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The problem is that China does not want to become the US, they want to become colonial great Britain or France. The goal is classic mercantilism-all raw materia

The problem is that China does not want to become the US, they want to become colonial great Britain or France. The goal is classic mercantilism-all raw material have to go through them to become a product. It's barely disgused Manchester allover. The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire.

pySSK 3y ago
> The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire. [[Citation Needed]]
simonh 3y ago
I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands. They've also made some terrible mistakes such as Vietnam and the 2nd Gulf War. The way the US prosecuted the Korean war was also inexcusable, although I think that one did need to be fought. Let's add some appalling interventions in South America while we're at it. On the other hand the 1st Gulf War was unavoidable, and overall with the exception of the 2nd Gulf War over the last 40 years they've more or less tried to do the right thing. Today it's widely recognised across parties in the US that 2GW was a mistake. Still, since WW2 they've sunk vast resources into guaranteeing Western European security, and spent Trillions guaranteeing global freedom of navigation that's benefited everybody. They've been aggressive economically, true, but that's a whole massive deal better than being aggressive militarily and overall global trade in the last 70 years has had incredible benefits. Global poverty has collapsed to a tiny fraction of what it was, the middle class has risen from about 5% to about 60% of the world population, life expectancy rates have soared. Death rates from war have collapsed. The stats on that are up on the last decade it's still historically low. The majority of this happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What Russia and China want to do is take the world back to a cold war situation of vying spheres of geographic influence. What the US wants to do is get out of the world police business while maintaining a peaceful global order conducive to business. So we have Russia and China flexing their territorial military muscles, while the US builds networks of alliances such as an expanded NATO, AUKUS, the Quad and such to better share the load. I say alliances, but for the latter US strategy to succeed it eventually needs to include nations that are not traditional US allies. India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, even places like Vietnam. These will or may never align with the US and Europe the way the US and Europe do, so such relationships will have to be transactional in nature. Partnerships rather than true alliances, based on common interests around eliminating the scope for military expansionism that favours big regional military hegemons. So sure, a lot of past mistakes for sure, but the question for us now is where does the world go from here?
- sand_castles 3y ago
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- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  > I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands This is the ruse. The US is a global empire. Except, as history has shown, imperialism is somewhat unpopular to local populations. The US modern imperialism playbook is designed so the population really believes they are self governing themselves. The US doesn’t care who runs the day to day domestic government, so long as they have military bases, are the primary trading partner, and effectively direct this countries foreign and economic policies unilaterally. The fact you think the American empire is limited to a few vestigial takings from the pacific theater of wwii shows how effective this modern and silent hegemony really is.
  - simonh 3y ago
    The actual desires and interests of actual citizens, even in vibrant democracies with changes of elected government and free speech, don't count. Nice.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Its by design. Military is a separate entity from domestic elected government the world over. If you know anyone who is in the leadership side of the military or in the state dept, its very interesting having conversations learning about how these agencies view the world and how actual power is manifested.
      - simonh 3y ago
        Frankly it's bullshit. The Putinist narrative that democracy is a sham makes sense for a man isolated from the real world that doesn't use the internet, but it's stunning to me how disconnected some people in the west can be from the society they live in. I have family in the British military at a moderately high level. A friend was a researcher for an MP, and another a government adviser. Sure politics is messy, it's the art of the possible and expedient. Of course it's not ideal, but as the saying goes Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. You're never going to get perfect, the best you can get is consensus and the consent of the governed. We have that. I revile Trump, but he did do one thing for us. He proved that US democracy is real. All the Washington consensus clubbyness was pushed aside, corporate capture and bought influence were bulldozed over. None of the establishment wanted him, but he's what we got through a massive grass roots movement. He was an utter disaster, but it was a genuine demonstration of democracy in action.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
> and overall been quite friendly an empire Just a few million in civilian casualties here and there. Because remember, Saddam has WMDs. When was the last time China went to war with another country on a false pretense and massacred millions?
- PestoDiRucola 3y ago
  Well they didn’t go to war with another country, but the great leap forward massacred millions of chinese citizens.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    If we’re going to go into history and massacring your own people, then America isn’t entirely the example you want to emulate. Remember the whole Native American massacre thing that America has convniently forgotten about.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
      I think there is a bit of a difference whether the massacre happened in the 1860 or 1960, and whether the last larger massacre of protestors happened in 1970 and is generally, officially and publicly recognized as a bad thing with memorials etc. [1], or whether it happened in 1989, involved tanks and hundreds to thousands of deaths, and people are persecuted for even mentioning it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
      - spaceman_2020 3y ago
        Well, when Mao was doing his great leaps, American citizens had to literally had to march in the streets for basic civil rights. Again, not exactly a clean record. Glass houses and stones and all that. Point is, in the living memory of most people on the earth, i.e. people below 30, the only wars waged against non-neighbors have been Americans invading Iraq and Afghanistan. So from the place most non-Americans stand, America is a belligerent and irresponsible power. What someone did in 1960 is important and can't be glazed over, but as a 30 year old, it's hard to understand and even harder to contextualize. But Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh enough in everyone's memory, to the point that I remember the headlines about the fake WMDs and the numbers about civilian deaths.
eunos 3y ago
Whereas American want all currency exchange have to go through them to become a product.
croes 3y ago
>They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire. As long as the others did what they want. See multiple countries in South America and the Middle East. Even China's lack of human rights weren't a problem until they became a real competitor.
surgical_fire 3y ago
> overall been quite friendly an empire. Yes they friendly helped install military dictatorships in Latin American countries. They friendly invaded Iraq under false pretenses. They friendly waged wars and used economic sanctions against countries that for on reason or another didn't conform to their dominant position. Don't misunderstand me. The US has the power to oppress, and is an opressor. It is business as usual. Just cut the crap of calling it "friendly".
- partiallypro 3y ago
  Relatively speaking it's undeniable that the US has been the most "friendly" "empire" or "super power" in World history. That doesn't mean it's never done anything wrong.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    Can you share any research or resources on this topic that have led you to this conclusion?
    - dr_hooo 3y ago
      Could you also just share which previous empire you believe has been more "friendly"?
      - Timon3 3y ago
        I don't know how friendly or unfriendly previous empires were, so I'd like to read up more on it, but I honestly don't know what keywords I'd look for. Asking the one who made the claim for references seems like the best way for me to understand their comment better. Why do you expect me to provide arguments counter to theirs?
        FreshStart 3y ago
        You want to look out for border regions, the small nations were other empires ended and went back and forth. You look for civil wars (empire lovers VS suppressed), cultural extinction attempts and empire imitators.. Aka small nations behaving atrocious to remain free by mimicry.. Sift through history and you get to know alot of empires that were and are worser.
bakuninsbart 3y ago
This is just false, there is little evidence to suggest anything of the kind. China wants to secure its imperial borders (Tibet, Xinjiang) as a show of national pride, and it wants to ensure the security of its people by making sure the islands in front of the mainland can't be used to stage an attack and the SCS cannot be blockaded by the US. American senators and generals proudly proclaim they have the power to starve the Chinese with a blockade in the SCS or block access to the Pacific - it is only natural for China to not want to be in that situation. None of the actions China resembles European colonialism.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  There is actually some truth to that. China has very poor access to the ocean, so they are pretty easy to blockade. But this is true even if they can successfully colonize the South China Sea. There are just way too many countries around that part of the world who aren’t in China’s corner, who are mostly afraid of China after being invaded by it for thousands of years.
saiya-jin 3y ago
That may be perspective of US person with desperate need for feel-good. Hundreds of millions of people who have seen their lives destroyed by US military-industrial complex directly, or by CIA et al power games, be if communism scare, russian scare or now China scare would strongly disagree. Also that abandoning it own production base was not action of some goodwill, rather just greedy cost optimization which is now deeply regretted and as much as possible reverted back. I do get this is US forum so opinions are strongly biased towards one side, and I personally am very happy with current US hegemony, but lets be a bit honest here. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin america coups, African coups. CIA starting arab springs and ie war in Syria. The blood trail of innocents is more like amazon river during height of monsoon, all around the world. Now look at China. Not really comparable, is it.
pokepim 3y ago
[dead]

pySSK 3y ago

> The US by comparison has been quite dedicated to free trade. They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire. [[Citation Needed]]

simonh 3y ago

I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands. They've also made some terrible mistakes such as Vietnam and the 2nd Gulf War. The way the US prosecuted the Korean war was also inexcusable, although I think that one did need to be fought. Let's add some appalling interventions in South America while we're at it. On the other hand the 1st Gulf War was unavoidable, and overall with the exception of the 2nd Gulf War over the last 40 years they've more or less tried to do the right thing. Today it's widely recognised across parties in the US that 2GW was a mistake. Still, since WW2 they've sunk vast resources into guaranteeing Western European security, and spent Trillions guaranteeing global freedom of navigation that's benefited everybody. They've been aggressive economically, true, but that's a whole massive deal better than being aggressive militarily and overall global trade in the last 70 years has had incredible benefits. Global poverty has collapsed to a tiny fraction of what it was, the middle class has risen from about 5% to about 60% of the world population, life expectancy rates have soared. Death rates from war have collapsed. The stats on that are up on the last decade it's still historically low. The majority of this happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What Russia and China want to do is take the world back to a cold war situation of vying spheres of geographic influence. What the US wants to do is get out of the world police business while maintaining a peaceful global order conducive to business. So we have Russia and China flexing their territorial military muscles, while the US builds networks of alliances such as an expanded NATO, AUKUS, the Quad and such to better share the load. I say alliances, but for the latter US strategy to succeed it eventually needs to include nations that are not traditional US allies. India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, even places like Vietnam. These will or may never align with the US and Europe the way the US and Europe do, so such relationships will have to be transactional in nature. Partnerships rather than true alliances, based on common interests around eliminating the scope for military expansionism that favours big regional military hegemons. So sure, a lot of past mistakes for sure, but the question for us now is where does the world go from here?

sand_castles 3y ago
[dead]
kjkjadksj 3y ago
> I'd say the US is a hegemon but not really an Empire except for a few small islands This is the ruse. The US is a global empire. Except, as history has shown, imperialism is somewhat unpopular to local populations. The US modern imperialism playbook is designed so the population really believes they are self governing themselves. The US doesn’t care who runs the day to day domestic government, so long as they have military bases, are the primary trading partner, and effectively direct this countries foreign and economic policies unilaterally. The fact you think the American empire is limited to a few vestigial takings from the pacific theater of wwii shows how effective this modern and silent hegemony really is.
- simonh 3y ago
  The actual desires and interests of actual citizens, even in vibrant democracies with changes of elected government and free speech, don't count. Nice.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Its by design. Military is a separate entity from domestic elected government the world over. If you know anyone who is in the leadership side of the military or in the state dept, its very interesting having conversations learning about how these agencies view the world and how actual power is manifested.
    - simonh 3y ago
      Frankly it's bullshit. The Putinist narrative that democracy is a sham makes sense for a man isolated from the real world that doesn't use the internet, but it's stunning to me how disconnected some people in the west can be from the society they live in. I have family in the British military at a moderately high level. A friend was a researcher for an MP, and another a government adviser. Sure politics is messy, it's the art of the possible and expedient. Of course it's not ideal, but as the saying goes Democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. You're never going to get perfect, the best you can get is consensus and the consent of the governed. We have that. I revile Trump, but he did do one thing for us. He proved that US democracy is real. All the Washington consensus clubbyness was pushed aside, corporate capture and bought influence were bulldozed over. None of the establishment wanted him, but he's what we got through a massive grass roots movement. He was an utter disaster, but it was a genuine demonstration of democracy in action.

spaceman_2020 3y ago

> and overall been quite friendly an empire Just a few million in civilian casualties here and there. Because remember, Saddam has WMDs. When was the last time China went to war with another country on a false pretense and massacred millions?

PestoDiRucola 3y ago
Well they didn’t go to war with another country, but the great leap forward massacred millions of chinese citizens.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  If we’re going to go into history and massacring your own people, then America isn’t entirely the example you want to emulate. Remember the whole Native American massacre thing that America has convniently forgotten about.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago
    I think there is a bit of a difference whether the massacre happened in the 1860 or 1960, and whether the last larger massacre of protestors happened in 1970 and is generally, officially and publicly recognized as a bad thing with memorials etc. [1], or whether it happened in 1989, involved tanks and hundreds to thousands of deaths, and people are persecuted for even mentioning it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
    - spaceman_2020 3y ago
      Well, when Mao was doing his great leaps, American citizens had to literally had to march in the streets for basic civil rights. Again, not exactly a clean record. Glass houses and stones and all that. Point is, in the living memory of most people on the earth, i.e. people below 30, the only wars waged against non-neighbors have been Americans invading Iraq and Afghanistan. So from the place most non-Americans stand, America is a belligerent and irresponsible power. What someone did in 1960 is important and can't be glazed over, but as a 30 year old, it's hard to understand and even harder to contextualize. But Iraq and Afghanistan is fresh enough in everyone's memory, to the point that I remember the headlines about the fake WMDs and the numbers about civilian deaths.

eunos 3y ago

Whereas American want all currency exchange have to go through them to become a product.

croes 3y ago

>They abandoned there own production base, imported more culture then they exported and overall been quite friendly an empire. As long as the others did what they want. See multiple countries in South America and the Middle East. Even China's lack of human rights weren't a problem until they became a real competitor.

surgical_fire 3y ago

> overall been quite friendly an empire. Yes they friendly helped install military dictatorships in Latin American countries. They friendly invaded Iraq under false pretenses. They friendly waged wars and used economic sanctions against countries that for on reason or another didn't conform to their dominant position. Don't misunderstand me. The US has the power to oppress, and is an opressor. It is business as usual. Just cut the crap of calling it "friendly".

partiallypro 3y ago
Relatively speaking it's undeniable that the US has been the most "friendly" "empire" or "super power" in World history. That doesn't mean it's never done anything wrong.
- Timon3 3y ago
  Can you share any research or resources on this topic that have led you to this conclusion?
  - dr_hooo 3y ago
    Could you also just share which previous empire you believe has been more "friendly"?
    - Timon3 3y ago
      I don't know how friendly or unfriendly previous empires were, so I'd like to read up more on it, but I honestly don't know what keywords I'd look for. Asking the one who made the claim for references seems like the best way for me to understand their comment better. Why do you expect me to provide arguments counter to theirs?
      - FreshStart 3y ago
        You want to look out for border regions, the small nations were other empires ended and went back and forth. You look for civil wars (empire lovers VS suppressed), cultural extinction attempts and empire imitators.. Aka small nations behaving atrocious to remain free by mimicry.. Sift through history and you get to know alot of empires that were and are worser.

bakuninsbart 3y ago

This is just false, there is little evidence to suggest anything of the kind. China wants to secure its imperial borders (Tibet, Xinjiang) as a show of national pride, and it wants to ensure the security of its people by making sure the islands in front of the mainland can't be used to stage an attack and the SCS cannot be blockaded by the US. American senators and generals proudly proclaim they have the power to starve the Chinese with a blockade in the SCS or block access to the Pacific - it is only natural for China to not want to be in that situation. None of the actions China resembles European colonialism.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
There is actually some truth to that. China has very poor access to the ocean, so they are pretty easy to blockade. But this is true even if they can successfully colonize the South China Sea. There are just way too many countries around that part of the world who aren’t in China’s corner, who are mostly afraid of China after being invaded by it for thousands of years.

saiya-jin 3y ago

That may be perspective of US person with desperate need for feel-good. Hundreds of millions of people who have seen their lives destroyed by US military-industrial complex directly, or by CIA et al power games, be if communism scare, russian scare or now China scare would strongly disagree. Also that abandoning it own production base was not action of some goodwill, rather just greedy cost optimization which is now deeply regretted and as much as possible reverted back. I do get this is US forum so opinions are strongly biased towards one side, and I personally am very happy with current US hegemony, but lets be a bit honest here. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin america coups, African coups. CIA starting arab springs and ie war in Syria. The blood trail of innocents is more like amazon river during height of monsoon, all around the world. Now look at China. Not really comparable, is it.

pokepim 3y ago

[dead]