.
  • bigpumpkin 7y ago
    How should we intervene?
    • dcolkitt 7y ago
      Not that I'm necessarily advocating this, but US intelligence has historically proven extremely adept at destabilizing regimes. I'd imagine that mostly look like sowing internal discord within the CCP. The party already has a lot of corruption, so most likely many senior officials could be blackmailed and manipulated. The long-term goal would be to weaken the resolve and coherence of the CCP to the point that a non-violent democratic revolution could take place.
      • throwaway8879 7y ago
        My guess is that US intelligence has several "shadow" arms that have morphed into their own creatures and are no longer the same patriotic beast it was during the cold war. I'm doubtful whether destabilizing China is a real possibility, in the "CIA in Latin America" sense.
      • samus 7y ago
        This is a quite short-sighted point of view. The real challenge is to establish a stable new regime after toppling the old one. In the case of mainland China that has no prior experience at all as a democratic society, it would have a difficult time adapting (PRC before WWII doesn't count since it was unstable and higly corrupt). Also, a weak goverment is in danger of neglecting to address the internal challenges China faces (tensions with minorities, poverty in rural regions, environmental destruction).
• baddox 7y ago
  What policies does China have which are expansionist?
  • magduf 7y ago
    Wanting to take over Taiwan, and trying to take over the South China Sea by building artificial islands and using them as military bases, for starters.
    • jmknoll 7y ago
      To add to that: Wars of aggression against two neighboring countries (Vietnam and India) in the past 50 years, active territorial disputes with basically every other significant country nearby. The creation of client states like which are then used to undermine stability (North Korea), or to undermine international organizations (Cambodia and ASEAN).
    • mytailorisrich 7y ago
      > Wanting to take over Taiwan, This is as expansionist as the American Civil War... I.e. it's not expansionist but really a 'domestic' matter. There is big amount of propaganda from Western media on this topic as well: If Taiwan had been in a position to fight the communists to retake the mainland the US would have supplied help and call this 'liberation' of the mainland. But of course any plan of the communists to complete the takeover of the country by getting their hands on Taiwan is labelled 'expansionist' and 'a threat to security and stability'. Same old games...
      • unethical_ban 7y ago
        The difference being one side is evil and the other isn't so much. The Chinese government, the CCP and everything they stand for regarding liberty and freedom of thought and expression is against the fundamental values of the West. The ideas are not equal in value. China is wrong. Oppression of thought is wrong. Incarceration without trial is wrong. The US and other countries don't get it right all the time, but at least our citizens have the expectation of rights the Chinese can only dream of.
• vkou 7y ago
  No, the biggest global problem is the same one that is causing inaction about climate change. It is domestic enemies of the public. People with money and power, who are happy to push the rest of us under the proverbial bus, in order to acquire more money, and more power. They have, historically, caused incalculable misery the world over, democracies have, historically, not had a great track record in dealing with them, and they have, and will continue to have a lot more impact over my life than China ever will. Unsurprisingly, it is in their interest to point fingers at foreign boogiemen. If you disagree, please consider enumerating the ways in which China has been a threat to your, or your fellow citizens' prosperity, life, or limb. Then consider enumerating the actual threats to prosperity, life, and limb that you and your neighbours have to deal with in your lives - or have had to deal with in the recent past.
• new2628 7y ago
  > biggest upcoming global problem after climate change? maybe, but climate change is around number 20 in that list for me.
  • uoaei 7y ago
    You're lucky you get to die soon enough for that to be appropriate.
    • new2628 7y ago
      Not sure what you are trying to say here.
      • orthecreedence 7y ago
        He's saying you don't have to worry because by the time it gets really bad, it will be someone else's problem. Which is exactly how we got into this mess in the first place.
        • uoaei 7y ago
          The reticence of politicians to address climate change is strongly correlated with their age. Of course there are outliers but it seems clear that "I'm not going to be alive when the shit hits the fan" does a lot to assuage existential anxieties related to climate change.
          • new2628 7y ago
            Blaming the elderly here seems misguided to me. I suspect the lifestyle of an average 20-year-old today puts much more burden on the environment/climate than the lifestyle of their parents in their twenties. ADD: The amount of time each spends _talking_ about climate change is a different matter of course.
            • uoaei 7y ago
• chrisco255 7y ago
  After climate change? I have always feared totalitarian governments more than climate change. The death tolls are a hundred million higher.
  • ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
    The six mass extinction event that humanity is currently causing is going to affect billions of people for centuries to come. If we have systemic ecosystem collapses and 90% of species go extinct, there will be a profound effects. When crops fail and fresh, potable water is extremely constrained, authoritarianism will sweep the world at an even more accelerated pace and regional and world wars are likely. It will be interesting to see how mutually assured destruction holds up and prevents nuclear war when climate change will have already guaranteed many levels of destruction and created a very desperate populace.
    • chrisco255 7y ago
      If humanity is causing extinctions, it's due to habitat destruction and local pollution. Climate change (+0.38C from 1980-2010) is not the cause.
      • undersuit 7y ago
        https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/06/first-mammal-extinct-climate-change-bramble-cay-melomys/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/06/first-mammal... Do you have a response to this?
        • chrisco255 7y ago
          We live in an ever-changing planet. The sea level has been rising since 20,000 years ago, during the last deep ice age. We're still technically in an ice age, we're just in a temporary warming period called an interglacial. The state of various species is always in flux. CO2 is fertilizing plant life on the earth. And satellite data confirms this: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer... Since plant life is thriving, so too will overall animal life. Although extinction will continue to occur just as it always has throughout the history of the planet.
• jhedwards 7y ago
  > Present-day China essentially has no ethics Source? I lived in China and didn't ever feel like I was in a place without ethics. Different ethics, sure, but it really looks to me like you simply don't know or understand China. The Great Leap Forward had nothing to do with routing out values, it was about hyper-fast industrialization, and it failed. There are real problems with modern China, and, separately, with the CCP, for example a lack of separation of powers and a lack of rule of law. But your statements look much more like fear of the other and demonization of what you don't understand that well reasoned arguments. If you live in China, you'll experience some things that are much better than they are in western countries. I'm not saying there's any comparison really, but the fact is that the reality is far more complex than you're making it out to be.
  • markus_zhang 7y ago
    I mean, people can believe in what they believe in, right? And there are plenty of articles from the media.
  • danbolt 7y ago
    That’s interesting to hear. Not trying to troll, but I’d love to hear about what you have found to be better about it.
    • jhedwards 7y ago
      I would say the biggest thing is the emphasis on public works. Wherever I went I was awed by the extent of things that were built just for the public. In the city where I lived there they built a new fancy bridge[0], and a massive park with an island and an art center[1], all for public use, and the city hosts massive public celebrations in these kinds of parks with extensive art installations, music performances etc. The quality of the high speed rail system barely needs mention, and while the hospital system has some pretty glaring faults the cost of care was low and it was easy and affordable to get medical care. Think of this: when I got an X-ray in China I payed upfront and the radiologist _gave me the x-ray_ so I could bring it to more than one doctor if I wanted a second opinion. The transparency there was refreshing. Again, there are plenty of brutal negatives, but I just want to show that there are some good things that don't get press. [0] https://www.treehugger.com/infrastructure/lucky-knot-bridge-spectacular-pedestrian-infrastructure.html https://www.treehugger.com/infrastructure/lucky-knot-bridge-... [1] https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/03/zaha-hadid-architects-changsha-meixihu-jnternational-culture-art-centre/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/03/zaha-hadid-architects-chan...
• deleted 7y ago
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• jtms 7y ago
  Yes.
• orthecreedence 7y ago
  > US has some founding morals and principles they do not forget. Excuse my french, but what the fuck are you talking about? How about imprisoning and torturing US citizens without due process in the name of a nebulous war that only gets worse the more we fight it? What about all the puppet governments we've set up so that our corporate overlords can make a quick buck at the expense of some country who's resources we want to plunder? The US is an empire. Not based on governmental control, but based on financial control. The difference between surveillance in the US and surveillance in China is that we've managed to keep our surveillance largely in the private sector; but that doesn't mean 1984 doesn't already exist here! In fact, you carry 1984 with you in your pocket everywhere you go! I'm not saying I'd rather live in China than the US, but putting the US on some high moral pedestal is extremely ignorant of all the terrible things we've done as a country.
  • jumelles 7y ago
    The key here is that the executive branch of the US government doesn't get to do these things in a vacuum - both Congress and the Supreme Court temper its power, and though elections in the US are far from perfect they are still free.
    • orthecreedence 7y ago
      Elections are free, but the influence money has on our government after elections is where the problem lies. And even the "free elections" portion is being eroded since Citizens United. I'm not saying China is better, but the fraction of control the average US citizen can exercise over the government in the defined political process is much, much smaller than `1 / 330,000,000`...
      • whatitdobooboo 7y ago
        Federal elections are not the only things that matter - state and local decisions have an impact. Obviously not perfect - even with the money affecting government we have the ABILITY to change that over some time period, and lobbying in some places can help. I am unsure about what exactly you are complaining about.
• throwaway77976 7y ago
  > the US has some founding morals and principles they do not forget. It took the US around 200 years to fully live up to those founding morals and principles. The PRC is a relatively young country. Only 70 years as of today. Give them a hundred more years and perhaps it’ll change drastically.
  • yellowapple 7y ago
    I think the point is that the PRC wasn't actually founded on those same morals, but rather on ones of "we know what's best for the proletariat and anyone who disagrees must cease to exist". With a handful of exceptions (most notably: McCarthyism), the US has always had a very different attitude when it comes to political dissent. Case in point: the freedom to openly criticize or even outright mock/ridicule a politician is demonstrably far stronger in the US - and historically has always been - than it is or has ever been in the PRC.
    • deleted 7y ago
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• atomi 7y ago
  China is what you get when you have a one party system. The country lives and dies for the party. Individual freedom is suppressed. Everyone must tow the party line. China is most certainly a concern for those of us that love freedom.
• thegranderson 7y ago
  Point #2 actually follows from Point #1. Hayek makes this argument very thoroughly in The Road to Serfdom: Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done. This quote is from the condensed edition, because my paper copy is at home: https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-condensed-edition/#part-6 https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-condensed-edit...
  • carapace 7y ago
    During the depths of the Cultural Revolution there were incidents of cannibalism committed not out of hunger but out of a desire to prove unquestionable loyalty to the cadre.
• no_opinions 7y ago
  It may be helpful to differentiate Chinese people and society from its government. I view Chinese people individually, and on the whole, as very humanistic. The real question is what would China look like if its system represented the sentiment of its people? I think they like private property, inheritance not being taxed, and in general focusing on their own lives without interruption. Like anywhere else, many Chinese people enjoy civil engagement. If China broke up into multiple countries and had a union to reduce redundancy/inefficiencies in common areas, that'd be a huge improvement. This also preserves Chinese culture/customs on a more granular basis.
  • carapace 7y ago
    > It may be helpful to differentiate Chinese people and society from its government. Not to mention some 50M+ Chinese that don't live in China. > Overseas Chinese (traditional Chinese: 海外華人/海外中國人; simplified Chinese: 海外华人/海外中国人; pinyin: Hǎiwài Huárén/Hǎiwài Zhōngguórén) are people of ethnic Chinese birth or descent who reside outside the territories of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Although a vast majority are Han Chinese, the group represents virtually all ethnic groups in China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese Chinese culture is much bigger, older, and grander than the CCP.
• dillondoyle 7y ago
  No not alarmist. I'm with you and I strongly believe US should undo Trump so we can rebuild an international coalition of 'Democracy' to confront China, unified together, with much stronger action (backstopped with force if needed).
• dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. This is not at all what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html