7 ms·

China orders U.S. to shut Chengdu consulate, retaliating for Houston

35 points by aminozuur 6y ago

odiroot 6y ago
Chengdu consulate is a very peculiar place. It shows very well the schizophrenia of a communist state. You could walk past it and not even notice there's anything special about that place. Yes it has tall, well protected walls around it, but so do many schools in Chengdu (apparently kidnapping is/was a huge concern). The place also has guards around it, but so do many office complexes. There's even one or two armed policemen -- a normal view around any bigger transport hub as well. At least 3 years ago, when I went there, there was not a single US flag installed visible from the street. It's like CCP doesn't want (their own) people to see, "US is there". The giveaway for me was the private via consultancy/advisory offices on the other side of the street. They all had USA flags in their windows.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Bo Xilai's defecting protege fled there. Chengdu was also a hotbed of cultural revolution where a lot of party leaders (including close relatives some of current leaders) were "suicided." Other than that, Sichuan had a strong regional political culture, insular from on in the capital.
  - odiroot 6y ago
    I've also heard from the locals, Chengdu is (recently) the "San Francisco" of China. You could be quite flamboyant without repressions. It's also very liveable compared to other mega-cities I've been to.
peroporque 6y ago
Americans can be proud that they are the only country that actually stands up against tyrants like the CCP. Compare that to what we do here in Europe: not only don't we do anything after China took control of Hongkong. We finance Putin by building yet another gas pipeline. And we finance Erdogan via the "refugee pact".
- ackbar03 6y ago
  I'm going to ignore all the blatantly groundless anti China bias here and factually point out that control over Hong Kong was in fact taken over by the British after China lost the opium war, which was a war that was started because China didn't want to buy all the opium drugs that the British were selling to us, and that this loss is and has always been one of our greatest humiliations through history
  - uranusjr 6y ago
    Anyone is free to not buy anything people sell. But you can’t just dump the goods into the sea and besiege the store when you refuse, FYI.
    - ackbar03 6y ago
      I suppose the US's war on drugs should similarly be condemned then. All those poor drug lords in Mexico and them dealers are just trying to make a living
      - uranusjr 6y ago
        Whataboutism aside, your analogy is still very off the mark. The government has every right to confiscate products trafficked into their country. The British opium trade was operating under legal contracts until China unilaterally revoked the trade agreement.
        throwaway423342 6y ago
        This is a fucking joke. Legal your ass.
  - Santosh83 6y ago
    While HK is understandable, I wonder which war did China lose to India and cede Eastern Ladakh or Arunachal which China belligerently maintains are its territory? Unfortunately China's overall expansionism is not reflecting well even on its legitimate claims in certain areas...
shanghaikid 6y ago
Is hacker news a political news site?
- pixxel 6y ago
  Sadly yes.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    Why sadly? Political education is very important.
    - pixxel 6y ago
      I’m here for tech news and respite from politics. Can’t scan titles without seeing politics.
    - chomp 6y ago
      There’s a lot of websites on the internet that are happy to discuss politics. This one was created to have a narrow focus. From the guidelines: “ Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - non-entity 6y ago
        For better or worse, that has been mostly overridden by: > Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Through the community (made up of at least in great part, hackers) deciding that politics is interesting.
      - threatofrain 6y ago
        This is a privately owned property by an early-stage investment firm. Either it is a property of whim or it is a property of business, or perhaps a combination thereof. Also, politics is the negotiation of power. I'm not sure why people wouldn't want to discuss that, especially given the potency of tech to insert itself into democratic politics. People who aren't in tech are certainly using tech to discuss the intersection between tech in politics.
chvid 6y ago
Apparantly Chinese TV has live video streams of the embassy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9E09BekUH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9E09BekUH4 Presumably as a payback for the fire brigade showing up at the Houston embassy. To be honest. This is terrible. The US China-relations risk spiral out of control and idiotic unrestricted nationalism will rule the day.
- ummwhat 6y ago
  Its a well known dirty secret that consulates of all countries serve double duty as offices for foreign intelligence services. The two possibilities I see are either the US had intelligence of some particularly egregious use of this not-so-secret arrangement or the current administration has just taken an unthinkable sledgehammer to a serious diplomatic norm just to be "tough on china". The fact that biden is polling well in Texas and Trump's whole schtick in his ads is "Biden won't be hard on China", it seems likely to me that this whole thing is a reckless campaign stunt. While the Houston fire department did show up, they respected Chinese sovereignty. In other words they did what a fire Dept is supposed to do for embassy calls, and the calls were not unfounded. The only other case I know of a consulate burning everything was the Soviets at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.
  - chvid 6y ago
    Yes. This seems to be an escalation on all channels driven by internal US politics. My worry is that a Trump administration faced with loosing an election is willing to take too risky bets.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- baybal2 6y ago
  > To be honest. This is terrible. The US China-relations risk spiral out of control and idiotic unrestricted nationalism will rule the day. > Will ??? from my standpoint, it looks like it already does, and did for the last decade or so,
blackrock 6y ago
Where do we go next? Armed conflict against China? Nuclear warfare against China? America has 5000 nuclear ICBM missiles. China has 300 nuclear ICBM missiles of lesser quality and precision. Is America looking to exchange a few American cities, in order to destroy the entire Chinese civilization? What American cities do you want to sacrifice, in order to meet your political objectives?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Where do we go next? Some more empty gestures, then some more special commercial privileges from China for our President’s immediate family members, or maybe a political favor like a transparently fabricated stack of “evidence” against Joe Biden, then everything will suddenly be okay, probably. > America has 5000 nuclear ICBM missiles. That is high by 4,600.
- tlear 6y ago
  Most likely supporting other opponents of PRC. India just had a bunch of its soldiers murdered by a PRC attack. That is one. Japan is the PRC boogeyman whenever they need to whip the mob up. Taiwan, Vietnam etc PRC behaviour resulted in it being surrounded with enemies instead of friends. Last year US coordinated a deal together with Japan to have MHI help build indigenous modern submarines for Taiwan. Prototype looks suspiciously like Soryu class. Taiwan get half a dozen of those and their ambitions with Taiwan are finished. PRC has played hard ball for a long time. US finally starting to play by same rules, it’s about time.

35 points by aminozuur 6y ago

Chengdu consulate is a very peculiar place. It shows very well the schizophrenia of a communist state. You could walk past it and not even notice there's anything special about that place. Yes it has tall, well protected walls around it, but so do many schools in Chengdu (apparently kidnapping is/was a huge concern). The place also has guards around it, but so do many office complexes. There's even one or two armed policemen -- a normal view around any bigger transport hub as well. At least 3 years ago, when I went there, there was not a single US flag installed visible from the street. It's like CCP doesn't want (their own) people to see, "US is there". The giveaway for me was the private via consultancy/advisory offices on the other side of the street. They all had USA flags in their windows.

baybal2 6y ago
Bo Xilai's defecting protege fled there. Chengdu was also a hotbed of cultural revolution where a lot of party leaders (including close relatives some of current leaders) were "suicided." Other than that, Sichuan had a strong regional political culture, insular from on in the capital.
- odiroot 6y ago
  I've also heard from the locals, Chengdu is (recently) the "San Francisco" of China. You could be quite flamboyant without repressions. It's also very liveable compared to other mega-cities I've been to.

peroporque 6y ago

Americans can be proud that they are the only country that actually stands up against tyrants like the CCP. Compare that to what we do here in Europe: not only don't we do anything after China took control of Hongkong. We finance Putin by building yet another gas pipeline. And we finance Erdogan via the "refugee pact".

ackbar03 6y ago
I'm going to ignore all the blatantly groundless anti China bias here and factually point out that control over Hong Kong was in fact taken over by the British after China lost the opium war, which was a war that was started because China didn't want to buy all the opium drugs that the British were selling to us, and that this loss is and has always been one of our greatest humiliations through history
- uranusjr 6y ago
  Anyone is free to not buy anything people sell. But you can’t just dump the goods into the sea and besiege the store when you refuse, FYI.
  - ackbar03 6y ago
    I suppose the US's war on drugs should similarly be condemned then. All those poor drug lords in Mexico and them dealers are just trying to make a living
    - uranusjr 6y ago
      Whataboutism aside, your analogy is still very off the mark. The government has every right to confiscate products trafficked into their country. The British opium trade was operating under legal contracts until China unilaterally revoked the trade agreement.
      - throwaway423342 6y ago
        This is a fucking joke. Legal your ass.
- Santosh83 6y ago
  While HK is understandable, I wonder which war did China lose to India and cede Eastern Ladakh or Arunachal which China belligerently maintains are its territory? Unfortunately China's overall expansionism is not reflecting well even on its legitimate claims in certain areas...

shanghaikid 6y ago

Is hacker news a political news site?

pixxel 6y ago
Sadly yes.
- baybal2 6y ago
  Why sadly? Political education is very important.
  - pixxel 6y ago
    I’m here for tech news and respite from politics. Can’t scan titles without seeing politics.
  - chomp 6y ago
    There’s a lot of websites on the internet that are happy to discuss politics. This one was created to have a narrow focus. From the guidelines: “ Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - non-entity 6y ago
      For better or worse, that has been mostly overridden by: > Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Through the community (made up of at least in great part, hackers) deciding that politics is interesting.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      This is a privately owned property by an early-stage investment firm. Either it is a property of whim or it is a property of business, or perhaps a combination thereof. Also, politics is the negotiation of power. I'm not sure why people wouldn't want to discuss that, especially given the potency of tech to insert itself into democratic politics. People who aren't in tech are certainly using tech to discuss the intersection between tech in politics.

chvid 6y ago

Apparantly Chinese TV has live video streams of the embassy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9E09BekUH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9E09BekUH4 Presumably as a payback for the fire brigade showing up at the Houston embassy. To be honest. This is terrible. The US China-relations risk spiral out of control and idiotic unrestricted nationalism will rule the day.

ummwhat 6y ago
Its a well known dirty secret that consulates of all countries serve double duty as offices for foreign intelligence services. The two possibilities I see are either the US had intelligence of some particularly egregious use of this not-so-secret arrangement or the current administration has just taken an unthinkable sledgehammer to a serious diplomatic norm just to be "tough on china". The fact that biden is polling well in Texas and Trump's whole schtick in his ads is "Biden won't be hard on China", it seems likely to me that this whole thing is a reckless campaign stunt. While the Houston fire department did show up, they respected Chinese sovereignty. In other words they did what a fire Dept is supposed to do for embassy calls, and the calls were not unfounded. The only other case I know of a consulate burning everything was the Soviets at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.
- chvid 6y ago
  Yes. This seems to be an escalation on all channels driven by internal US politics. My worry is that a Trump administration faced with loosing an election is willing to take too risky bets.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
baybal2 6y ago
> To be honest. This is terrible. The US China-relations risk spiral out of control and idiotic unrestricted nationalism will rule the day. > Will ??? from my standpoint, it looks like it already does, and did for the last decade or so,

blackrock 6y ago

Where do we go next? Armed conflict against China? Nuclear warfare against China? America has 5000 nuclear ICBM missiles. China has 300 nuclear ICBM missiles of lesser quality and precision. Is America looking to exchange a few American cities, in order to destroy the entire Chinese civilization? What American cities do you want to sacrifice, in order to meet your political objectives?

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Where do we go next? Some more empty gestures, then some more special commercial privileges from China for our President’s immediate family members, or maybe a political favor like a transparently fabricated stack of “evidence” against Joe Biden, then everything will suddenly be okay, probably. > America has 5000 nuclear ICBM missiles. That is high by 4,600.
tlear 6y ago
Most likely supporting other opponents of PRC. India just had a bunch of its soldiers murdered by a PRC attack. That is one. Japan is the PRC boogeyman whenever they need to whip the mob up. Taiwan, Vietnam etc PRC behaviour resulted in it being surrounded with enemies instead of friends. Last year US coordinated a deal together with Japan to have MHI help build indigenous modern submarines for Taiwan. Prototype looks suspiciously like Soryu class. Taiwan get half a dozen of those and their ambitions with Taiwan are finished. PRC has played hard ball for a long time. US finally starting to play by same rules, it’s about time.