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> It's coming sooner or later and the longer you leave your investments in China the more you risk the door slamming shut on your hand. Half the US population
by nobodyandproud 4y ago
> It's coming sooner or later and the longer you leave your investments in China the more you risk the door slamming shut on your hand.
Half the US population is asleep. During my undergrad years, I told my professor—then racing to get a foothold in China—that I thought war with China was inevitable.
15 to 25 years was my projection. He probably thought I was batshit crazy, but here we are.
China’s now using shows of military force as well as soft-power projection like CGTN.
Meanwhile we’re still struggling to bring back manufacturing capabilities.
If I had the means, I would be lobbying hard for a 30 year plan 5/10/20/30 to revamp our capabilities.
- nonethewiser 4y agoWhere are we exactly? Your prediction has not been proven correct. Even as much as things are escalating, war does not appear imminent nor certain.
- nobodyandproud 4y ago> Where are we exactly? Your prediction has not been proven correct. Even as much as things are escalating, war does not appear imminent nor certain. We’re much closer than we were 20 years ago. Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine; nor that Xi would be foolish enough to scare away Taiwan by muscling in on Hong Kong. Unless the CCP forces Xi out, their hardliners and the middle-kingdom mindset have all but made some level of warfare certain.
- nirav72 4y ago>Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine Who is 'Nobody' in this context? Because most analysis on this since Russia took Crimea in 2014 have predicated that Russia would make further attempts at capturing Ukrainian territory. Even the U.S defense establishment knew this and were preparing the Ukrainians for since 2015.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoExcuse my hyperbole. The better term would be “divided”. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-what-is-risk-war-between-russia-ukraine-2021-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-what-is-risk-war-bet... https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/how-real-is-the-threat-of-a-russian-invasion-of-ukraine https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/how-real-is-the-thr... vs. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/us-warns-russia-plans-large-scale-attack-on-ukraine https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/01/us-warns-russi... for example.
- thrashh 4y agoThey’re just random news sites you’re linking though. They’re not even political news magazines. News editors don’t enact policy. Who cares what they thinks.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoGaslighting doesn’t work here. I provided my evidence. Show me proof of the contrary.
- thrashh 4y agoYou didn't provide evidence. Your argument is that "the government didn't take Russia seriously enough" Proper evidence would be an study of government officials in power and their position at the time. It is not 3 hand-picked private industry news articles.
- nobodyandproud 4y ago> Proper evidence would be an study of government officials in power and their position at the time. > It is not 3 hand-picked private industry news articles. It reflects public sentiment. Analysts aren’t the ones in power. Public sentiment and leadership’s will to bend the public sentiment are what matters. See GWB’s bullshit invasion of Iraq.
- eftychis 4y agoI disagree about the Russia Ukraine prediction statements in this discussion. Nobody wanted to admit a "full blown invasion would happen" is better wording. Russia invaded and was meddling with Ukraine back in 2014. It invaded Georgia in an actual war back then over the same act. EU vetoed related action and was preaching that everything is going to be fine because Germany was using all their power to not ruin their profitable trade with Russia. We have to call things with their own name. Related to the average Joe's beliefs: they would believe their leaders telling them everything is fine and nothing bad will happen because they want to believe it. No thinking or prediction was involved in any of this.
- nobodyandproud 4y ago> Nobody wanted to admit a "full blown invasion would happen" is better wording. That’s still a spectacular failure in its own right. It means we’re not willing to admit the obvious until it becomes a far bigger problem. A weakness of a democratic process without the right leaders.
- thrashh 4y agoAre you suggesting someone should have pre-emptively invaded Russia after Crimea, thus instead of worrying about a possible full-blown invasion, get it out of the way and just guarantee one? Because as far as I know, the right people expected something to happen — there is just the issue of “well, what do you do about it?”
- nobodyandproud 4y ago> Are you suggesting someone should have pre-emptively invaded Russia after Crimea, thus instead of worrying about a possible full-blown invasion, get it out of the way and just guarantee one? That’s quite a leap of logic there. I think it’s enough to recognize that many believed a full invasion wasn’t in the cards. > Because as far as I know, the right people expected something to happen — there is just the issue of “well, what do you do about it?” The main issue here is that we let down our guard against hostile leaders and nations. And there still seems to be a a large portion of Western civilization in denial. But a deadman-switch NATO membership? Prop up their defensive capabilities? Put pressure on Germany with regards to gas and overly cozy relationships with Russia? Hindsight is easy and I’m sure others have better ideas; that’s besides the point.
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- MisterBastahrd 4y agoYou are making a bunch of statements that virtually nobody who has paid attention to either scenario would agree with.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoYou believe it was universally accepted in 2021, that Russia would full-scale invade Ukraine? Because a quick google search will easily disprove that notion.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine Plenty of people believed that Russia would launch a major invasion as part of their war with Ukraine launched in 2014. As a general concern it was raised many times by many people during the period after 2014, and that went into overdrive in the months before the actual invasion.
- another_story 4y agoI wouldn't say any actions are idncidcating we're closer. There have been numerous conflicts across the strait in the last half century. If the KMT takes control of the presidency in the next election it'll calm down a lot.
- webkike 4y agoNobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine? They've been at war since 2014. A full blown invasion was a legitimate possibility for anyone paying attention since Russia invaded Georgia in 2008
- Aunche 4y ago>We’re much closer than we were 20 years After the collapse of the Soviet Union settled, it has been the most peaceful time in human history (at least for semi-developed nations). A moderate amount of hostility is to be expected as China has approached superpower status. This is still no where near Cold War levels. >Nobody believed Russia would actually invade Ukraine This was always a possibility after Crimea. People just assumed that Putin wasn't stupid enough to through with it. >nor that Xi would be foolish enough to scare away Taiwan by muscling in on Hong Kong. Ever since the British gave up Hong Kong, China has agreed that they will allow it to be autonomous until 2047. We're already at the half way point, so China is slowly tightening it's grip on them. One big difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is that Russia shares a large land border with it. Traditional wisdom dictates that you need at least 1 troop for every 40 inhabitants, which is over half a million for Taiwan. China simply does not have the navy to move that number of personale. If they ever hope to invade Taiwan, they would have to prepare for a D-Day level of operation, which would be immediately obvious to intelligence.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoI imagine Taiwan would be ground down by a war of attrition and isolation. They are not self-sufficient: https://ap.fftc.org.tw/article/2570 https://ap.fftc.org.tw/article/2570 Isolation practice: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-03-08/taiwan-suspects-china-cut-islands-internet-cables https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-03-08/taiwan...
- pvarangot 4y agoIf China wants the semiconductor factories producing magic 5nm chips they can't bomb much of the country or fuck with the middle class that much by making the country shitty. Of course if they just want to destroy Apple and NVIDIA and make consumer electronics unaffordable for a generation they can just get the fucking island by raining rockets on it for a week but that would be insanity.
- uejfiweun 4y agoThis is not true. Many people predicted a Russian invasion of Ukraine. You can look back at books like The Next 100 Years (2009) or The Accidental Superpower (2014) which predicted the war almost to the T.
- 8note 4y agoWarfare with China is pretty inevitable while the US and its allies aims for containment and control over china's access to the Pacific ocean and shipping lanes. China has a strategic need for ocean access, regardless of who is in charge, and everyone else is looking for a military confrontation on that. If china controlled the whole US east coast's access to the Atlantic ocean, and the US needed Chinese permission to go to sea, the US would have attacked already
- lixtra 4y agoWhen were Chinese shipping lanes threatened by the west last time? A potential threat does not count. China potentially threatens the destruction of the west coast by nukes, so by your argument the US should have gone to war long ago if potential threats count.
- medo-bear 4y agoabout 20 years ago i asked an old commie (proper commie, with portraits of marx engels lenin proudly hung on the wall and a library to show) what he thinks of china. his response stuck with me to this day in china you don't have socialism. what you have in china is a market for head-nooses and western capitalists are the main customer. it's absolutely genius!
- prottog 4y agoThe quote "Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." has been attributed to various Marxists over the decades.
- medo-bear 4y agochina seems to have put it into praxis
- Regnore 4y agoI’ve always enjoyed interpreting this quote as “The Marxist system is such a terrible socioeconomic system that it can’t even produce its own rope”
- medo-bear 4y agowhere i curently live the marxist economy, despite numerous short commings, promoted a healthy work life balance, unrivaled job security, and some rather high quality public housing that even today sells at a premium
- varispeed 4y agoIronically though, the reason why the West gone to China for manufacturing is that people in the West wanted employment rights, minimum wage and all sort of socialist protections, but they didn't want to pay for it.
- medo-bear 4y agohaha yep and pretended for good 30+ years that the working class no longer exists. people seem to forget that the uk was on a brink of revolution prior to thatcher outsourcing work to china. and now apparently they want to magically go back
- 35208654 4y agoThis has been a popular opinion for a very long time. It even supports a plot point in the movie The Departed (2006): Oliver Queenan : Microprocessors. Billy Costigan : Micro what? Oliver Queenan : Microprocessors. We'll probably be at war with the Chinese in 20-odd years and Costello is selling them military technology. Microprocessors, chips, computer parts. Anybody says anything about anything like that you let us know
- WrtCdEvrydy 4y agoThis has been a trope in scifi since years. I remember the original Black Ops 2 video game campaign literally built on microprocessors all coming from China.
- nobodyandproud 4y agoI believe this was also a plot point of the (newer) Outer Limits, with drugged up soldiers believing each other to be hostile aliens. Without the USSR, the US didn’t have any other power to serve as a credible enemy. I’m certainly not some insightful prophet: I can’t discount SF playing its part in influencing me; but it also makes sense in the long term (Carthage and Rome; Greece Polis’ and Persia…). Headbutting is inevitable and China clearly was getting stronger even in the 1990s.
- uejfiweun 4y agoIt was also a plot point in Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer, which is kind of a think-tanked hypothetical "what-if" look at WW3 between China and the US, and has been adopted as reading material by the US military. The US military is full of guys who care about nothing in life except the defense of the country. Any dependency we have on China, you can be sure they're well aware of it.
- WillPostForFood 4y agoBlack Ops 2 video game campaign literally built on microprocessors all coming from China In Black Ops 2 the campaign is about stopping a latin american drug lord/terrorist who is trying to start war between the US and China to wipe them both out. He is developing some magic chip quantum tech to hack into both the US and China to trigger a war. Activision has taken the Hollywood approach and carefully avoided making China a bad guy.
- ChatGTP 4y agoThe plan is robots and Silicon Valley tech. Free market capitalism is the plan. That’s why so much funding is going into AI and robots lately. …yes it’s a just a hunch but I believe it!
- arroz 4y agoWe are not at war and hopefully we won’t be
- nobodyandproud 4y agoI don’t want war either, but I’m genuinely afraid it’s a matter of when and how; and not if. My biggest fear, however, is that the US will resort to nuclear due to its weak manufacturing.