8 ms·

What about what they did in Hong Kong? They changed the rules once, what stops them from doing it again? History clearly means nothing.

FooBarWidget 4y ago
Deviations in agreements is not a thing exclusive to China. Agreements in international politics are made for a purpose. Perhaps to keep peace, or to protect some interest, etc. If the situation changes such that that purpose can no longer be served — especially if that purpose is an extremely important core interest — then any country will seek to deviate from agreed upon behavior. For example, the US clearly agreed on the One China Policy but they are now changing it. Because the US no longer values the original purpose that the One China Policy served. So the question "will China renegade on its agreement or not?" is best answered with another question: "What is China's core interest? What purpose does an agreement serve to China?" It is unfortunately here where big misreadings happen. Popular western understand of China says that China does things because they are "authoritarian", "expansionist", "power hungry", etc. But a true analysis of China's interest would show that one of China's core interests is territorial integrity, defined largely by the territory it had inherited from the Qing empire in 1911, and the Republic of China in 1949. China's policy on territorial integrity has not changed since 1949. We may not always agree with China's interests. Maybe they conflict with ours. But properly understanding those interests will at the end of the day surely yield better outcomes than misreading China with stereotypes.
- throw10920 4y ago
  > Deviations in agreements is not a thing exclusive to China. Yes, but merely looking at the agreement that China broke recently with the invasion of Hong Kong, a reasonable person would assume that there's a much higher risk of them breaking more agreements than another arbitrary country that hasn't been invading other countries recently. Said another way, most people currently will trust France to honor a pact more than they trust Russia. ...not that that somehow makes violating the agreement with and invading Hong Kong somehow morally excusable. China seems pretty similar to Russia right now - with an authoritarian dictator planning to use military force to invade nearby countries. You can even draw parallels between their mindsets - Putin wants to recreate the glory of the Soviet Union and views the old USSR countries as "his", just as Xi Jinping wants to recreate the glory of old China and views Hong Kong and Taiwan as his. > So the question "will China renegade on its agreement or not?" is best answered with another question: "What is China's core interest? What purpose does an agreement serve to China?" I don't see what purpose this statement has. It's clearly in China's core interest to be aggressive and expansionist and invade nearby countries and steal IP from other countries, but none of that is right, and none of that changes the fact that they're an aggressive enemy who pose a threat to the whole Asia region at least, if not the whole world.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    Invading Hong Kong? Are you equating Hong Kong to Ukraine? How does that equation exactly work, given that Hong Kong was Chinese territory in the 19th century and was taken away by the British by force for refusing to buy opium?
    - rnk 4y ago
      Ukraine and HK are very different of course. But the outcome is the same, people who were previously free were invaded, put off into prison for things like saying they publicly disagreed and wearing the wrong color shirt in Hong Kong.
  - indymike 4y ago
    The travesty in Hong Kong is that the people of Hong Kong had zero say in any of it.
- Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
  The key difference is that we're talking about a gang of insurgents here, who have been extraordinarily lucky in getting to grab most of the pie, and holding on to it for as long as they have. Most insurgents are lucky if they get a small slice, and still have to accept being treated as second-class citizens in international relations. The PRC having more than most others can only dream of, and still not being satisfied is absolutely being power-hungry and expansionist. And talking about inheriting territory, let's not forget that the Republic of China still very much exists.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  The US policy was more nuanced than you suggest. The US never agreed to One China, the US just said it wouldn't challenge it. This is the exact text of it in the 1972 Shanghai Communique. the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    I will agree that the One China Policy issue is more nuanced than that. But we should also recognize that the Sino-British Joint Declaration issue is more nuanced than "China broke an agreement"
- therealcamino 4y ago
  "For example, the US clearly agreed on the One China Policy but they are now changing it. Because the US no longer values the original purpose that the One China Policy served." If by that you mean the US agreed that Taiwan should be a part of the PRC, that's never been true. It was just a condition of establishing relations with China that the US officially pretend that Taiwan isn't an independent nation. But everyone understood that the actual belief and policy of the US was that Taiwan has a right to independence. There hasn't been any change there.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    No. One China means the acknowledgement that the mainland and Taiwan are part of the same country, but there may be disagreement to who the government is. Before the US recognized the PRC government, it recognized the ROC government aka the one in Taiwan, as being the sole legit government of all of China including Taiwan. So the US didn't officially support "Taiwan independence". After the US flipped to PRC, they opposed the PRC taking over Taiwan, but the "Taiwan independence" notion didn't exist in Taiwan at the time. The govt in Taiwan wanted to retake the mainland. The independence notion only came into existance relatively recently.
    - SenHeng 4y ago
      > The independence notion only came into existance relatively recently. ie. The original generation that considered themselves Chinese has mostly died off, and now the younger generation who consider themselves Taiwanese are slowly taking over.
      - rnk 4y ago
        Yes. Especially now that Taiwan is really a democratic country without it being tacitly controlled by the people and political parties left over from the early days (the KMT). And the destruction of the people of Hong Kong finishes the end of the reunification desire in Taiwan. Young people are naturally horrified about HK and reunification. It's only fools who think that the people in Taiwan want to be part of the "greater Chinese people's country" more than they want freedom.
- hueyluey 4y ago
  Not trying to nitpick, but as far as I know, Taiwan was occupied by Japan starting from 1895, so China didn't inherit it in 1911. I guess this shows how unfundamented is the current chinese territorial claim. Xinjiang was for most centuries an independent region or part of a different (usualy turkish) empire. Something similar happened with Tibet. It might make sense to include what's currently Mongolia into the chinese claim.
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    Well Taiwan was officially given back to China by the US after WW2 ended. So maybe not inherited from Qing, but definitely from ROC. Regarding Xinjiang, the Xinjiang claim is older than the US's claim on its own land so it cannot be more unfundamented than the US as a nation is.
    - mdp2021 4y ago
      The history of the USA and of Xinjiang do not seem to be easily comparable. A date for "claim" means little both in the historic context and in the context of what constitutes a Nation - a commonality of intents in a society of dwellers.
- rnk 4y ago
  The thing is that China defines the border territories around it as it wishes, and those definitions change over time to suit its current desires. So that turns out not to be an adequate description of why it behaves to protect its 'core interests'. Today the Chinese govt, aka Xi and the CCP seem to be working to become the most powerful country through trying to weaken democratic governments, along with this comes increasing threatening military actions. The world is in a dangerous 10 year period as China's power increases to a maximum, dictator Xi is in charge, and pressure will increase on them as their population starts to shrink along with an increasing retired population compared to the number of workers. This is all separate from my belief that China should be able to be free to make their own choices about their own country, they just can invade and destroy everyone else to get their own way. I feel great sadness for the Chinese people being subject to a horrible central government (yeah, they've also moved millions of people out of poverty and improved their lives, but they still ended up with a country that like the USSR now won't let people leave freely, holds foreign citizens hostile, and also records college lectures so they can see if profs talk about impure thoughts).
  - FooBarWidget 4y ago
    > The thing is that China defines the border territories around it as it wishes, and those definitions change over time to suit its current desires. This is false. All of today's claims existed back in 1949 when the PRC inherited claims from the ROC. In fact the PRC today claims fewer territories than 1949 because they've given up some territory as part of diplomatic deals.
Gentil 4y ago
Because TSMC still contributes to the manufacturing 90%+ of the semi conductors FOR the whole world. AFAIK, Samsung which is one of their competitor too uses TSMC. So touching Taiwan is an automatic trigger for the entire world. You saw what the pandemic did to the semi conductor industry. Now imagine if a war was happening there. The world could just stop. Literally. Like firesale in Die hard 4. But in universal scale. That was not the case with Hong Kong. And the world is not going to shut up and be silent if this happens. While the EU, US, India, Australia are all trying to change this semi conductor status quo by building their own manufacturing facilities, it is not easy as I understand it. Am guessing it would take at least 5-10 years to have full fledged production facility in the scale the world demands if this needs to be changed. That is if really wanna be Taiwan free with semi conductors. Which I doubt the world will do. But hey with M1 and RISC-V, there is a whole new future waiting for the semi conductor industry. So who knows what will happen?!
- Uehreka 4y ago
  The M1 chips are made entirely by TSMC, they reinforce the status quo, they don’t change it. RISC-V is still years from matching ARM performance or cost, and by the time it does, a lot of it will likely be getting manufactured by TSMC. TSMC is really good at making chips, and really good at learning how to make new kinds of chips, so any change will have to come from other fabs getting equally good.
  - Gentil 4y ago
    > The M1 chips are made entirely by TSMC, they reinforce the status quo, they don’t change it Yeah. But with the current geopolitical environment every country is thinking about this. But like I said, ONLY IF they have the motive. Which I also mentioned that the world won't have so as to completely take Taiwan out of the equation. > RISC-V is still years from matching ARM performance or cost, and by the time it does, a lot of it will likely be getting manufactured by TSMC. You are probably right. Also RISC-V is used as a support module with Nvidia cards already if I am not wrong. They just are not used as standalone processors. And with M1, I meant ARM in general. But RISC-V is very promising. Like I said, who knows about the future?! > TSMC is really good at making chips, and really good at learning how to make new kinds of chips, so any change will have to come from other fabs getting equally good. I don't think me or any country for that matter disapproves that. But with China as it's neighbor, it's just stupid for the world to think everything will be sunshines and butterflies. It's always a good idea to deter from putting everything in one basket.
powerapple 4y ago
What CCP did in Hong Kong is exactly they think necessary to stop the independence movement in Hong Kong. Same goes to Taiwan, it will lead to a war eventually.
yieldcrv 4y ago
You should think more about what China didn’t do in Macau, to understand China’s actions and motives better. Many people in Hong Kong grasp onto useless documents like the Sino-British Declaration because their actual constitution (the basic law) gave them no assurance to match promises. That constitution always gave the PRC ability to control any and everything there to suppress anything. The appointments always came from Beijing, and it inherits a system similar to City of London where 100% of the people’s vote and representatives can only be 50% of the legislative outcome. Its hopeless - for those deathly afraid of PRC life - and always has been, and China can wait out that “50 year thing” ever so nominally, in a way that doesnt match anything remotely close to what is often repeated in the west about what “should” happen. To me, having read the basic law and prc constitution, China didnt break its agreement, and anyone grasping at the Sino British Declaration is being disingenuous, ignorant, or really that desperate. Only thing to point at is Britain for giving up on negotiations, because they failed the people of Hong Kong back in the 90s and let the basic law be good enough. But again, look at Macau and why that area isn’t an issue in the minds of the west, its not the smaller population. Despite rule of law being kind of a burgeoning concept in the PRC (unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to the stuff they were already going to do), China is pretty predictable and operates within some easy to understand confines.
- rnk 4y ago
  More important than any sophistry or arguments about the nuances of the agreements around HK is that China has been crushing freedom in HK. That's the problem. Stop doing that. China won't stop because that's the way they remain in power. China can't use its usual excuse that "we brought millions out of poverty through our rule" in Hong Kong, because they were already pretty well off there. The HK economy is going backwards.
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, China is crushing freedoms in Hong Kong because people in Hong Kong were afraid of China crushing freedoms in Hong Kong. The unrest over the potential use of an extradition bill prompted China to clamp down on nearly everything Hong Kong residents held near and dear and show how powerless the people there are in this reality. It is also convenient to accelerate the "harmonization" of Hong Kong into the PRC system because many (depending on how you count) places in China are well to do now. They don't need Hong Kong's different system to be a bastion of economic progress, because its like 3% of the GDP now, compared to like 20% during handover.

FooBarWidget 4y ago

Deviations in agreements is not a thing exclusive to China. Agreements in international politics are made for a purpose. Perhaps to keep peace, or to protect some interest, etc. If the situation changes such that that purpose can no longer be served — especially if that purpose is an extremely important core interest — then any country will seek to deviate from agreed upon behavior. For example, the US clearly agreed on the One China Policy but they are now changing it. Because the US no longer values the original purpose that the One China Policy served. So the question "will China renegade on its agreement or not?" is best answered with another question: "What is China's core interest? What purpose does an agreement serve to China?" It is unfortunately here where big misreadings happen. Popular western understand of China says that China does things because they are "authoritarian", "expansionist", "power hungry", etc. But a true analysis of China's interest would show that one of China's core interests is territorial integrity, defined largely by the territory it had inherited from the Qing empire in 1911, and the Republic of China in 1949. China's policy on territorial integrity has not changed since 1949. We may not always agree with China's interests. Maybe they conflict with ours. But properly understanding those interests will at the end of the day surely yield better outcomes than misreading China with stereotypes.

throw10920 4y ago
> Deviations in agreements is not a thing exclusive to China. Yes, but merely looking at the agreement that China broke recently with the invasion of Hong Kong, a reasonable person would assume that there's a much higher risk of them breaking more agreements than another arbitrary country that hasn't been invading other countries recently. Said another way, most people currently will trust France to honor a pact more than they trust Russia. ...not that that somehow makes violating the agreement with and invading Hong Kong somehow morally excusable. China seems pretty similar to Russia right now - with an authoritarian dictator planning to use military force to invade nearby countries. You can even draw parallels between their mindsets - Putin wants to recreate the glory of the Soviet Union and views the old USSR countries as "his", just as Xi Jinping wants to recreate the glory of old China and views Hong Kong and Taiwan as his. > So the question "will China renegade on its agreement or not?" is best answered with another question: "What is China's core interest? What purpose does an agreement serve to China?" I don't see what purpose this statement has. It's clearly in China's core interest to be aggressive and expansionist and invade nearby countries and steal IP from other countries, but none of that is right, and none of that changes the fact that they're an aggressive enemy who pose a threat to the whole Asia region at least, if not the whole world.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Invading Hong Kong? Are you equating Hong Kong to Ukraine? How does that equation exactly work, given that Hong Kong was Chinese territory in the 19th century and was taken away by the British by force for refusing to buy opium?
  - rnk 4y ago
    Ukraine and HK are very different of course. But the outcome is the same, people who were previously free were invaded, put off into prison for things like saying they publicly disagreed and wearing the wrong color shirt in Hong Kong.
- indymike 4y ago
  The travesty in Hong Kong is that the people of Hong Kong had zero say in any of it.
Tabular-Iceberg 4y ago
The key difference is that we're talking about a gang of insurgents here, who have been extraordinarily lucky in getting to grab most of the pie, and holding on to it for as long as they have. Most insurgents are lucky if they get a small slice, and still have to accept being treated as second-class citizens in international relations. The PRC having more than most others can only dream of, and still not being satisfied is absolutely being power-hungry and expansionist. And talking about inheriting territory, let's not forget that the Republic of China still very much exists.
WillPostForFood 4y ago
The US policy was more nuanced than you suggest. The US never agreed to One China, the US just said it wouldn't challenge it. This is the exact text of it in the 1972 Shanghai Communique. the United States acknowledges that Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States does not challenge that position.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  I will agree that the One China Policy issue is more nuanced than that. But we should also recognize that the Sino-British Joint Declaration issue is more nuanced than "China broke an agreement"
therealcamino 4y ago
"For example, the US clearly agreed on the One China Policy but they are now changing it. Because the US no longer values the original purpose that the One China Policy served." If by that you mean the US agreed that Taiwan should be a part of the PRC, that's never been true. It was just a condition of establishing relations with China that the US officially pretend that Taiwan isn't an independent nation. But everyone understood that the actual belief and policy of the US was that Taiwan has a right to independence. There hasn't been any change there.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  No. One China means the acknowledgement that the mainland and Taiwan are part of the same country, but there may be disagreement to who the government is. Before the US recognized the PRC government, it recognized the ROC government aka the one in Taiwan, as being the sole legit government of all of China including Taiwan. So the US didn't officially support "Taiwan independence". After the US flipped to PRC, they opposed the PRC taking over Taiwan, but the "Taiwan independence" notion didn't exist in Taiwan at the time. The govt in Taiwan wanted to retake the mainland. The independence notion only came into existance relatively recently.
  - SenHeng 4y ago
    > The independence notion only came into existance relatively recently. ie. The original generation that considered themselves Chinese has mostly died off, and now the younger generation who consider themselves Taiwanese are slowly taking over.
    - rnk 4y ago
      Yes. Especially now that Taiwan is really a democratic country without it being tacitly controlled by the people and political parties left over from the early days (the KMT). And the destruction of the people of Hong Kong finishes the end of the reunification desire in Taiwan. Young people are naturally horrified about HK and reunification. It's only fools who think that the people in Taiwan want to be part of the "greater Chinese people's country" more than they want freedom.
hueyluey 4y ago
Not trying to nitpick, but as far as I know, Taiwan was occupied by Japan starting from 1895, so China didn't inherit it in 1911. I guess this shows how unfundamented is the current chinese territorial claim. Xinjiang was for most centuries an independent region or part of a different (usualy turkish) empire. Something similar happened with Tibet. It might make sense to include what's currently Mongolia into the chinese claim.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  Well Taiwan was officially given back to China by the US after WW2 ended. So maybe not inherited from Qing, but definitely from ROC. Regarding Xinjiang, the Xinjiang claim is older than the US's claim on its own land so it cannot be more unfundamented than the US as a nation is.
  - mdp2021 4y ago
    The history of the USA and of Xinjiang do not seem to be easily comparable. A date for "claim" means little both in the historic context and in the context of what constitutes a Nation - a commonality of intents in a society of dwellers.
rnk 4y ago
The thing is that China defines the border territories around it as it wishes, and those definitions change over time to suit its current desires. So that turns out not to be an adequate description of why it behaves to protect its 'core interests'. Today the Chinese govt, aka Xi and the CCP seem to be working to become the most powerful country through trying to weaken democratic governments, along with this comes increasing threatening military actions. The world is in a dangerous 10 year period as China's power increases to a maximum, dictator Xi is in charge, and pressure will increase on them as their population starts to shrink along with an increasing retired population compared to the number of workers. This is all separate from my belief that China should be able to be free to make their own choices about their own country, they just can invade and destroy everyone else to get their own way. I feel great sadness for the Chinese people being subject to a horrible central government (yeah, they've also moved millions of people out of poverty and improved their lives, but they still ended up with a country that like the USSR now won't let people leave freely, holds foreign citizens hostile, and also records college lectures so they can see if profs talk about impure thoughts).
- FooBarWidget 4y ago
  > The thing is that China defines the border territories around it as it wishes, and those definitions change over time to suit its current desires. This is false. All of today's claims existed back in 1949 when the PRC inherited claims from the ROC. In fact the PRC today claims fewer territories than 1949 because they've given up some territory as part of diplomatic deals.

Gentil 4y ago

Because TSMC still contributes to the manufacturing 90%+ of the semi conductors FOR the whole world. AFAIK, Samsung which is one of their competitor too uses TSMC. So touching Taiwan is an automatic trigger for the entire world. You saw what the pandemic did to the semi conductor industry. Now imagine if a war was happening there. The world could just stop. Literally. Like firesale in Die hard 4. But in universal scale. That was not the case with Hong Kong. And the world is not going to shut up and be silent if this happens. While the EU, US, India, Australia are all trying to change this semi conductor status quo by building their own manufacturing facilities, it is not easy as I understand it. Am guessing it would take at least 5-10 years to have full fledged production facility in the scale the world demands if this needs to be changed. That is if really wanna be Taiwan free with semi conductors. Which I doubt the world will do. But hey with M1 and RISC-V, there is a whole new future waiting for the semi conductor industry. So who knows what will happen?!

Uehreka 4y ago
The M1 chips are made entirely by TSMC, they reinforce the status quo, they don’t change it. RISC-V is still years from matching ARM performance or cost, and by the time it does, a lot of it will likely be getting manufactured by TSMC. TSMC is really good at making chips, and really good at learning how to make new kinds of chips, so any change will have to come from other fabs getting equally good.
- Gentil 4y ago
  > The M1 chips are made entirely by TSMC, they reinforce the status quo, they don’t change it Yeah. But with the current geopolitical environment every country is thinking about this. But like I said, ONLY IF they have the motive. Which I also mentioned that the world won't have so as to completely take Taiwan out of the equation. > RISC-V is still years from matching ARM performance or cost, and by the time it does, a lot of it will likely be getting manufactured by TSMC. You are probably right. Also RISC-V is used as a support module with Nvidia cards already if I am not wrong. They just are not used as standalone processors. And with M1, I meant ARM in general. But RISC-V is very promising. Like I said, who knows about the future?! > TSMC is really good at making chips, and really good at learning how to make new kinds of chips, so any change will have to come from other fabs getting equally good. I don't think me or any country for that matter disapproves that. But with China as it's neighbor, it's just stupid for the world to think everything will be sunshines and butterflies. It's always a good idea to deter from putting everything in one basket.

powerapple 4y ago

What CCP did in Hong Kong is exactly they think necessary to stop the independence movement in Hong Kong. Same goes to Taiwan, it will lead to a war eventually.

yieldcrv 4y ago

You should think more about what China didn’t do in Macau, to understand China’s actions and motives better. Many people in Hong Kong grasp onto useless documents like the Sino-British Declaration because their actual constitution (the basic law) gave them no assurance to match promises. That constitution always gave the PRC ability to control any and everything there to suppress anything. The appointments always came from Beijing, and it inherits a system similar to City of London where 100% of the people’s vote and representatives can only be 50% of the legislative outcome. Its hopeless - for those deathly afraid of PRC life - and always has been, and China can wait out that “50 year thing” ever so nominally, in a way that doesnt match anything remotely close to what is often repeated in the west about what “should” happen. To me, having read the basic law and prc constitution, China didnt break its agreement, and anyone grasping at the Sino British Declaration is being disingenuous, ignorant, or really that desperate. Only thing to point at is Britain for giving up on negotiations, because they failed the people of Hong Kong back in the 90s and let the basic law be good enough. But again, look at Macau and why that area isn’t an issue in the minds of the west, its not the smaller population. Despite rule of law being kind of a burgeoning concept in the PRC (unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles to the stuff they were already going to do), China is pretty predictable and operates within some easy to understand confines.

rnk 4y ago
More important than any sophistry or arguments about the nuances of the agreements around HK is that China has been crushing freedom in HK. That's the problem. Stop doing that. China won't stop because that's the way they remain in power. China can't use its usual excuse that "we brought millions out of poverty through our rule" in Hong Kong, because they were already pretty well off there. The HK economy is going backwards.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, China is crushing freedoms in Hong Kong because people in Hong Kong were afraid of China crushing freedoms in Hong Kong. The unrest over the potential use of an extradition bill prompted China to clamp down on nearly everything Hong Kong residents held near and dear and show how powerless the people there are in this reality. It is also convenient to accelerate the "harmonization" of Hong Kong into the PRC system because many (depending on how you count) places in China are well to do now. They don't need Hong Kong's different system to be a bastion of economic progress, because its like 3% of the GDP now, compared to like 20% during handover.