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I mean it's the gigantic elephant in the room. The reported narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. Here are some: Economically, the

I mean it's the gigantic elephant in the room. The reported narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. Here are some: Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nations with predatory loans for infrastructure. They trade with our other enemies and flaunt sanctions, etc, etc. Ethically, they're our adversary: They use (basically) slave labor, unethical materials (e.g. live plucking), environmentally damaging materials (e.g. banned CFCs), they happily pollute the earth as if tomorrow isn't a concern. They are scraping the ocean clean to feed their people. They oppress their citizens, they operate a crude faux-democracy, they have embarked on an extremely damaging zero covid approach long after it ceased to be relevant to save face for creating it, etc, etc. Politically, they're our adversary, insulting foreign politicians, trying to annexe land and sea that definitively isn't theirs (Tibet, "South China" Sea), engaging in brinksmanship to force the issue, etc. These are all things from media stories that I can think of from the top of my head. Not exactly representation as a best friend.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
> They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nations with predatory loans for infrastructure. They trade with our other enemies and flaunt sanctions, etc, etc. Aside from the money standard and zero COVID bits, every part of this is true of the US. This conflict just boils down to “the hegemon doesn’t want any competition.” > they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. America’s oligarchs did this to the country. China just leveraged their short-sightedness and greed to the country’s own advantage.
- glompers 3y ago
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  - kelipso 3y ago
    Please don't do a whatabout, thanks.
    - glompers 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    The Civil War was about the future, not the past. The South was kinda fucked anyway - land rich agricultural barons were an endangered species everywhere at that point. The point was to bring slavery to the West. Not just for the free labor, but because slaves suppress the wages of everyone. The sons of the south getting mowed down in the trenches were fighting for those barons whose prosperity was dependent on their poverty. African slaves meant there was always readily identifiable people worse off than you.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Can you provide the examples for US part in pervasive IP stealing, predatory infrastructure loans, trading with sanctioned countries? Not single issues (every country will have some examples here and there), but actually using those as long term strategies?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Huh? The US sets the sanctions. We’ve changed our laws to legalize corruption and subsidize export of key industries. Steel is hardly made in Cleveland and Pittsburgh anymore for a simple reason: our tax and regulatory structure was reformed, and makes it more profitable to ship that business to China or Mexico.
    - viraptor 3y ago
      Correct. But that doesn't support any of the claims I mentioned from bugglebeetle's comment.
  - petre 3y ago
    To be fair, the US doesn't trade with sanctioned states because they (and the UK) are among the first to sanction other states. The EU just follows. Did China sanction any other states? Maybe Lithuania for opening a Taiwan representation office. But it's not sanctions, it's more like bullying.
    - aerio 3y ago
      China has sanctioned Lithuania for opening a Taiwan representative office, like you said. Recently, they've also sanctioned Australia after the Australian government requested an independent investigation into the origins of the virus. This escalated into a one-sided trade war, particularly targeting Australian barley, wine and iron/steel exports. As well as Norway, in 2010, after the independent Norwegian Nobel committee granted the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.
- deleted 3y ago
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glompers 3y ago
The problem is that a single-party propagandist republic is effectively a separate type of government than a representative republic and makes it harder to distinguish the will of the population. The policies could be hidden from the vast majority of informed public opinion in a way Western conspiracists or whataboutists alike can only dream is really correspondent or directly analogous to mainstream media manipulation. It can still be true that China’s no one’s enemy except that the Party is everyone’s enemy (while the Chinese population will be the last ones to realize it).
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  Pretty similar to the US. We don’t really have true representism. We just have two parties instead of one, but I’d wager the wills and wants of the ruling elite are just as far removed from the true wills and wants of the populace as they are in china.
vkou 3y ago
> The narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. We've been narrated to over the years that they are our enemies, yes. > They use (basically) slave labor, unethical materials (e.g. live plucking), environmentally damaging materials (e.g. banned CFCs), they happily pollute the earth as if tomorrow isn't a concern. Why is this all of a sudden a problem when China does it, but not when our firms do this in their off-shore sweatshops and subsidiaries and mining and agricultural interests? It sounds like all of these things aren't a problem, it's that we aren't profiting from them that's the problem. Ethically, they are our enemies in the same scope that our multi-nationals are our enemies. They too are incompatible with human rights and democracy.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  > Why is this all of a sudden a problem when China does it, but not when our firms do this in their off-shore sweatshops It's certainly a problem! But the only thing we can really do about it is pass laws.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > It's certainly a problem! If it were a problem, Washington could get it resolved in a year. It's not a problem, because half the people bankrolling political campaigns are neck-deep in it! Their businesses are built on it! On cheap labour, on captive markets, on sources of third-world resources that are accessed through theft, violence, or corruption! And even if you aren't directly involved, our society will not function very well if we stop reaping the benefits of all the practices I've described. Nobody wants to pay $90 for a t-shirt, or $9 for a gallon of gas.
    - ithkuil 3y ago
      I see two kinds of people saying either: 1. The west is doing immoral things and hiding it. Let's talk about it and force people in charge to change things or change the people in charge! Or: 2. The west is doing immoral things. Let's root for these other guys who are also doing immoral things; eventually they will replace the west and then somebody will figure out how to stop them from doing the immoral things. I think (2) is predicated on the fact that the west wrong doings are so old and irreparable and so they can be only washed away through a complete blank slate rewrite of the geopolitical order. I think this is a relatively "natural" effect of our human psychology. We have an innate sense of "punishing" people and we often find ways to rationalize and explain why they should be punished. However these instincts are ill suited to handle geopolitics because there are many more people involved that the "tribe" size of our natural selection environment and also because the time scale of the changes is usually much longer than what people are used to in their day to day relationships. I think logic (2) is flawed because once the new power structure is formed it will be hard to change exactly like (1) or even worse. Furthermore it will have done immoral things for quite some time by then because changes to geopolitical power balances will take a long time to actuate and thus they new power will also become "irreparable" and the only thing left to do will be to root for the next "underdog".
Spooky23 3y ago
The biggest adversary of the United States is the United States. Those factories migrated to the US South, then to Mexico, then to China. Not because of some conspiracy, but because we run our institutions based on quarterly financials. I worked a long time ago on an effort to sue a large manufacturer whose supply chain was shipping counterfeit parts to certain customers. The Chinese partners ran a third shift with no QC and stuffed these parts into the distribution chain. They also stole defective parts and did the same thing. Everyone knew this was happening. But everyone was making money, so nobody gave a shit. With respect to politics, well yeah, they are the other great power now. It’s in their interest to buffer themselves from whatever they perceive as a threat. The US is no babe in the woods here - our war plan from the 1950s onward was to attack China with nuclear weapons if the Soviets rolled into East Berlin - just in case. The Chinese can’t compete with the US with air or sea power, so they seek to control their sphere of influence in other ways, and slowly build in preparation for the US decline in power.
- jongjong 3y ago
  I agree. The US (and other western countries) have let themselves fall victim to all sorts of corrupt ideologies; this has created short term 'limited liability' reward structures which have encouraged a short term mindset. Instead of focusing on fixing internal issues, the US decided to run their economy on the misery of others by starting wars in faraway lands, manipulating foreign governments, saddling them with debts to create artificial demand for USD to export inflation, then they monopolized 'the internet' with their own government-anointed big tech monopolies. Zero focus on creating real, profitable, value-adding businesses. Zero ethics. China won this round fair and square... The smartest thing the west can do from now on is dump fiat currencies, switch to crypto and leave China holding the paper, but the longer the west fails to acknowledge that China beat it at its own game, the further it will fall.
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    > then [the US and other western countries] monopolized 'the internet' with their own government-anointed unprofitable big tech monopolies How did the government anoint Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook?
Simorgh 3y ago
I think this is an issue of perspective. I know someone who quite recently died of Covid. There is no longer a pandemic, but the virus is still deadly. Their concern is justified. Economically, the US is critically dependent on China for facilitating consumer demand. The US cannot afford an adversary in China. Ethically, the US is not offering a compelling framework or alternative that alleviates the issues you raise. This is a real concern. China has lifted hundreds of millions of people directly out of extreme poverty. This is their prerogative and modus operandi. The only way forward is cooperation, adjustment and coordination.
- cbilson 3y ago
  If the CCP were so concerned with COVID why did they have a victory concert in August 2020[1]? Obviously the virus is still deadly, but it seems at least inconsistent for CCP COVID policy to be “we did it!” in August 2020, then lock downs in 2022. Regarding “lifting people out of poverty”, did hundreds of millions of people’s hard work have anything to do with lifting _themselves_ out of poverty or does the CCP get all the credit? If CCP gets the credit, there was certainly a lot of “trial and error” before they got it right. Was it worth the lives of 30 million people? [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhans-mask-less-pool-party-reopening-covid-concert-lockdown-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhans-mask-less-pool-party-...
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    I can understand this being hard to comprehend, but if China actually effectively deployed a zero covid policy initially - it's up to you whether you think the reports to this effect are true or not - then a mask-less concert is in fact pretty safe as long as you're not allowing foreigners to bring COVID into the country. Of course the moment you let Americans in to your country, you've given up your battle against COVID since we decided to just let it rip. China's not the only country that tried a zero COVID policy and for a while it was working in other places too thanks to management techniques, travel restrictions, quarantines, etc. (New Zealand is one, iirc) But when one of the biggest and most powerful countries in the world decides to just give up on the fight nobody else is going to win.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> trying to annexe land and sea that definitively isn't theirs (Tibet, "South China" Sea) The matter of Tibet is complex, and I think "definitively" is handwaving away a lot of Tibetan history.
- deleted 3y ago
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- obscurette 3y ago
  In 1991, when Soviet Union collapsed and some parts of it had finally a lucky chance to go their own way, there was a lot of western "experts" who lectured new countries how complex their past was, how Soviet past should be also respected and shouldn't be handwaved away etc. It actually continued decades until very recently – Bucha happened.
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
I quite like how the average American looks at China (not always fairly by the way - some of what you accuse China of doing is actually illegal in China) while being completely unable to hold a mirror to how their own economy works. It’s kind of entertaining to see a bully complains that there now is another bully in town.
- FpUser 3y ago
  >"bully complains that there now is another bully in town." I think yours is the best reply to the post that reads more like a tantrum.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
> Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. Wow, you make it sound like it was some devious Chinese plan where they intentionally made their people work for American manufacturers and lured them in with bribes. The reality was that American corporations willingly went over to China because number must go up and paying their own people living factory wages wasn’t cutting it. So tired of this stance - “China did it to us!” America did it to itself.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  > America did it to itself. Corporations outsourced manufacturing to China, because American corporations are independent from the US government and profit-motivated.
  - didntknowya 3y ago
    yea corporations that are staunchly independent until the next recession where they beg for government handouts because they are too important to fail
  - ImHereToVote 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      Source to the systemic contrary? If GE decides it wants to build widgets in another country, GE does.
      - szundi 3y ago
        Conclusion?
        ethbr0 3y ago
        That if one is trying to reverse offshoring of manufacturing, one needs to make it in companies' best economic interests. Make it more profitable (or at least net neutral) to manufacture onshore or nearshore. A key start to it would probably be to (a) implement a carbon tax on all goods that enter the US via international maritime trade, according to the footprint of their transportation, (b) use the proceeds exclusively to fund a recapitalization of US merchant shipping [0] (new generation lower emission design construction and operation). Preferably in cooperation with the EU. Modernizing the provisions of the Jones Act [1] to support US shipbuilding and flagging for inter-national oceanic trade would be a good start. Merchant shipping, like energy, is a pillar that a country's economy rests on, and shipyards are dual-use heavy economic assets with direct military implications. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_navy_capacity_by_country#The_table https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_navy_capaci... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920
eunos 3y ago
> undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. Notice that western itself is a collective of nation but all hell breaks lose if non western got manufacturing am I rite? Having said that be thankful for ultra scaling up manufacturing in East Asia. Appliances and electronic prices keeps falling. Compare that to services or "western" exclusive manufacturing like vehicles, getting inflated like crazy.
- pokepim 3y ago
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FpUser 3y ago
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pokepim 3y ago
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stephen_g 3y ago
So they do… basically all the things that the West used to do over the last few hundred years (some of them far more recently) to get ourselves into the position of economic and political power in the world we are in? I mean, not to say they aren’t bad but we need to have more acknowledgement of the things our countries did in the past and why they were wrong, and looking to make reparations where possible, and not just hypocritically pretending that we didn’t do them while accusing other emerging powers of the things we did…
biosboiii 3y ago
> They're seeking to upset the global money standard. The disturb the global standard, which happens to benefit the US greatly while hurting the rest of the world (especially the global south). Terrible! > They use (basically) slave labor, While it is true that China has a lot of manual labor and less worker rights than most western states, China isnt the sweatshop it used to be anymore. Nearly every "simple" labor intensive industry, like textile industry, has moved to countries like Bangladesh, while strangely no one seems to care about their slave labor. Also, wasn't the "slave labor" the reason why the US cooperated with China, essentially making them what they are today? [1] > They manipulate their currency. How dare they? https://brrr.money https://brrr.money > They entrap other nations with predatory loans for infrastructure. I could write a book about this but whatcha doin' over there? [2] > they happily pollute the earth as if tomorrow isn't a concern. China is ranking 48 in Co2 emissions per capita, the US in ranking 14 (2021) [3] Also they are investing more into renewable energy than every other country, by far [4] > They are scraping the ocean clean to feed their people. China fished 11.7 million metric tons in 2020, the US fished 4.23 million metric tons, China fishes approx. three times as much as the US. [5] But China has 1.4 billion citizens, while the US has 331 million citizens, so China has over 4 times the citizens. Also the average Chinese eats 40.3kg of fish every year, while average American eats 22.2kg of fish every year. [6] So to sum up: China fishes three times as much as the US, while having 4 times the population that eats nearly twice as much fish as a US citizen does. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme [3] https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-china-the-main-climate-change-culprit/a-57777113 https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-china-the-main-climate-c... [4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-invests-546-billion-in-clean-energy-far-surpassing-the-u-s/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-invests-546... [5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/240225/leading-fishing-nations-worldwide-2008/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/240225/leading-fishing-n... [6] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-and-seafood-consumption-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-and-seafood-consumpt...
- superchroma 3y ago
  Like, great job, but you completely missed the point of the post by addressing the anecdotes. My point was western media prints uniformly negative stories about them and treats them like an enemy. The stories may be true, or not, or fair, or not. It's immaterial. They represent the battle for the hearts and minds of North America.
szundi 3y ago
I would rather simply point out that they are after our way of living.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
How is this any worse than what Saudi Arabia does, that we overtly consider a US ally?
didntknowya 3y ago
The same logic could easily apply to every other manufacturing heavy country (Japan, India, etc). There are just as many unethical companies operating in the country (Dupont/Monsato/3M) hit by massive lawsuits. And trying to influence domestic issues in other countries has led to the numerous wars the US have started in modern times, not to mention the annexation of Hawaii because of blatant business interests. the world is tired of the US finding applying double standards to whoever they want to make their enemy.

bugglebeetle 3y ago

> They manipulate their currency. They interfere with foreign owned businesses. They steal IP. They're seeking to upset the global money standard. They entrap other nations with predatory loans for infrastructure. They trade with our other enemies and flaunt sanctions, etc, etc. Aside from the money standard and zero COVID bits, every part of this is true of the US. This conflict just boils down to “the hegemon doesn’t want any competition.” > they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. America’s oligarchs did this to the country. China just leveraged their short-sightedness and greed to the country’s own advantage.

glompers 3y ago
[flagged]
- kelipso 3y ago
  Please don't do a whatabout, thanks.
  - glompers 3y ago
    [flagged]
- Spooky23 3y ago
  The Civil War was about the future, not the past. The South was kinda fucked anyway - land rich agricultural barons were an endangered species everywhere at that point. The point was to bring slavery to the West. Not just for the free labor, but because slaves suppress the wages of everyone. The sons of the south getting mowed down in the trenches were fighting for those barons whose prosperity was dependent on their poverty. African slaves meant there was always readily identifiable people worse off than you.
viraptor 3y ago
Can you provide the examples for US part in pervasive IP stealing, predatory infrastructure loans, trading with sanctioned countries? Not single issues (every country will have some examples here and there), but actually using those as long term strategies?
- deleted 3y ago
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- Spooky23 3y ago
  Huh? The US sets the sanctions. We’ve changed our laws to legalize corruption and subsidize export of key industries. Steel is hardly made in Cleveland and Pittsburgh anymore for a simple reason: our tax and regulatory structure was reformed, and makes it more profitable to ship that business to China or Mexico.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Correct. But that doesn't support any of the claims I mentioned from bugglebeetle's comment.
- petre 3y ago
  To be fair, the US doesn't trade with sanctioned states because they (and the UK) are among the first to sanction other states. The EU just follows. Did China sanction any other states? Maybe Lithuania for opening a Taiwan representation office. But it's not sanctions, it's more like bullying.
  - aerio 3y ago
    China has sanctioned Lithuania for opening a Taiwan representative office, like you said. Recently, they've also sanctioned Australia after the Australian government requested an independent investigation into the origins of the virus. This escalated into a one-sided trade war, particularly targeting Australian barley, wine and iron/steel exports. As well as Norway, in 2010, after the independent Norwegian Nobel committee granted the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.
deleted 3y ago
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glompers 3y ago

The problem is that a single-party propagandist republic is effectively a separate type of government than a representative republic and makes it harder to distinguish the will of the population. The policies could be hidden from the vast majority of informed public opinion in a way Western conspiracists or whataboutists alike can only dream is really correspondent or directly analogous to mainstream media manipulation. It can still be true that China’s no one’s enemy except that the Party is everyone’s enemy (while the Chinese population will be the last ones to realize it).

kjkjadksj 3y ago
Pretty similar to the US. We don’t really have true representism. We just have two parties instead of one, but I’d wager the wills and wants of the ruling elite are just as far removed from the true wills and wants of the populace as they are in china.

vkou 3y ago

> The narratives have aligned over the years as if they were our enemy. We've been narrated to over the years that they are our enemies, yes. > They use (basically) slave labor, unethical materials (e.g. live plucking), environmentally damaging materials (e.g. banned CFCs), they happily pollute the earth as if tomorrow isn't a concern. Why is this all of a sudden a problem when China does it, but not when our firms do this in their off-shore sweatshops and subsidiaries and mining and agricultural interests? It sounds like all of these things aren't a problem, it's that we aren't profiting from them that's the problem. Ethically, they are our enemies in the same scope that our multi-nationals are our enemies. They too are incompatible with human rights and democracy.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
> Why is this all of a sudden a problem when China does it, but not when our firms do this in their off-shore sweatshops It's certainly a problem! But the only thing we can really do about it is pass laws.
- vkou 3y ago
  > It's certainly a problem! If it were a problem, Washington could get it resolved in a year. It's not a problem, because half the people bankrolling political campaigns are neck-deep in it! Their businesses are built on it! On cheap labour, on captive markets, on sources of third-world resources that are accessed through theft, violence, or corruption! And even if you aren't directly involved, our society will not function very well if we stop reaping the benefits of all the practices I've described. Nobody wants to pay $90 for a t-shirt, or $9 for a gallon of gas.
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    I see two kinds of people saying either: 1. The west is doing immoral things and hiding it. Let's talk about it and force people in charge to change things or change the people in charge! Or: 2. The west is doing immoral things. Let's root for these other guys who are also doing immoral things; eventually they will replace the west and then somebody will figure out how to stop them from doing the immoral things. I think (2) is predicated on the fact that the west wrong doings are so old and irreparable and so they can be only washed away through a complete blank slate rewrite of the geopolitical order. I think this is a relatively "natural" effect of our human psychology. We have an innate sense of "punishing" people and we often find ways to rationalize and explain why they should be punished. However these instincts are ill suited to handle geopolitics because there are many more people involved that the "tribe" size of our natural selection environment and also because the time scale of the changes is usually much longer than what people are used to in their day to day relationships. I think logic (2) is flawed because once the new power structure is formed it will be hard to change exactly like (1) or even worse. Furthermore it will have done immoral things for quite some time by then because changes to geopolitical power balances will take a long time to actuate and thus they new power will also become "irreparable" and the only thing left to do will be to root for the next "underdog".

Spooky23 3y ago

The biggest adversary of the United States is the United States. Those factories migrated to the US South, then to Mexico, then to China. Not because of some conspiracy, but because we run our institutions based on quarterly financials. I worked a long time ago on an effort to sue a large manufacturer whose supply chain was shipping counterfeit parts to certain customers. The Chinese partners ran a third shift with no QC and stuffed these parts into the distribution chain. They also stole defective parts and did the same thing. Everyone knew this was happening. But everyone was making money, so nobody gave a shit. With respect to politics, well yeah, they are the other great power now. It’s in their interest to buffer themselves from whatever they perceive as a threat. The US is no babe in the woods here - our war plan from the 1950s onward was to attack China with nuclear weapons if the Soviets rolled into East Berlin - just in case. The Chinese can’t compete with the US with air or sea power, so they seek to control their sphere of influence in other ways, and slowly build in preparation for the US decline in power.

jongjong 3y ago
I agree. The US (and other western countries) have let themselves fall victim to all sorts of corrupt ideologies; this has created short term 'limited liability' reward structures which have encouraged a short term mindset. Instead of focusing on fixing internal issues, the US decided to run their economy on the misery of others by starting wars in faraway lands, manipulating foreign governments, saddling them with debts to create artificial demand for USD to export inflation, then they monopolized 'the internet' with their own government-anointed big tech monopolies. Zero focus on creating real, profitable, value-adding businesses. Zero ethics. China won this round fair and square... The smartest thing the west can do from now on is dump fiat currencies, switch to crypto and leave China holding the paper, but the longer the west fails to acknowledge that China beat it at its own game, the further it will fall.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  > then [the US and other western countries] monopolized 'the internet' with their own government-anointed unprofitable big tech monopolies How did the government anoint Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook?

Simorgh 3y ago

I think this is an issue of perspective. I know someone who quite recently died of Covid. There is no longer a pandemic, but the virus is still deadly. Their concern is justified. Economically, the US is critically dependent on China for facilitating consumer demand. The US cannot afford an adversary in China. Ethically, the US is not offering a compelling framework or alternative that alleviates the issues you raise. This is a real concern. China has lifted hundreds of millions of people directly out of extreme poverty. This is their prerogative and modus operandi. The only way forward is cooperation, adjustment and coordination.

cbilson 3y ago
If the CCP were so concerned with COVID why did they have a victory concert in August 2020[1]? Obviously the virus is still deadly, but it seems at least inconsistent for CCP COVID policy to be “we did it!” in August 2020, then lock downs in 2022. Regarding “lifting people out of poverty”, did hundreds of millions of people’s hard work have anything to do with lifting _themselves_ out of poverty or does the CCP get all the credit? If CCP gets the credit, there was certainly a lot of “trial and error” before they got it right. Was it worth the lives of 30 million people? [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhans-mask-less-pool-party-reopening-covid-concert-lockdown-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhans-mask-less-pool-party-...
- kevingadd 3y ago
  I can understand this being hard to comprehend, but if China actually effectively deployed a zero covid policy initially - it's up to you whether you think the reports to this effect are true or not - then a mask-less concert is in fact pretty safe as long as you're not allowing foreigners to bring COVID into the country. Of course the moment you let Americans in to your country, you've given up your battle against COVID since we decided to just let it rip. China's not the only country that tried a zero COVID policy and for a while it was working in other places too thanks to management techniques, travel restrictions, quarantines, etc. (New Zealand is one, iirc) But when one of the biggest and most powerful countries in the world decides to just give up on the fight nobody else is going to win.

denton-scratch 3y ago

> trying to annexe land and sea that definitively isn't theirs (Tibet, "South China" Sea) The matter of Tibet is complex, and I think "definitively" is handwaving away a lot of Tibetan history.

deleted 3y ago
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obscurette 3y ago
In 1991, when Soviet Union collapsed and some parts of it had finally a lucky chance to go their own way, there was a lot of western "experts" who lectured new countries how complex their past was, how Soviet past should be also respected and shouldn't be handwaved away etc. It actually continued decades until very recently – Bucha happened.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

I quite like how the average American looks at China (not always fairly by the way - some of what you accuse China of doing is actually illegal in China) while being completely unable to hold a mirror to how their own economy works. It’s kind of entertaining to see a bully complains that there now is another bully in town.

FpUser 3y ago
>"bully complains that there now is another bully in town." I think yours is the best reply to the post that reads more like a tantrum.

spaceman_2020 3y ago

> Economically, they're an adversary; they undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. Wow, you make it sound like it was some devious Chinese plan where they intentionally made their people work for American manufacturers and lured them in with bribes. The reality was that American corporations willingly went over to China because number must go up and paying their own people living factory wages wasn’t cutting it. So tired of this stance - “China did it to us!” America did it to itself.

ethbr0 3y ago
> America did it to itself. Corporations outsourced manufacturing to China, because American corporations are independent from the US government and profit-motivated.
- didntknowya 3y ago
  yea corporations that are staunchly independent until the next recession where they beg for government handouts because they are too important to fail
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    Source to the systemic contrary? If GE decides it wants to build widgets in another country, GE does.
    - szundi 3y ago
      Conclusion?
      - ethbr0 3y ago
        That if one is trying to reverse offshoring of manufacturing, one needs to make it in companies' best economic interests. Make it more profitable (or at least net neutral) to manufacture onshore or nearshore. A key start to it would probably be to (a) implement a carbon tax on all goods that enter the US via international maritime trade, according to the footprint of their transportation, (b) use the proceeds exclusively to fund a recapitalization of US merchant shipping [0] (new generation lower emission design construction and operation). Preferably in cooperation with the EU. Modernizing the provisions of the Jones Act [1] to support US shipbuilding and flagging for inter-national oceanic trade would be a good start. Merchant shipping, like energy, is a pillar that a country's economy rests on, and shipyards are dual-use heavy economic assets with direct military implications. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_navy_capacity_by_country#The_table https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_merchant_navy_capaci... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920

eunos 3y ago

> undercut western manufacturing and all our manufacturing went there. Notice that western itself is a collective of nation but all hell breaks lose if non western got manufacturing am I rite? Having said that be thankful for ultra scaling up manufacturing in East Asia. Appliances and electronic prices keeps falling. Compare that to services or "western" exclusive manufacturing like vehicles, getting inflated like crazy.

pokepim 3y ago
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FpUser 3y ago

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pokepim 3y ago

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stephen_g 3y ago

So they do… basically all the things that the West used to do over the last few hundred years (some of them far more recently) to get ourselves into the position of economic and political power in the world we are in? I mean, not to say they aren’t bad but we need to have more acknowledgement of the things our countries did in the past and why they were wrong, and looking to make reparations where possible, and not just hypocritically pretending that we didn’t do them while accusing other emerging powers of the things we did…

biosboiii 3y ago

> They're seeking to upset the global money standard. The disturb the global standard, which happens to benefit the US greatly while hurting the rest of the world (especially the global south). Terrible! > They use (basically) slave labor, While it is true that China has a lot of manual labor and less worker rights than most western states, China isnt the sweatshop it used to be anymore. Nearly every "simple" labor intensive industry, like textile industry, has moved to countries like Bangladesh, while strangely no one seems to care about their slave labor. Also, wasn't the "slave labor" the reason why the US cooperated with China, essentially making them what they are today? [1] > They manipulate their currency. How dare they? https://brrr.money https://brrr.money > They entrap other nations with predatory loans for infrastructure. I could write a book about this but whatcha doin' over there? [2] > they happily pollute the earth as if tomorrow isn't a concern. China is ranking 48 in Co2 emissions per capita, the US in ranking 14 (2021) [3] Also they are investing more into renewable energy than every other country, by far [4] > They are scraping the ocean clean to feed their people. China fished 11.7 million metric tons in 2020, the US fished 4.23 million metric tons, China fishes approx. three times as much as the US. [5] But China has 1.4 billion citizens, while the US has 331 million citizens, so China has over 4 times the citizens. Also the average Chinese eats 40.3kg of fish every year, while average American eats 22.2kg of fish every year. [6] So to sum up: China fishes three times as much as the US, while having 4 times the population that eats nearly twice as much fish as a US citizen does. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimerica [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme [3] https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-china-the-main-climate-change-culprit/a-57777113 https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-is-china-the-main-climate-c... [4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-invests-546-billion-in-clean-energy-far-surpassing-the-u-s/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-invests-546... [5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/240225/leading-fishing-nations-worldwide-2008/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/240225/leading-fishing-n... [6] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-and-seafood-consumption-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fish-and-seafood-consumpt...

superchroma 3y ago
Like, great job, but you completely missed the point of the post by addressing the anecdotes. My point was western media prints uniformly negative stories about them and treats them like an enemy. The stories may be true, or not, or fair, or not. It's immaterial. They represent the battle for the hearts and minds of North America.

szundi 3y ago

I would rather simply point out that they are after our way of living.

kjkjadksj 3y ago

How is this any worse than what Saudi Arabia does, that we overtly consider a US ally?

didntknowya 3y ago

The same logic could easily apply to every other manufacturing heavy country (Japan, India, etc). There are just as many unethical companies operating in the country (Dupont/Monsato/3M) hit by massive lawsuits. And trying to influence domestic issues in other countries has led to the numerous wars the US have started in modern times, not to mention the annexation of Hawaii because of blatant business interests. the world is tired of the US finding applying double standards to whoever they want to make their enemy.