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as a Chinese raised in China myself, this happens pretty regularly since years ago. I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent futur

as a Chinese raised in China myself, this happens pretty regularly since years ago. I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. China has too much to lose right now.

yumraj 5y ago
> I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  Ironically, I think the above statement is irrational. Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational. There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China, despite all the negative press, has done plenty of rational things in order to get toe to toe with the US as both a military and economic rival. I think the negative connotation associated with the word dictator paints anyone labeled with it in a biased light. Not saying anything bad or good about pooh bear in general. Whatever that man is, him being a dictator is not a causal origin of his current character.
  - baq 5y ago
    dictators are blind. a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship. decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside. of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      >a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship. Singapore is the first one that comes to mind. See: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship Additionally monarchies are essentially old forms of dictatorship with slightly different customs and titles. It's one and the same and plenty of good kingdoms exist. I have PLENTY of examples: The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt; The Byzantine Emperors; The Habsburg Monarchy in its various incarnations; The Capetian Kings of France; The Tsars; The Tang, Ming and Qing - my three favorite Chinese dynasties; The Incas. If you’re looking for something more present-day, I’d look into Bhutan, Lichtenstein and Monaco. Tibet it also an example. A little iffy this one, it's actually not benevolent but the West has definitely painted them as such to use as propaganda against China. Chinas actions against Tibet were quite horrific and wrong but even still... Tibet was not an example of a benevolent dictatorship... more of an example how a dictatorship can be PERCIEVED as benevolent and how your perceptions can be easily influenced. Tibet and China is an example of evil acting on evil to simplify the situation, but again I want to emphasize that the actual reality is not so black and white. You may also want to look into the term enlightened absolutism. Also China is an example of a benevolent dictatorship despite all the bad things they've done (TBH China is more of a mixed bag, and by mixed bag I mean both benevolent and self interested at the same time... but then again so is the US). You cannot deny that the rise of China has been unprecedented. The amount of people lifted out of poverty at such a velocity has never been seen before in the history of human civilization. That is benevolence. While of course what is happening in Xinjiang is not benevolence; blinding yourself to the good because of the bad is irrational. You must acknowledge both.
      - baq 5y ago
        Singapore, maybe. China, please. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps can't be bothered to look for atrocities they've committed before 2010... US has its share of bad stuff, too, but I never said they're benevolent. They're a democracy, which means the winner of a beauty contest is in power instead of somebody who took forcefully or has been gifted it. No good options here, but at least in the contest somebody actually wins.
  - bastardoperator 5y ago
    History is pretty clear, go check it out. Nobody wants to be ruled by a single individual that operates with impunity.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      - bastardoperator 5y ago
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      >You like to argue, but no one seems to agree with you. I'm not offended I do like to argue. A better way to put it, is I like to talk to people and convince people on a viewpoint I truly believe in while at the same time I'm open to learning as well. Whether someone agrees with me or not doesn't correlate with whether I'm right. That is the point. And I am right and you are wrong. You view international politics from the microcosm of US news. The entire population of Asia which outnumbers the US population by a huge number has a more nuanced and complicated view of the situation. Dismissing China as evil or putin as crazy is an oversimplification. Think bigger.
      - bastardoperator 5y ago
        The fact that you asked such a silly question about dictators and than refuse to learn from any of the multiple answers shows that you are not open to honest or intellectual debate. You care more about being "right" which is why you deleted your original comment and have been stuck replying to people for almost a day while the rest of us have moved on. I think you're wrong, I think you're angry, I think you're arguing in bad faith, and I believe multiple people/instances have been provided and you have yet to prove anything other than insolence when it comes to being "right". Honestly, I don't even think you know what you're arguing anymore because you're all over the place. I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed? The original question is what makes dictators more irrational. If you can't understand the many answers you recieved, that is your problem, not mine. I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    > Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? People, including leaders, are influenced by those around them. A sane leader has advisors, which they trust to provide rational arguments, which sometimes may differ from their own. A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions. So, there is no one to provide a counter argument to the dictator's own viewpoints and makes them believe in their supreme power. This is what makes them dangerous and act irrationally. Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      >A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions You say this asa if it's axiomatically true. It's not. This can happen. But it can also not happen. >Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends. In another thread, I have cited multiple historical and modern examples of where what you described did not happen. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281
  - drdaeman 5y ago
    > Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Lack of constructive feedback paired with that all your thoughts including irrational ones are amplified through the echo chamber. It's easy to get caught up with weird ideas (and the more power you have the weirder it might get because you have to solve more complex problems and have much more vast capabilities). If you don't have external feedback you need to be much more resilient to irrationality than under normal circumstances.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      I agree that this can happen. But the opposite can also happen. There is no hard rule that says what you describe is the exact case for every centralized power. In fact there are multitudes of successful "dictatorships" throughout history. I cite many in another reply in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281
actuator 5y ago
But China is too much coupled with the western economy to even sanction effectively. I think CCP must be watching this to see the cost and benefits Russia gets for invading Ukraine, which would definitely influence their decision even more than Afghanistan would have. If the cost for Russia is too low, then they wouldn't be risking much.
- egwor 5y ago
  Russia’s economy is interesting. Russian debt is 14%. It isn’t like the UK which requires external input. Their availability cash and balance sheet is quite vast. This limits the immediate impact of sanctions?
- heurist 5y ago
  China does not want to get involved in major conflicts. They will be opportunistic if/when they have a chance to take power, but they are not as risk tolerant as Putin. Only since 2016 or so have they started to come out of their shell to take advantage of relative American weaknesses.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  It's not the matter of sanctions. Any conflict disrupts China's very own supply chains, the economic fallout would be considerable.
- newuser94303 5y ago
  Militarily attacking Taiwan would destroy the chip factories. China waiting 100 years to get HK back. They will wait for Taiwan. Slow economic warfare and they get it all without messy bullets.
  - actuator 5y ago
    It might but it also gives Xi something that will immortalise him like Mao. CCP didn't have the military might to fight the British Empire and by the time they could think about fighting UK for Hong Kong, the lease was about to get over and UK knew it might be difficult to get ally support to keep Hong Kong with them.
CountSessine 5y ago
I think they'll be watching what happens in Ukraine very carefully. Then they'll be calibrating their predictions about what would happen if they invaded Taiwan with Russia's experience in Ukraine.
- chongli 5y ago
  I doubt the TSMC fabs would survive a PLA invasion of Taiwan. If nothing else, the CIA would probably blow them up during the attack.
  - tomatotomato37 5y ago
    Any Taiwan invasion would be spearheaded by surgical strikes against those fabs via some type of special forces. Whether those forces would be able to successfully secure the fabs before they get blown or not is anyone's guess, but China isn't stupid enough to think this is something they can just throw their standard troops at.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    That's why China is trying to build out domestic chipmaking tech. They're fine burning the rest of the world's supply chain down as long as it leaves them a monopoly.
  - CountSessine 5y ago
    I doubt they care about TSMC. The CCP understands (or at least was predicting back with Jiang and Hu) that eventually China will democratize. Taiwan is a democracy right now. Democratic countries almost never re-unite into a single country. I can only name one instance of this happening in the last 70 years, and in some ways East Germany wasn't really a democracy yet. The CCP knows that Taiwanese reunification will never really happen peacefully. Leaders will talk about it, they'll negotiate a bit, but then it won't happen because the status-quo is always more attractive. They know that their only chance at national reunification is now or in the next 10 years or so. It's now or never. It has to happen by force or it will never happen. If China swallows Taiwan and then democratizes, that can be managed - a restive province can be placated and bought-off. But if China democratizes before reunification, then Taiwan is separate forever.
atlantas 5y ago
Wasn't that what people were saying about Russia's aggression too? Yet here we are.
- vkou 5y ago
  It's not yet clear whether or not this war will end like the one with Georgia, or with a worse outcome.
- heurist 5y ago
  We've been watching Russia prepare for major war for more than a decade. Anyone who said they wouldn't be willing to enter this war was deluding themselves. It was a matter of when, not if Russia would embark on this path.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
if I may, "recent future" implies some time travel to make sense, you might instead say immediate or forseeable future
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  You wollen haven be a temporal grammar enthusiast, I see.
olliej 5y ago
The western world's economy is dependent on china - any sanction immediately hurts the local economy. That's why every country is happy to fund the Chinese government's genocide.
allisdust 5y ago
Has China ever sent their army into another country post their independence ?
- swagasaurus-rex 5y ago
  Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_Peo... North Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
  - zabzonk 5y ago
    Also, Mongolia.
    - sudopluto 5y ago
      and India
- zabzonk 5y ago
  Independence from whom?
- Rexxar 5y ago
  Depends if you consider Tibet as a country or not.
robbedpeter 5y ago
You can't assume dictators are rational. Xi Jinping thinks he is singularly entitled to run the lives of billions of human beings.
deltaonefour 5y ago
Yeah Chinese people place commerce over patriotism first. It's just the general attitude we have... unlikely Pooh bear will conduct an attack. We should only be worried about an attack if the the effects on commerce and military retaliation becomes negligible. That's when China will strike.

yumraj 5y ago

> I don’t think Winnie the Pooh has big balls to attack Taiwan in recent future. Not disagreeing with you, but I think people generally incorrectly assume that a dictator with absolute power thinks and acts rationally.

deltaonefour 5y ago
Ironically, I think the above statement is irrational. Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Absolute power has no direct causal bearing on human intelligence. It does not make you more irrational or more rational. There are plenty of examples of good kings, bad kings, good emperors and bad emperors throughout history both for ancient china and plenty of other civilizations. Modern China, despite all the negative press, has done plenty of rational things in order to get toe to toe with the US as both a military and economic rival. I think the negative connotation associated with the word dictator paints anyone labeled with it in a biased light. Not saying anything bad or good about pooh bear in general. Whatever that man is, him being a dictator is not a causal origin of his current character.
- baq 5y ago
  dictators are blind. a single person does not have the mental nor technological capacity to run everything. they must delegate. the way dictarships work is the dictator's subordinates, friends, whatever, must live in constant fear of each other, so they are incentivized to lie (or at least omit truths) to the dictator. a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship. decisions based on falsehoods may look irrational from the outside. of course, putin may very well be getting plain crazy. certainly no shortage of normal civilian russians admit it off the record.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    >a benevolent dictatorship doesn't exist, because no benevolent person would survive the process of getting dictatorship. Singapore is the first one that comes to mind. See: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Benevolent_dictatorship Additionally monarchies are essentially old forms of dictatorship with slightly different customs and titles. It's one and the same and plenty of good kingdoms exist. I have PLENTY of examples: The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt; The Byzantine Emperors; The Habsburg Monarchy in its various incarnations; The Capetian Kings of France; The Tsars; The Tang, Ming and Qing - my three favorite Chinese dynasties; The Incas. If you’re looking for something more present-day, I’d look into Bhutan, Lichtenstein and Monaco. Tibet it also an example. A little iffy this one, it's actually not benevolent but the West has definitely painted them as such to use as propaganda against China. Chinas actions against Tibet were quite horrific and wrong but even still... Tibet was not an example of a benevolent dictatorship... more of an example how a dictatorship can be PERCIEVED as benevolent and how your perceptions can be easily influenced. Tibet and China is an example of evil acting on evil to simplify the situation, but again I want to emphasize that the actual reality is not so black and white. You may also want to look into the term enlightened absolutism. Also China is an example of a benevolent dictatorship despite all the bad things they've done (TBH China is more of a mixed bag, and by mixed bag I mean both benevolent and self interested at the same time... but then again so is the US). You cannot deny that the rise of China has been unprecedented. The amount of people lifted out of poverty at such a velocity has never been seen before in the history of human civilization. That is benevolence. While of course what is happening in Xinjiang is not benevolence; blinding yourself to the good because of the bad is irrational. You must acknowledge both.
    - baq 5y ago
      Singapore, maybe. China, please. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps can't be bothered to look for atrocities they've committed before 2010... US has its share of bad stuff, too, but I never said they're benevolent. They're a democracy, which means the winner of a beauty contest is in power instead of somebody who took forcefully or has been gifted it. No good options here, but at least in the contest somebody actually wins.
- bastardoperator 5y ago
  History is pretty clear, go check it out. Nobody wants to be ruled by a single individual that operates with impunity.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    - bastardoperator 5y ago
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    >You like to argue, but no one seems to agree with you. I'm not offended I do like to argue. A better way to put it, is I like to talk to people and convince people on a viewpoint I truly believe in while at the same time I'm open to learning as well. Whether someone agrees with me or not doesn't correlate with whether I'm right. That is the point. And I am right and you are wrong. You view international politics from the microcosm of US news. The entire population of Asia which outnumbers the US population by a huge number has a more nuanced and complicated view of the situation. Dismissing China as evil or putin as crazy is an oversimplification. Think bigger.
    - bastardoperator 5y ago
      The fact that you asked such a silly question about dictators and than refuse to learn from any of the multiple answers shows that you are not open to honest or intellectual debate. You care more about being "right" which is why you deleted your original comment and have been stuck replying to people for almost a day while the rest of us have moved on. I think you're wrong, I think you're angry, I think you're arguing in bad faith, and I believe multiple people/instances have been provided and you have yet to prove anything other than insolence when it comes to being "right". Honestly, I don't even think you know what you're arguing anymore because you're all over the place. I never called China evil or Putin crazy so why are you putting words in my mouth that I never claimed? The original question is what makes dictators more irrational. If you can't understand the many answers you recieved, that is your problem, not mine. I'm going to bid you a farewell, have a wonderful day.
- yumraj 5y ago
  > Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? People, including leaders, are influenced by those around them. A sane leader has advisors, which they trust to provide rational arguments, which sometimes may differ from their own. A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions. So, there is no one to provide a counter argument to the dictator's own viewpoints and makes them believe in their supreme power. This is what makes them dangerous and act irrationally. Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    >A dictator on the other hand is only surrounded by yes-men since anyone else would be thrown to the lions You say this asa if it's axiomatically true. It's not. This can happen. But it can also not happen. >Pick any dictator/supreme leader and you'll see the trends. In another thread, I have cited multiple historical and modern examples of where what you described did not happen. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281
- drdaeman 5y ago
  > Why does being a dictator automatically make you more irrational? Lack of constructive feedback paired with that all your thoughts including irrational ones are amplified through the echo chamber. It's easy to get caught up with weird ideas (and the more power you have the weirder it might get because you have to solve more complex problems and have much more vast capabilities). If you don't have external feedback you need to be much more resilient to irrationality than under normal circumstances.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    I agree that this can happen. But the opposite can also happen. There is no hard rule that says what you describe is the exact case for every centralized power. In fact there are multitudes of successful "dictatorships" throughout history. I cite many in another reply in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459281

actuator 5y ago

But China is too much coupled with the western economy to even sanction effectively. I think CCP must be watching this to see the cost and benefits Russia gets for invading Ukraine, which would definitely influence their decision even more than Afghanistan would have. If the cost for Russia is too low, then they wouldn't be risking much.

egwor 5y ago
Russia’s economy is interesting. Russian debt is 14%. It isn’t like the UK which requires external input. Their availability cash and balance sheet is quite vast. This limits the immediate impact of sanctions?
heurist 5y ago
China does not want to get involved in major conflicts. They will be opportunistic if/when they have a chance to take power, but they are not as risk tolerant as Putin. Only since 2016 or so have they started to come out of their shell to take advantage of relative American weaknesses.
Apocryphon 5y ago
It's not the matter of sanctions. Any conflict disrupts China's very own supply chains, the economic fallout would be considerable.
newuser94303 5y ago
Militarily attacking Taiwan would destroy the chip factories. China waiting 100 years to get HK back. They will wait for Taiwan. Slow economic warfare and they get it all without messy bullets.
- actuator 5y ago
  It might but it also gives Xi something that will immortalise him like Mao. CCP didn't have the military might to fight the British Empire and by the time they could think about fighting UK for Hong Kong, the lease was about to get over and UK knew it might be difficult to get ally support to keep Hong Kong with them.

CountSessine 5y ago

I think they'll be watching what happens in Ukraine very carefully. Then they'll be calibrating their predictions about what would happen if they invaded Taiwan with Russia's experience in Ukraine.

chongli 5y ago
I doubt the TSMC fabs would survive a PLA invasion of Taiwan. If nothing else, the CIA would probably blow them up during the attack.
- tomatotomato37 5y ago
  Any Taiwan invasion would be spearheaded by surgical strikes against those fabs via some type of special forces. Whether those forces would be able to successfully secure the fabs before they get blown or not is anyone's guess, but China isn't stupid enough to think this is something they can just throw their standard troops at.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  That's why China is trying to build out domestic chipmaking tech. They're fine burning the rest of the world's supply chain down as long as it leaves them a monopoly.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  I doubt they care about TSMC. The CCP understands (or at least was predicting back with Jiang and Hu) that eventually China will democratize. Taiwan is a democracy right now. Democratic countries almost never re-unite into a single country. I can only name one instance of this happening in the last 70 years, and in some ways East Germany wasn't really a democracy yet. The CCP knows that Taiwanese reunification will never really happen peacefully. Leaders will talk about it, they'll negotiate a bit, but then it won't happen because the status-quo is always more attractive. They know that their only chance at national reunification is now or in the next 10 years or so. It's now or never. It has to happen by force or it will never happen. If China swallows Taiwan and then democratizes, that can be managed - a restive province can be placated and bought-off. But if China democratizes before reunification, then Taiwan is separate forever.

atlantas 5y ago

Wasn't that what people were saying about Russia's aggression too? Yet here we are.

vkou 5y ago
It's not yet clear whether or not this war will end like the one with Georgia, or with a worse outcome.
heurist 5y ago
We've been watching Russia prepare for major war for more than a decade. Anyone who said they wouldn't be willing to enter this war was deluding themselves. It was a matter of when, not if Russia would embark on this path.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

if I may, "recent future" implies some time travel to make sense, you might instead say immediate or forseeable future

robbedpeter 5y ago
You wollen haven be a temporal grammar enthusiast, I see.

olliej 5y ago

The western world's economy is dependent on china - any sanction immediately hurts the local economy. That's why every country is happy to fund the Chinese government's genocide.

allisdust 5y ago

Has China ever sent their army into another country post their independence ?

swagasaurus-rex 5y ago
Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War Tibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Tibet_by_the_Peo... North Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
- zabzonk 5y ago
  Also, Mongolia.
  - sudopluto 5y ago
    and India
zabzonk 5y ago
Independence from whom?
Rexxar 5y ago
Depends if you consider Tibet as a country or not.

robbedpeter 5y ago

You can't assume dictators are rational. Xi Jinping thinks he is singularly entitled to run the lives of billions of human beings.

deltaonefour 5y ago

Yeah Chinese people place commerce over patriotism first. It's just the general attitude we have... unlikely Pooh bear will conduct an attack. We should only be worried about an attack if the the effects on commerce and military retaliation becomes negligible. That's when China will strike.