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I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanction
by LatteLazy 6y ago
I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations...
- traveler01 6y agoThats what happens when you're a country with deep pockets apparently.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- delecti 6y agoThere's sadly a pretty long history of the international community ignoring atrocities as long as they're contained within a country. The answer to "why won't we recognize <genocide>?" is usually "because the victims were from the same country as the perpetrators".
- MaxHoppersGhost 6y agoWe let China get too big without modernizing/democratizing. Massive foreign policy failure by the western world. Now they appear too big to reign in and everyone (except maybe the US) is scared of them and just wants to play nice.
- Dumblydorr 6y agoWe "let" them get too big? They are an ancient society who have had millions of inhabitants for centuries. They were already big, huge in fact. In the wake of Mao, however, they have a one party communist system that exterminated it's intellectual and critical class decades ago. Hard to see what could've been done during the Cold War, we tried the domino theory which was a colossal failure in Korea and Vietnam and Laos.
- MaxHoppersGhost 6y agoWe let them get too big economically. We let them into the western world trading economy under the hope that they would normalize into a western-like democracy with liberal ideals. That has obviously failed.
- eunos 6y agoAs an Asian, this is a reason that I start to become disillusioned with "the world community". Their missionary zeal has not diminished. It just transformed from religion into political ideology. There are alternatives outside of so called "western-like democracy with liberal ideals".
- bjelkeman-again 6y agoIt becomes really inconvenient when you have outsourced so much of your manufacturing there. Who is going to make your stuff then? (Maybe something we should have thought of before this, but then China took a turn towards more authoritarian under the current CCP chairman.)
- incrudible 6y agoChina is now itself outsourcing to cheaper countries, because Chinese labor has become expensive. Supply chains become flexible when the incentives are there. I think the Trump tariffs were on the right track, but for the wrong reasons.
- insulanus 6y agoYes, the Trump tariffs show that there are one or two things that China will respond to. It seems unlikely that the US or the EU will want to pay the cost in the short term.
- Dumblydorr 6y agoThere is genocide going on against Muslims, and the US would typically denounce religious genocide. The current president seems more concerned with watching Fox and pardoning his friends than handling Muslim rights issues.
- selimthegrim 6y agoPompeo has raised the issue, even if it’s not out of delicacy to Muslims
- baybal2 6y ago> I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations... Why would world politicians take any actions against China when so many of them do have a finger in the honeypot themselves? Invalidate stock shares* of all companies who made untold billions on China, and you will see that a huge double digit of Western politicians will go broke overnight. The one sole reason the West was so eager to jump on the China train unlike any other broke harebrained communist country was because China went from the start to openly bribing Western elites. The reason why China is not Iraq now is that.
- nlitened 6y agoWhat would “invalidating stocks” even mean?
- baybal2 6y agoHere, invalidate stock shares
- nlitened 6y agoYeah, but what does it mean? To revoke ownership of the company from its owners? Who then gets to own the company and why? Or does it mean the company should cease to exist, and all employees should be fired immediately? We should deny honest people from getting their salaries?
- baybal2 6y agoTo declare their shares of having no more legal power than toilet paper.
- nlitened 6y agoBut owning shares mean owning a part of a company? Does that mean that when a company’s shares are invalidated, then the company is now worth zero, and anybody can buy it for a penny? Are the owners forced to sell everything for a penny, or they are allowed to choose, when to sell and at what price? Why would the price be different from current stock price?
- naruvimama 6y agoChina has reached it's Hiroshima moment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj_mEiMvPMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj_mEiMvPMI
- naruvimama 6y agoWhile the US earned its goodwill with the Marshall plan that lifted many nations from debris to wealth. China uses threats and censorship to get its way, post Covid or as Trump puts it China virus. No investigation or inspections have happened the whole year.
- adrr 6y agoAgainst the largest consumer/retail market in world? Not going to happen at the country level and risk reciprocal economic restrictions. Only way to get china to change is have people vote with their wallets and refuse to buy Chinese made stuff but at the end of the day people just don't care and just want cheap stuff. If you gave someone a choice between $100 IPhone made by slave child labor and $1000 IPhone that was made humane conditions at fair wages, i am willing to bet more than 75% of people take the $100 IPhone.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoThe $1000 iPhone is made with slave labor. There are Korean and Taiwanese phones that are not made with slave labor.
- alisonkisk 6y agoBut we're actually buying $1000 slave iPhones with Apple shareholders getting the workers' wages.
- powerapple 6y agoI will buy the phone made by slave child labour because the only reason they exist is because economy, if they make money, at least their next generation can live a better life. It is not likely that without a factory they will study and go to college like you would think. The alternative to a bad choice may be a worse choice, not a better choice.
- powerapple 6y agoI have to state a fact that there is no child labour in China. Were their child labour before? Maybe some. My uncle left home when he was 14 to work in a factory. 40-50 years ago. Nowadays, the earliest age you can find real jobs is probably 16. So no, you don't find a child labour made iPhone. But if there is child labour somewhere, you either find a not-worst-case solution or you get him out of there. And you have to think from his point of view, understand his circumstances.
- jeswin 6y agoThe problem is that Europe has no appetite for any sort of confrontation. Their leadership in peace and climate initiatives mask how little they're willing to do to address issues which have a potential body-bag cost. They have poured hundreds of billions of dollars every year into a dictatorship with no accountability and its military. And shifting all that industrial capacity out of Europe certainly made it look greener, with all the smoke out of sight. If China becomes militarily stronger and Xi's domestic position weakens, war will be his first resort. If Taiwan had to be defended, there will be very little help coming from Europe.
- LatteLazy 6y agoI've been pleased with how the EU has made progress with Iran. Maybe that plus brexit, Russia and refugees has been too much for them. We'll see I guess.
- throw_m239339 6y ago> I'm amazed the world isn't taking more action on China. Its quite sad really, 20 years ago, any one of the headlines from this year would have prompted sanctions and denunciations... I don't think so. Nothing happened with Tibet, or after the Tiananmen Square event AFAIK. 20 years ago, the people that signed all the trade deals with countries such as China claimed it would lead to improving democracy and human rights there, obviously, it didn't, People's Republic of China has never been more autocratic. Ethical and moral concerns should have been addressed when China joined the WTO in 2001, irregardless China's political structure. China got a very good deal, western industrials as well, but at what human cost? I wasn't interested in economy at the time, but I still remember clearly debates on talkshows between human rights advocates and people pushing trade deals and their arguments, it was a time where you could still publicly talk about the situation in Tibet. Today? Nobody would even dare.
- MarkSweep 6y agoYou mean the “People’s Republic of China”, right? The “Republic of China” is more commonly known as “Taiwan”.
- est 6y agoTaiwanese companies were mostly responsible for those forced labor supplly chains in E. and S.E. Asia.
- LatteLazy 6y agoTiananmen was at least met with lasting arms embargo, both from the EU and US... I think the expectation for many (myself included) was that as living standards rose, the Chinese people would demand democratic reform (rule of law, justice for all, some say in decisions and leadership). China (or rather the ccp) has successfully avoided that so far. Now its flexing that power and people like me, who expected natural change, are forced to re-evaluate. mea culpa
- quasse 6y ago> the republic of China has never been more autocratic This is a more nuanced issue than it might seem in some ways though. I have some first hand experience since many of my coworkers are native Chinese living in different parts of China. Trade has enabled the growth of a previously non-existent middle class in China and they have started to assert political power in ways not immediately apparent to Westerners. One example is the "Beijing smog" that everyone knows about. The Chinese middle class are becoming unwilling to tolerate the total environmental devastation that was the norm two decades ago. They have put a lot of pressure on the CCP to keep the air cleaner and as a result many dirty industries like iron casting have had a huge number of restrictions put on them in the last 5 years. I would consider this a direct result of the political willpower of the Chinese people. In my experience though, the reason things like the treatment of the Uyghurs or Tibetans have not changed is simply because the average Chinese person does not care or wish to rock the boat. Before you finger wag about that, consider the American treatment of South American migrants that has come into the spotlight in the last 4 years. I would say that the reason it has not changed has the same root cause. The average American does not care, or silently approves and thus there is not enough pressure on the ruling party to produce change.
- okprod 6y agoAre you also amazed the world didn't take action against the US under Trump?
- LatteLazy 6y agoNo. Trump has done basically nothing and hasn't managed to run a mini holocaust, crush democracy in one corner of his realm, launch a preventable global pandemic and engage another nuclear power in direct military conflict. For all his evil, he's not effective. Xi Jinping is what Trump dreamed of being...
- redis_mlc 6y agoTrump is well-respected internationally, and will be remembered as having the best foreign policy since the Marshall Plan in 1948. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan A lot of what Trump and Pompeo had to overcome was the treaty abandonment that peaked under Obama. Asia is arming itself to the teeth because Obama allowed China (Xi was actually personally involved) to steal the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Shoal If you're referring to NATO members underpaying their contributions to their own defence, that's on them. Of course they're whining about an increase from 1.5% of GDP to 2.0 - 3.0%. It's sad that I have to explain this to HN readers on a monthly basis. You literally don't know what you're talking about on this forum.