15 ms·

China on the Cusp of a 'Profound Transformation'

57 points by DocFeind 5y ago

chitowneats 5y ago
“The US has also launched biological warfare, cyber warfare and public opinion against China." Amazing they are still pushing the "COVID-19 originated in a U.S. lab" propaganda. Do they think anyone on Earth outside of China finds this plausible or is it purely for domestic consumption?
- eptcyka 5y ago
  They'll push whatever fits.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Propaganda doesnt have to be believed, even at home. Part of the message (we lie and you can't contradict us) is always useful.
- halestock 5y ago
  Very much the latter. Another comparable example is the accidental US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade[0] - almost no one in the US (or much of the rest of the world) even remembers this incident, but to this day China still treats it as an example of US imperialism/hostility. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    My (young, bald, very white) professor in college was in China when that happened. He got a call while in his hotel room from a friend telling him to stay inside, so naturally he ran outside to see what was going on. As soon as he got out the door and found out from a very large crowd of very angry people, he said he threw his hands up in the air and yelled "I'm Canadian!" and promptly returned to his room as quickly as he could. I always get a bit of a sad chuckle that we Americans tend to default to that whenever confronted abroad.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      I had a similar experience in Salzburg in the first few days after the first Iraq War started. Lots an anti-American banners, a few even hung on churches. Couldn't get a table at a restaurant anywhere, tipped off by my accent, I expect. Lots of ugly talk from the tour guide before he finally decided he didn't want to take money from Americans anymore and kicked me and my wife out of the tour group. Took my wife and my money back to Vienna, flew out, and never went to Austria again.
  - axguscbklp 5y ago
    To be fair, if China spent several weeks bombing a country that the US did not want it to bomb and, as part of that bombing, China bombed the US embassy there and then said that it had been an accident, I think that this incident would be well remembered in the US 20 years later and many people in the US would doubt whether it had really been an accident.
  - JackFr 5y ago
    I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but ... I can believe the bombing of the Chinese embassy was intentional. The story I have read: Approximately 1 month prior an F-117 stealth was shot down and the USAF did not attempt to further destroy the wreckage, considering that the technology would not be of any great advantage to Russia, However, when it became clear through intelligence, that sensitive bits of the wreckage had been sold to China, for whom it would be a great advantage there was a bit of flustered panic which resulted in the bombing of the Chinese embassy and the subsequent claim it was a mistake.
- ipnon 5y ago
  The power of official lies comes not from the people who accept the lie wholeheartedly, but from the people who knowingly suppress their instincts and perception in service of public harmony. Here, it doesn't matter how preposterous the proposition is, so long as everyone knows the authorized explanation and the consequences for claiming anything else.
- throwaway34241 5y ago
  > Do they think anyone on Earth outside of China finds this plausible or is it purely for domestic consumption? FWIW, I made an effort to get outside my bubble recently and talked to a right-leaning acquaintance, who as it turns out happened to be somewhat conspiracy-minded (which from what I gather isn't uncommon these days). They were into this theory. So the answer to (the first part of your question) is, surprisingly, yes. This conspiracy theory apparently has some traction in (at least some subset) of the US, although probably not the subset that visits HN regularly. For an explanation of why he believes this, he pointed me to a series of articles by a guy named Ron Unz. I won't link to his site here since it is a far-right site that contains a variety of objectionable (anti-Semitic etc) content, although at a glance mainly from other authors. Skimming it, it was actually more highbrow than I was expecting, drawing on books on US bioweapons programs during the Korean War (real programs, at least according to Wikipedia), and how, at the time, such secret programs weren't reported by the media and how easily the public dismissed their existence as simply foreign propaganda. Which is a fair enough point, I guess. I'm not saying I buy it (I'm doubtful I even have the motivation to go through a book-length series on the topic and do enough fact checking to measure how credible it is). But adding this historical context, it made people paranoid enough to consider such things seem a little less totally crazy than my initial impression of the matter before talking to them.
LatteLazy 5y ago
>our young people will lose their strong and masculine vibes Nothing says dying culture like "our boys aren't manly enough!"
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  To be fair, that’s a frequent complaint from the US Right, too.
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    That seems to be the point the commenter was trying to make.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      On the surface, standing alone, its not at all clear that that’s the intended implication (reading more of the posters comment history, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, though); it’s also the kind of thing the strident voices on the US Right with little self-awareness might say with a straight face about a Chinese official making that statement, though.
    - LatteLazy 5y ago
      Correct, so much for my subtlety
  - adventured 5y ago
    > To be fair, that’s a frequent complaint from the US Right, too. How is that being fair? In the US it's a meaningless opinion and doesn't represent the cultural beliefs of an all-powerful dictatorship that has ruled the nation for multiple generations. Coming from the CCP or its cultural proxies it's a de facto cultural dictate. A US conservative might think children shouldn't be playing video games for more than three hours per week, and that's largely an opinion without any consequential power behind it (no matter who holds the opinion). In China, if Xi or the CCP proclaims they think something is bad or XYZ should be, it's a specific threat/warning about what's going to happen, it's a roadmap of how they plan to forcibly mold the society.
ipnon 5y ago
China returning to the Cultural Revolution, or hard-line Maoism, bodes poorly for foreign entrepreneurs seeking to participate in the advanced manufacturing and hardware industries there, but also poorly for the citizens of PRC in general. Communist extremism is usually advantageous for the Communist party, and disastrous for everyone else.
- luckylion 5y ago
  It's usually not even advantageous for the communist party. They'll get much richer running a corrupt mostly-capitalist state than they would running a centrally planned communist state.
  - ipnon 5y ago
    Think of the most totalitarian and liberal times of the Soviet Union. The former is associated with the infallibility and seemingly permanent durability of the state, and the latter with Ronald Reagan and people dancing on the rubble of the Berlin Wall.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Except this has nothing to do with communism, which is an economic and political theory. This is just social conservatism being implememted in a totalitarian state, clouded in the language of a past communist uprising. Similarly, US conservatism is clouded in Christian language even when it has nothing to do with Christianity; Russian conservatism in a 'strong Russia' lingo eben when it's about Putin's enrichment, or western European conservatism clouded in social democracy language. All of these use old words and and a more or less mythical past to justify whatever they want to be the case. CCP is a party of old men shouting at clouds, with the difference that they happen to have the power to actually implement their ideas quite radically without much consultation.
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    How does this have nothing to do with communism? Li Guangman specifically calls out capitalists. What would a communist country think is the opposite of capitalism? Doesn't take a detective to know he means communism.
echelon 5y ago
Is anyone afraid this is going to lead to nuclear war? Or an engagement that destroys us? This feels much riskier than the Cold War. The mood of that time was one where school children practiced ducking under their desks in preparation for nuclear attack. China isn't a weak adversary, and they really hate us according to their propaganda and rhetoric. They have hypersonic nuclear weapons and could possibly pull off a first strike against our nuke sites. If they can also track our subs, maybe they'd try to disable us. Their navy and armament are rapidly approaching parity. With their economy, it'll likely surpass us. We aren't the manufacturing power house that won WWII and churned out naval ships on a weekly basis anymore. China is, and they have a ton of dry docks busy building right now. What's the game plan?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > Their navy and armament are rapidly approaching parity. With their economy, it'll likely surpass us. Their navy is approaching ours in terms of tonnage. But they're lacking in carriers at the moment. This means that their navy can work anywhere with good missile/air force support. But they lack the ability to force project outward. > What's the game plan? Aircraft Carriers and the F35. How can they find our ships at sea, if their drones get shot down? How can they prevent us from finding their ships, if we have superior stealth? If they can't see our ships, how can they attack, even with a hypersonic nuclear warhead? Aircraft carrier move at 35+ mph and turn on a dime. If it takes 10 minutes for a hypersonic nuclear warhead to be delivered to a location, the aircraft carrier is already 6-miles off target.
  - echelon 5y ago
    https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1431351847810392070?s=19 https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1431351847810392070?... https://twitter.com/RupprechtDeino/status/1410199656060133379?s=19 https://twitter.com/RupprechtDeino/status/141019965606013337...
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Yeah. They have an 80,000 ton carrier coming. We have 120,000 ton carriers and F35s. Does China have an airplane that can beat our airplane? Our Aircraft Carriers can hold something like 4 or 5 squadrons and do nearly simultaneous launch + landing exercises. How quickly can that hypothetical 30% smaller Chinese Aircraft Carrier launch and land aircraft? Are there any advanced air platforms or stealth platforms that can spy on US Navy positions? China will have 3 aircraft carriers by 2030, all under 100,000 tons. US will have 7 of 120,000 tons all equipped with F35s, each with a veteran crew that's been training on those systems since 2015 (15 years of experience). Can those 3-Chinese carriers even take on one of ours in a fight on the open sea?
president 5y ago
It was only a few years ago that I started digging deep and learning about China's dominance in almost every aspect of geopolitics (economy, military, supply chain, media influence, political influence, cultural influence, etc) and I wondered why the US seemingly did nothing to combat any of this. It was not too long ago when Xi promised Obama he wouldn't militarize islands in the South China Seas and then years later, bunkers and missile defenses started showing up in satellite imagery [1]. Then I learned that all of the world and US corporations, financial and political elite depended or were heavily invested in China. That was the moment I realized the US was dead and the next few decades of global dominance would belong to the Chinese. [1] https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/06/21/china-has-militarised-the-south-china-sea-and-got-away-with-it https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/06/21/china-has-militari...
- Koshkin 5y ago
  There's some truth to this. (Let's not forget that America played not a small role in the Soviet Union's rising as an industrial power 90 years ago.)
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> Then I learned that all of the world and US corporations, financial and political elite depended or were heavily invested in China. Yeah, the US essentially handed China a modern industrial economy. This was done by outsourcing production (viewed as menial labor) to lower cost countries and focusing on your "core business". The MBAs in the 90s actually believed it's possible to do that while limiting the suppliers technological capabilities. They were wrong. Even when it became more clear, they had to keep doing it because costs and competition meant death to companies that tried to reverse it. Then Trump came along with an IDGAF attitude and pointed out that we're getting "a raw deal". Not many in the business world disagreed, and now measures are being taken to undo it. It has to be undone at the national level so the playfield is even for everyone as it shifts. Biden has not reversed many Trump initiatives in this area but also doesn't talk about it because politics.
  - AtlasBarfed 5y ago
    Well, the elite made out like bandits. Could one argue the more recent wealth inequality of the last three decades can be tied to essentially outsourced/arbitraged near-slave-labor/globalization/"free trade". It was sold to the policymakers as good for America, and would moderate China. But it was probably always about corporations making money. So why did we hand them a modern economy? Because the rich would get richer. I think Xi is making a big mistake: the global elite will not like this. It's not like they can depose him, but ... well, look at Russia. Putin is rich and powerful, but it is a failed state essentially. China could easily turn into that. China had basically won the modern economy: modernize almost two billion people and use soft power to control the world. All they had to do is continue, but I guess CCP politics would eventually reward a totalitarian power hungry madman without any checks and balances.
lazlee 5y ago
"Tittytainment" Is that Maoist rhetoric? I'm adding that to my daily lexicon - see how often I can drop it into conversation today.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  It's a very well-crafted, memorable slam on western entertainment. It's great propaganda, but it's also not entirely wrong...
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap
magwa101 5y ago
Looks like the US just lost a competitor.
onecool 5y ago
“The US has also launched biological warfare, cyber warfare and public opinion against China.” This is quite some projection. China's role in the virus/biowarfare will never be affirmed with certainty due to their information suppression; however their cyber warfare and public opinion efforts are at full throttle. If you look at any major news website, YouTube, Reddit, Slashdot, Facebook, Twitter, etc, the paid "shills" and "useful idiots" touting pro-Chinese, anti-America propaganda are everywhere. If you don't think you see it, the common talking points repeated are: 1) Amerikkka is full of white supremacists - this is an effort to change public opinion and have people believe that everyone in America is racist and hates Chinese people. 2) Nothing is happening in Xinjiang. 3) COVID disinformation in the forms of 'it started in Fort Detrick', disparaging Pfizer/Moderna/vaccines, etc. 4) The Imperialist/Colonial America is responsible for all the bad things. 5) Without Capitalism, the world would be a perfect place. And many more
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Just like in China, how everyone who doesn't support their country is obviously a paid shill that needs to be silenced.
Koshkin 5y ago
History teaches us that things like that can be either a reaction to some growing internal tensions, or this is done in preparation for a war. (The latter, of course, would be to the huge detriment to China's economy, which, despite the burgeoning internal market, is deeply entangled with the international one.)
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > History teaches us that things like that can be either a reaction to some growing internal tensions, or this is done in preparation for a war. Its 100% always the former. Sometimes, preparing for and executing a war is also part of the reaction to internal tensions, though.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    At a minimum, if you have to do this to prepare for war, then your country had a fairly powerful faction that didn't want war, that you have to suppress before you can get there. Which in fact means that you have internal tensions.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    Hey see this guys, he wants your cookie, go fight him and don't mind me I will keep track of everyone's cookies.
akudha 5y ago
China also banned feminine-looking male celebrities What kind of insanity is this? This is beyond stupid
- gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
  This isn’t the communism I wanted!
- Zababa 5y ago
  It makes sense from their point of view. They think they are headed for troubled times, and thus want to promote traditional masculinity, which is at odds with feminine-looking male celebrities. They want their youth to have examples closer to Stakhanov than to kpop idols.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> What kind of insanity is this? This is beyond stupid That depends entirely on his goals. OTOH it's all over tiktok so my guess is that he views it not only as harmful to their "social order" whatever that is, but also as harmful to the west.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Marginalizing easily targeted minorities is page one of totalitarian playbooks.
jaqalopes 5y ago
I was living in Shanghai in 2018 when the Chinese National People’s Congress lifted the two-term limit for Chinese presidents, effectively making Xi Jinping "dictator for life." My feeling at that time was that this is a sign not of strength, but of profound weakness. If Xi was so unconfident in his legacy that he could not find a worthy successor in the usual amount of time, what did that say about him? And about China after Xi? In my 4.5 years in China (I left in Nov 2019) the country seemingly became more paranoid, with noticeable increases in internet censorship and street-level policing, as well as intensifying nationalist propaganda in everyday media. We all saw what happened in Hong Kong in the past couple years. We know what has been happening in Xinjiang for longer. China is clearly at war with the "enemies within," and this article gives me an extremely similar vibe. To my mind, this all adds up to weakness, not strength. The Xi regime is trying to forestall dissent, fragmentation, and collapse. Will they succeed? Maybe. But at what cost? The brain drain on China is continuous, the capital flight steady. A "second cultural revolution" may strengthen and perpetuate the CPC's grip on the country, but it ultimately weakens China, and is hardly a threat at all to other countries.
- xtracto 5y ago
  > If Xi was so unconfident in his legacy that he could not find a worthy successor in the usual amount of time, what did that say about him? And about China after Xi? It got me thinking: Here we have Angela Merkel, who was German Chancellor for 16 years in a democracy and is stepping down because she wants to do something else, vs Xi Jinping who has to maneuver to remain in power.
  - loukrazy 5y ago
    If there is no peaceful transfer of power then you are incentivized to never give up power
- yann2 5y ago
  Well its a large cattle herd. So the amount of flight and drainage required to weaken it would probably require a new continent to appear out of the sea to absorb it all. Its basically unknown how much damage they can take.

57 points by DocFeind 5y ago

“The US has also launched biological warfare, cyber warfare and public opinion against China." Amazing they are still pushing the "COVID-19 originated in a U.S. lab" propaganda. Do they think anyone on Earth outside of China finds this plausible or is it purely for domestic consumption?

eptcyka 5y ago
They'll push whatever fits.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Propaganda doesnt have to be believed, even at home. Part of the message (we lie and you can't contradict us) is always useful.
halestock 5y ago
Very much the latter. Another comparable example is the accidental US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade[0] - almost no one in the US (or much of the rest of the world) even remembers this incident, but to this day China still treats it as an example of US imperialism/hostility. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_C...
- zdragnar 5y ago
  My (young, bald, very white) professor in college was in China when that happened. He got a call while in his hotel room from a friend telling him to stay inside, so naturally he ran outside to see what was going on. As soon as he got out the door and found out from a very large crowd of very angry people, he said he threw his hands up in the air and yelled "I'm Canadian!" and promptly returned to his room as quickly as he could. I always get a bit of a sad chuckle that we Americans tend to default to that whenever confronted abroad.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    I had a similar experience in Salzburg in the first few days after the first Iraq War started. Lots an anti-American banners, a few even hung on churches. Couldn't get a table at a restaurant anywhere, tipped off by my accent, I expect. Lots of ugly talk from the tour guide before he finally decided he didn't want to take money from Americans anymore and kicked me and my wife out of the tour group. Took my wife and my money back to Vienna, flew out, and never went to Austria again.
- axguscbklp 5y ago
  To be fair, if China spent several weeks bombing a country that the US did not want it to bomb and, as part of that bombing, China bombed the US embassy there and then said that it had been an accident, I think that this incident would be well remembered in the US 20 years later and many people in the US would doubt whether it had really been an accident.
- JackFr 5y ago
  I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but ... I can believe the bombing of the Chinese embassy was intentional. The story I have read: Approximately 1 month prior an F-117 stealth was shot down and the USAF did not attempt to further destroy the wreckage, considering that the technology would not be of any great advantage to Russia, However, when it became clear through intelligence, that sensitive bits of the wreckage had been sold to China, for whom it would be a great advantage there was a bit of flustered panic which resulted in the bombing of the Chinese embassy and the subsequent claim it was a mistake.
ipnon 5y ago
The power of official lies comes not from the people who accept the lie wholeheartedly, but from the people who knowingly suppress their instincts and perception in service of public harmony. Here, it doesn't matter how preposterous the proposition is, so long as everyone knows the authorized explanation and the consequences for claiming anything else.
throwaway34241 5y ago
> Do they think anyone on Earth outside of China finds this plausible or is it purely for domestic consumption? FWIW, I made an effort to get outside my bubble recently and talked to a right-leaning acquaintance, who as it turns out happened to be somewhat conspiracy-minded (which from what I gather isn't uncommon these days). They were into this theory. So the answer to (the first part of your question) is, surprisingly, yes. This conspiracy theory apparently has some traction in (at least some subset) of the US, although probably not the subset that visits HN regularly. For an explanation of why he believes this, he pointed me to a series of articles by a guy named Ron Unz. I won't link to his site here since it is a far-right site that contains a variety of objectionable (anti-Semitic etc) content, although at a glance mainly from other authors. Skimming it, it was actually more highbrow than I was expecting, drawing on books on US bioweapons programs during the Korean War (real programs, at least according to Wikipedia), and how, at the time, such secret programs weren't reported by the media and how easily the public dismissed their existence as simply foreign propaganda. Which is a fair enough point, I guess. I'm not saying I buy it (I'm doubtful I even have the motivation to go through a book-length series on the topic and do enough fact checking to measure how credible it is). But adding this historical context, it made people paranoid enough to consider such things seem a little less totally crazy than my initial impression of the matter before talking to them.

LatteLazy 5y ago

>our young people will lose their strong and masculine vibes Nothing says dying culture like "our boys aren't manly enough!"

dragonwriter 5y ago
To be fair, that’s a frequent complaint from the US Right, too.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  That seems to be the point the commenter was trying to make.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    On the surface, standing alone, its not at all clear that that’s the intended implication (reading more of the posters comment history, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, though); it’s also the kind of thing the strident voices on the US Right with little self-awareness might say with a straight face about a Chinese official making that statement, though.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Correct, so much for my subtlety
- adventured 5y ago
  > To be fair, that’s a frequent complaint from the US Right, too. How is that being fair? In the US it's a meaningless opinion and doesn't represent the cultural beliefs of an all-powerful dictatorship that has ruled the nation for multiple generations. Coming from the CCP or its cultural proxies it's a de facto cultural dictate. A US conservative might think children shouldn't be playing video games for more than three hours per week, and that's largely an opinion without any consequential power behind it (no matter who holds the opinion). In China, if Xi or the CCP proclaims they think something is bad or XYZ should be, it's a specific threat/warning about what's going to happen, it's a roadmap of how they plan to forcibly mold the society.

ipnon 5y ago

China returning to the Cultural Revolution, or hard-line Maoism, bodes poorly for foreign entrepreneurs seeking to participate in the advanced manufacturing and hardware industries there, but also poorly for the citizens of PRC in general. Communist extremism is usually advantageous for the Communist party, and disastrous for everyone else.

luckylion 5y ago
It's usually not even advantageous for the communist party. They'll get much richer running a corrupt mostly-capitalist state than they would running a centrally planned communist state.
- ipnon 5y ago
  Think of the most totalitarian and liberal times of the Soviet Union. The former is associated with the infallibility and seemingly permanent durability of the state, and the latter with Ronald Reagan and people dancing on the rubble of the Berlin Wall.
estaseuropano 5y ago
Except this has nothing to do with communism, which is an economic and political theory. This is just social conservatism being implememted in a totalitarian state, clouded in the language of a past communist uprising. Similarly, US conservatism is clouded in Christian language even when it has nothing to do with Christianity; Russian conservatism in a 'strong Russia' lingo eben when it's about Putin's enrichment, or western European conservatism clouded in social democracy language. All of these use old words and and a more or less mythical past to justify whatever they want to be the case. CCP is a party of old men shouting at clouds, with the difference that they happen to have the power to actually implement their ideas quite radically without much consultation.
- merpnderp 5y ago
  How does this have nothing to do with communism? Li Guangman specifically calls out capitalists. What would a communist country think is the opposite of capitalism? Doesn't take a detective to know he means communism.

echelon 5y ago

Is anyone afraid this is going to lead to nuclear war? Or an engagement that destroys us? This feels much riskier than the Cold War. The mood of that time was one where school children practiced ducking under their desks in preparation for nuclear attack. China isn't a weak adversary, and they really hate us according to their propaganda and rhetoric. They have hypersonic nuclear weapons and could possibly pull off a first strike against our nuke sites. If they can also track our subs, maybe they'd try to disable us. Their navy and armament are rapidly approaching parity. With their economy, it'll likely surpass us. We aren't the manufacturing power house that won WWII and churned out naval ships on a weekly basis anymore. China is, and they have a ton of dry docks busy building right now. What's the game plan?

dragontamer 5y ago
> Their navy and armament are rapidly approaching parity. With their economy, it'll likely surpass us. Their navy is approaching ours in terms of tonnage. But they're lacking in carriers at the moment. This means that their navy can work anywhere with good missile/air force support. But they lack the ability to force project outward. > What's the game plan? Aircraft Carriers and the F35. How can they find our ships at sea, if their drones get shot down? How can they prevent us from finding their ships, if we have superior stealth? If they can't see our ships, how can they attack, even with a hypersonic nuclear warhead? Aircraft carrier move at 35+ mph and turn on a dime. If it takes 10 minutes for a hypersonic nuclear warhead to be delivered to a location, the aircraft carrier is already 6-miles off target.
- echelon 5y ago
  https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1431351847810392070?s=19 https://twitter.com/CovertShores/status/1431351847810392070?... https://twitter.com/RupprechtDeino/status/1410199656060133379?s=19 https://twitter.com/RupprechtDeino/status/141019965606013337...
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    Yeah. They have an 80,000 ton carrier coming. We have 120,000 ton carriers and F35s. Does China have an airplane that can beat our airplane? Our Aircraft Carriers can hold something like 4 or 5 squadrons and do nearly simultaneous launch + landing exercises. How quickly can that hypothetical 30% smaller Chinese Aircraft Carrier launch and land aircraft? Are there any advanced air platforms or stealth platforms that can spy on US Navy positions? China will have 3 aircraft carriers by 2030, all under 100,000 tons. US will have 7 of 120,000 tons all equipped with F35s, each with a veteran crew that's been training on those systems since 2015 (15 years of experience). Can those 3-Chinese carriers even take on one of ours in a fight on the open sea?

president 5y ago

It was only a few years ago that I started digging deep and learning about China's dominance in almost every aspect of geopolitics (economy, military, supply chain, media influence, political influence, cultural influence, etc) and I wondered why the US seemingly did nothing to combat any of this. It was not too long ago when Xi promised Obama he wouldn't militarize islands in the South China Seas and then years later, bunkers and missile defenses started showing up in satellite imagery [1]. Then I learned that all of the world and US corporations, financial and political elite depended or were heavily invested in China. That was the moment I realized the US was dead and the next few decades of global dominance would belong to the Chinese. [1] https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/06/21/china-has-militarised-the-south-china-sea-and-got-away-with-it https://www.economist.com/asia/2018/06/21/china-has-militari...

Koshkin 5y ago
There's some truth to this. (Let's not forget that America played not a small role in the Soviet Union's rising as an industrial power 90 years ago.)
phkahler 5y ago
>> Then I learned that all of the world and US corporations, financial and political elite depended or were heavily invested in China. Yeah, the US essentially handed China a modern industrial economy. This was done by outsourcing production (viewed as menial labor) to lower cost countries and focusing on your "core business". The MBAs in the 90s actually believed it's possible to do that while limiting the suppliers technological capabilities. They were wrong. Even when it became more clear, they had to keep doing it because costs and competition meant death to companies that tried to reverse it. Then Trump came along with an IDGAF attitude and pointed out that we're getting "a raw deal". Not many in the business world disagreed, and now measures are being taken to undo it. It has to be undone at the national level so the playfield is even for everyone as it shifts. Biden has not reversed many Trump initiatives in this area but also doesn't talk about it because politics.
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Well, the elite made out like bandits. Could one argue the more recent wealth inequality of the last three decades can be tied to essentially outsourced/arbitraged near-slave-labor/globalization/"free trade". It was sold to the policymakers as good for America, and would moderate China. But it was probably always about corporations making money. So why did we hand them a modern economy? Because the rich would get richer. I think Xi is making a big mistake: the global elite will not like this. It's not like they can depose him, but ... well, look at Russia. Putin is rich and powerful, but it is a failed state essentially. China could easily turn into that. China had basically won the modern economy: modernize almost two billion people and use soft power to control the world. All they had to do is continue, but I guess CCP politics would eventually reward a totalitarian power hungry madman without any checks and balances.

lazlee 5y ago

"Tittytainment" Is that Maoist rhetoric? I'm adding that to my daily lexicon - see how often I can drop it into conversation today.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
It's a very well-crafted, memorable slam on western entertainment. It's great propaganda, but it's also not entirely wrong...
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Global_Trap

magwa101 5y ago

Looks like the US just lost a competitor.

onecool 5y ago

“The US has also launched biological warfare, cyber warfare and public opinion against China.” This is quite some projection. China's role in the virus/biowarfare will never be affirmed with certainty due to their information suppression; however their cyber warfare and public opinion efforts are at full throttle. If you look at any major news website, YouTube, Reddit, Slashdot, Facebook, Twitter, etc, the paid "shills" and "useful idiots" touting pro-Chinese, anti-America propaganda are everywhere. If you don't think you see it, the common talking points repeated are: 1) Amerikkka is full of white supremacists - this is an effort to change public opinion and have people believe that everyone in America is racist and hates Chinese people. 2) Nothing is happening in Xinjiang. 3) COVID disinformation in the forms of 'it started in Fort Detrick', disparaging Pfizer/Moderna/vaccines, etc. 4) The Imperialist/Colonial America is responsible for all the bad things. 5) Without Capitalism, the world would be a perfect place. And many more

smoldesu 5y ago
Just like in China, how everyone who doesn't support their country is obviously a paid shill that needs to be silenced.

Koshkin 5y ago

History teaches us that things like that can be either a reaction to some growing internal tensions, or this is done in preparation for a war. (The latter, of course, would be to the huge detriment to China's economy, which, despite the burgeoning internal market, is deeply entangled with the international one.)

dragonwriter 5y ago
> History teaches us that things like that can be either a reaction to some growing internal tensions, or this is done in preparation for a war. Its 100% always the former. Sometimes, preparing for and executing a war is also part of the reaction to internal tensions, though.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  At a minimum, if you have to do this to prepare for war, then your country had a fairly powerful faction that didn't want war, that you have to suppress before you can get there. Which in fact means that you have internal tensions.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  Hey see this guys, he wants your cookie, go fight him and don't mind me I will keep track of everyone's cookies.

akudha 5y ago

China also banned feminine-looking male celebrities What kind of insanity is this? This is beyond stupid

gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
This isn’t the communism I wanted!
Zababa 5y ago
It makes sense from their point of view. They think they are headed for troubled times, and thus want to promote traditional masculinity, which is at odds with feminine-looking male celebrities. They want their youth to have examples closer to Stakhanov than to kpop idols.
phkahler 5y ago
>> What kind of insanity is this? This is beyond stupid That depends entirely on his goals. OTOH it's all over tiktok so my guess is that he views it not only as harmful to their "social order" whatever that is, but also as harmful to the west.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Marginalizing easily targeted minorities is page one of totalitarian playbooks.

jaqalopes 5y ago

I was living in Shanghai in 2018 when the Chinese National People’s Congress lifted the two-term limit for Chinese presidents, effectively making Xi Jinping "dictator for life." My feeling at that time was that this is a sign not of strength, but of profound weakness. If Xi was so unconfident in his legacy that he could not find a worthy successor in the usual amount of time, what did that say about him? And about China after Xi? In my 4.5 years in China (I left in Nov 2019) the country seemingly became more paranoid, with noticeable increases in internet censorship and street-level policing, as well as intensifying nationalist propaganda in everyday media. We all saw what happened in Hong Kong in the past couple years. We know what has been happening in Xinjiang for longer. China is clearly at war with the "enemies within," and this article gives me an extremely similar vibe. To my mind, this all adds up to weakness, not strength. The Xi regime is trying to forestall dissent, fragmentation, and collapse. Will they succeed? Maybe. But at what cost? The brain drain on China is continuous, the capital flight steady. A "second cultural revolution" may strengthen and perpetuate the CPC's grip on the country, but it ultimately weakens China, and is hardly a threat at all to other countries.

xtracto 5y ago
> If Xi was so unconfident in his legacy that he could not find a worthy successor in the usual amount of time, what did that say about him? And about China after Xi? It got me thinking: Here we have Angela Merkel, who was German Chancellor for 16 years in a democracy and is stepping down because she wants to do something else, vs Xi Jinping who has to maneuver to remain in power.
- loukrazy 5y ago
  If there is no peaceful transfer of power then you are incentivized to never give up power
yann2 5y ago
Well its a large cattle herd. So the amount of flight and drainage required to weaken it would probably require a new continent to appear out of the sea to absorb it all. Its basically unknown how much damage they can take.