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I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. I get that china is a direct economic threat. That’s o

I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. I get that china is a direct economic threat. That’s obvious. I also get that china is a philosophical threat on a level different to the Soviet Union (that was freedom produces more wealth than totalitarianism - which the US won.). The problem with China is that the argument is much harder to win - china is doing well economically (kinda) - and has not given up its totalitarian control. Their argument was the Soviet Union tried central command economics whereas we are something something power of markets and chinese culture. What gets me is that this is not something to win on the battlefield - this is something where we (being liberal democracies) need to double down on liberal democracy- both the production of wealth and the use of that wealth to raise the living standards of all its citizens - in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful. Yea that’s wealth taxes, yes it’s more spending on infrastructure and education and sharing the wealth, and teaching ourselves to aspire to better. Not (just) having bigger guns.

klyrs 2y ago
We'll settle for having more guns per capita
wesselbindt 2y ago
We didn't win the ideological battle against communism through liberal democratic means. That's a common misconception. The war against communism was fought and won with violence. Sometimes this violence was meted out directly by the US (in the case of Vietnam (about 0.5 million civilian casualties), North Korea (1 million), Cambodia (150k)), and in a lot of cases by local militias armed and trained by the US (Indonesia 0.5M dead, the Chile coup leading to Pinochet being in power). The forceful intervention of the US in foreign countries whenever they tried to be even slightly leftist is well documented. Heck, we even armed and trained Bin Laden in the fight against communism! Maybe within the US itself it was fought with liberal democratic means (although, McCarthyism is a thing), most of the world by population had to be convinced violently. That isn't to say that all communists were all nice and peaceful like the ones in Chile and Indonesia; Pol Pot and Stalin need no introduction. But to say we won the war with words and ideas dismisses the suffering and pain of millions as non-existent. And no matter where you stand on the debate, that's a bit disrespectful.
- ngcazz 2y ago
  Manufacturing Consent defines anti-communism as the US's national religion and a pillar of political power...
- Jensson 2y ago
  > The forceful intervention of the US in foreign countries whenever they tried to be even slightly leftist is well documented. This is nonsense, there are plenty of very leftist countries that USA didn't attack, so that provably wasn't the reason. Communism is first and foremost anti democratic and authoritarian in these countries, that is the main issue. If you take Sweden that was very close to going towards worker owned economy in the 80's USA didn't do anything to them, same with rest of Europe. Sweden since then became much more right wing and moved away from those ideas, but at the time it looked very likely.
  - ah27182 2y ago
    The point the parent comment made still stands, why did the US fund so many coups/regime changes up until the modern day? Your answer as to why seems to be “communism is antidemocratic and authoritarian”. If that’s the case, why were so many Western backed regimes also antidemocratic and authoritarian?
    - Jensson 2y ago
      I don't know, I am not an expert, but I can say for sure it wasn't just "they did something left wing". My main point the attacks happened for some other reason, it could be more noble but could also be more ulterior like economic control etc. They aren't a raging lunatic that attacks anyone who tries to do left wing things, at worst they are a cold calculating evil villain that manipulates the world to their own benefit.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      American interventionism in the Cold War largely got started under Eisenhower. His administration’s policy could be best described as a reaction against Soviet moves (or perceived Soviet moves) in the countries affected. And so by engaging in regime change, the rationale was that this prevented that state from aligning with the Soviets. This seems to have worked in many cases but not in others, but I won’t get into the historical details here. The point is that lot of people seem to forget that the USSR wasn’t sitting at home, either, and was deliberately funding political actions around the world as a part of the Cold War. Whether that “justifies” US interventionism is a different question, but people seem to talk about it as if the US was acting in a vacuum.
anonylizard 2y ago
You completely do not mention, that China is MILITARY THREAT. 1. China takes Taiwan 2. China dominates all chip manufacturing 3. China dominates the AI industry 4. China overthrows the US tech industry supremacy by dominating global markets 5. US economy collapses (It is not exaggerating to say the tech industry is the lifeblood of US economic growth, just look at the stock market) The philosophical argument is actually irrelevant, since China isn't trying to export its ideology that much beyond some alliances of convenience. China never tried to win that argument either, it just blocked off the internet with its firewall, and focused on building its economy. China is first and foremost a military threat, then an economic threat. Hence why winning AI is so pivotal (AI drones will dominate battlefields and jobs).
- sschueller 2y ago
  Sorry but that take is insane. Don't you think that people in China just want to live just like people in the US? China dominating the Tech industry vs the US makes no difference to a majority of the people in the world. The US no longer being able to print money (without massive inflation) out of thin air would force it to be more fiscally responsible like many other countries have to be.
  - anonylizard 2y ago
    Are you insane? China can only achieve that by forcibly conquering Taiwan, with minimum hundreds of thousands of casualties. China can't win a peaceful competition against the US in the long run, because China is undergoing total demographic collapse (Marriage/birth rates declining 10% yoy every year). China's plan is to sprint for the last stretch, while its population can still work. As for the US, it is really held together by the massive wealth from its tech and financial dominance. Given the enormous social fractures today (please don't forget that Trump was nearly assassinated 1 month ago), an structural economic collapse will mean civil war.
    - sschueller 2y ago
      Are you really claiming that there aren't as smart Chinese engineers as in the US? China is very capable of innovating on its own just like Europe and the US. There are even many Chinese that go to US universities and leave after graduation back to China.
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gexla 2y ago
A major item is the prevention of the proliferation of nukes. The U.S. has security agreements (or assumptions) with allies. If the U.S. appears weak, then allies freak out and nuke up. China and Taiwan are nearly at war. If the U.S. doesn't come through for Taiwan, then everyone gets nervous. Japan and S. Korea likely get nukes the fastest, since they are tech powerhouses. Then European countries may follow suit. Then, each enemy of every new entry to the nuke club also feels pressure to get nukes. Next, everyone gets in a race to build more nukes. Additionally, you get the same issue as with Russia. If a big power takes a smaller power, then where do they stop? What is to stop them from taking everything. And this is already happening. China has been in low level clashes with the Philippines to take forcefully reshape borders. If they do this to Taiwan and the Philippines, then they likely will do this to every country in a border dispute with China. And Taiwan is strategically important. Japan faces a greater threat from a China controlled Taiwan. That's why China wants Taiwan. The island is important to China's national security. In this world, you have a nightmare situation of more fingers on more triggers. More MAD targets for everyone. A greater possibility that someone actually pulls a trigger. And the thing is, China doesn't care about this. If every country on the planet being nuked up was the price to pay for domination, then so be it.
- Aeolos 2y ago
  > And the thing is, China doesn't care about this. If every country on the planet being nuked up was the price to pay for domination, then so be it. Citation needed.
  - gexla 2y ago
    You don't need a citation. You can see from their actions. And China isn't going to come out and say this anyway. But the leaders of the country know what the results would be, and still they continue with an aggressive posture vs Taiwan and the U.S.
    - impomura 2y ago
      yup, their actions of not being involved into every single war going on right in the world.Very scary
gkanai 2y ago
As someone who spent 5 years in China pre-pandemic, China is a threat to many nations due to their growth. The Chinese govt. is specifically targeting key markets (EVs, solar, battery tech, steel, semiconductors) and China makes much more of those items that can be used internally in China. So China ends up driving any non-Chinese battery or solar panel manufacturer out of business. If Chinese EVs were to be sold widely in the US, they would be less than half the cost of any Western-made EV and would take over the EV market. A future where Chinese companies own the EV market in the US with all of the American user data going back to servers in China- that's just not a future the US govt. wants- no govt. (outside of China's own) should want that. Then there's the whole Fentanyl epidemic in the US and elsewhere. That is largely due to Chinese chemical manufacturers who are selling the chemicals to Mexico and then those drugs are smuggled into the US. There are many to blame here but the US has been pushing China to ban the sale of these chemicals outside of China for a long time without agreement. China realizes this is important to the US and it's being used as a key trade issue. "doubling down on liberal democracy" got us to where we are now wrt China. China doesn't respond to liberal democracy. They only respond to force or trade embargos, or tariffs. That's what was learned as Xi decided to become dictator for life.
- skrebbel 2y ago
  To nitpick a single point: > A future where Chinese companies own the EV market in the US with all of the American user data going back to servers in China- that's just not a future the US govt. wants I agree, but why do cars need to send data to servers again? I don't grok why Tesla does it and I don't grok why BYD does it either. What's wrong with the alternative where we allow real competition that benefits everyone, and then ban any features (eg sending data to servers) that the government gets nervous about? I don't see how this is any different from the myriad of other requirements on cars (eg mandated safety belts etc etc etc). I recognize that state-subsidised competition still isn't fair, so I support import tariffs that match those subsidies, but any further and you're just hurting competition and the consumer, right? Thing is, super cheap EVs and solar panels is exactly what we should want. There's a climate crisis going on and these things are a big part of the solution. With climate goggles on, to put import tariffs on the tech that's gonna save the world sound batshit insane. We should want those tariffs to be as low as possible.
reducesuffering 2y ago
It's actually about one major thing. Will China invade Taiwan, a country and 20 million people that have lived free of the Communist Party for 70 years, and if so, what does that mean for the US and allies to do something about it or let it happen? If the US tries to prevent it, that's a package of huge "war-like anti-Chinese (government) sentiment" ramifications that should've been grappled with a decade ago. If the US doesn't prevent it, Pax Americana is officially over, and the world will know what the collapse of World Order really looks like and what that means for the diminishing prosperity that first worlders are accustomed to.
- kolme 2y ago
  Pax Americana is a farce. There was always war going on and America was always involved, and for their own imperial interests. This narrative that the US are the good guys and they are the police of the world is the propaganda of the empire. It's coolaid. I don't think the Chinese or whatever other empire comes will be better. But this Pax Americana is just lies. Go tell Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on about it.
  - weweersdfsd 2y ago
    US sure do seem like the good guys, if you happen to live next to even worse guys, such as Russia. The US might want your natural resources, but that's less bad than Russia's desire to annex your entire nation and genocide its population.
    - kolme 2y ago
      Well, I don't know. If we look at the body counts, I think being in the receiving end of getting democratized by the USA is actually worse. But this is "whataboutism" and not addressing the point of my comment. The actual point of my comment is: the narratives of good guys / bad guys are silly propaganda. Geopolitics were never about morals, unluckily for us. Edit: for the record, by no means I like the Russian regime "better" than the west. Yes, Putin bad.
SophonTuring 2y ago
Freedom is better because it removes hurdles to more rapid evolutions of efficiency, which leads to better utilization of energy, bringing better material life for every human. Other than that, I'm genuinely curious about the origin of the "inevitable war that we have to win for humanity" sentiment. Where does this judgment come from? It's perplexing to hear such a deterministic and high-stakes view being expressed in elite circles. I wonder what specific factors or events have led to this conclusion, and whether it's based on concrete evidence or if it's more of a narrative that has gained traction. It would be interesting to understand the reasoning behind this perspective, especially given the complex and multifaceted nature of US-China relations. Are there particular think tanks, policy papers, or influential figures promoting this idea? I'd be very interested in tracing the development and spread of this sentiment, as it seems to have significant implications for international relations and policy-making.
- oreally 2y ago
  > Other than that, I'm genuinely curious about the origin of the "inevitable war that we have to win for humanity" sentiment. There is a line of evidence/thinking that says relations between democracies are a lot more stable. So if you make everyone a democracy there would be no wars and a lot more peace. And peace is what humanity (or each individual) aspires to be. Unfortunately this may result in some degree of intervention or politicking that others may not like. Intervention, specifically, is forcing judgement onto others. Regarding these elites, you could say it's a calling from whatever Christian god that tells them to spread whatever good they deem it to be. But it may just as well be hubris, or human nature - a superiority complex that comes from being at the top of the chain of 'merit' and status. Anyway, it's happened before. Even in the colonial times there were British who thought colonizing India was a 100% good thing for humanity. > Freedom is better because it removes hurdles to more rapid evolutions of efficiency, which leads to better utilization of energy, bringing better material life for every human. Anything taken to extremes is bad. The chinese that studied in America and decided to go back made such a decision when they saw things like school shootings and riots.
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bertylicious 2y ago
> freedom produces more wealth than totalitarianism - which the US won > The problem with China is that the argument is much harder to win > What gets me is that this is not something to win on the battlefield Authoritarian state capitalism already won this fight. Everybody is realizing that the marriage between liberal democracy and bourgeois capitalism is coming to an end. For Western societies, the only remaining ways to assert dominance are 1) war & violence, 2) becoming more authoritarian themselves, or 3) a radically new way Western societies organize production and the distribution of wealth.
- bjornsing 2y ago
  > Everybody is realizing that the marriage between liberal democracy and bourgeois capitalism is coming to an end. I’m not. What do you recommend me to read, in order to come to that realization?
- refurb 2y ago
  I’m trying to understand where this perspective is coming from? From most measures China has peaked. Its state capitalism has gotten it a housing bubble and investment in industries with not enough customers. Combine that with its falling birth rate and high youth unemployment it would seem that the failures, not successes, are on display.
- rocqua 2y ago
  How is it clear that authoritarian state capitalism has won the fight? China is still less productive per Capita than the west. Most of it's advantage comes from it's population size, and demographics are bringing that to a halt.
  - deah12 2y ago
    [flagged]
- torginus 2y ago
  I disagree. People don't want to live under authoritarian regimes. I'm willing to bet that for many working professionals have moved to the West to escape authoritarianism at home, and were willing to accept lower living standards (smaller home etc.) in exchange for greater freedom and peace of mind.
impossiblefork 2y ago
Before this there was an explosion in anti-European sentiment as well. Lots of American newspaper articles disparaging European engineering and scientific work, disparaging European work culture, etc. Even now, if somebody here comes up with something they will be referred to as 'scientists' while others in the US will be referred to by name and university; and this stuff is on Wikipedia too. People like Håkan Lans, who in reality is a Polhem prize and Thulin medal winner, are presented as if though they were patent trolls. This became less prominent-- it's still going on, but still slightly less prominent, so maybe the US is capable of calming itself down.
logicchains 2y ago
>The problem with China is that the argument is much harder to win - china is doing well economically (kinda) - and has not given up its totalitarian control. China's GDP _per capita_ is still 4-8x lower than the US depending on how you measure it. Its overall GDP is just very big because its population is very big. Given the recent slowdown in the Chinese economy, it's looking like it'll take a very long time for per capita GDP (the living standards of Chinese people) to catch up to the US.
- fragmede 2y ago
  > per capita GDP (the living standards of Chinese people) note that the parenthetical isn't entirely true. it's a very mathematical measure of living standards, and sure, one number is much bigger than the other, which does mean something, but how happy are you really doomscrolling various feeds about how the world is doomed? The wrong person's gonna get elected, you just know it. How happy can you really be knowing that to be the future? Or, hey, know anybody who's died from fentanyl recently? There's a lot GDP doesn't capture. Hell, in terms of buying more things and driving the economy, you could look at it and say divorce is good for GDP since everybody is now buying twice as much stuff, not to mention all the lawyers bills. Not sure I'd argue that it's great for living standards though. so yes, let's compare GDP for what it measures, money number divided by people number, and see that our number is bigger, yay. But simplifying that to living standards is lazy shortcut thinking. If a FAANG engineer makes $400k/yr, but minimum wage is $15/hr or $30,000, their average pay is $215k, which sounds pretty great! The living standards for two someones making $215k are much nicer than for the one person making $30k. How much do you trust your neighbors? How about those city/rural/suburb folk, especially the ones the extremists on the opposite side of the political spectrum? That contribute to a good living standard? GDP isn't a good measure of living standards, it's a neat number to compare, and means something, but it doesn't define living standards.
- torginus 2y ago
  Honestly, I'm less and less inclined to believe in these numbers. If your average Chinese person lives in a comfortable, well-built apartment that costs 1/4th of what it would cost in the US, drives a car that's similarly built but cost $10k instead of $40k, and eats food thats the quarter of the price, could you convincingly state that he has the quarter of the actual wealth, even though the numbers would indicate that.
KoolKat23 2y ago
Well it's primarily driven by what's going on in China, not what's going on the US. The prior three decades were driven by the line of thought that a prosperous economy tends towards democracy and that prosperity prevents war. Allied to this, the expectation was that this would be mutually beneficial with both parties pursuing it in good faith. Since then, it's become clear it's not the case. China have found the loopholes, their lack of IP (intellectual property rights) enforcement and government corporate espionage have shown the relationship is asymmetric and to the detriment of the US. Xi has also strengthened his hold on power dramatically, breaking with his predecessors gradual loosening of control. This leads to more risk of irrational ideological driven decisions such as war, maintaining prosperity is no longer necessarily the main driving factor. Intelligence around Chinese military build up around Taiwan are concerning evidence of this. The Chinese economy's rapid growth is also slowing.
- pas 2y ago
  there was no loophole. the problem was that the USA did not enforce the reciprocity principles of WTO with regards to China. (mostly because business was booming. so short-term thinking got us here.)
bjornsing 2y ago
> What gets me is that this is not something to win on the battlefield - this is something where we (being liberal democracies) need to double down on liberal democracy- both the production of wealth and the use of that wealth to raise the living standards of all its citizens - in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful. I could definitely get behind this. Sadly it doesn’t seem to be what people want, at least not here in Sweden. The dominant branch of political thought is more like something something power of government and Swedish culture.
freddierest 2y ago
> I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. I think they're predicting large military spending and are seeking the power, influence, and money that can come from being an early leader.
refurb 2y ago
in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful. China isn’t going to roll over because life is better in the US. In the end it will come down to power and the ability to project it. You can do that a lot of different ways - politically, economically or militarily, but in the end whether life is better in the US won’t really matter.
- immibis 2y ago
  The Chinese state won't, but if freedom is really so much better, the people will find ways to escape non-freedom - just like they already do from every country that's obviously worse than the USA and the USA seems powerless to stop - and the Chinese state will have no choice except to become free or suffer brain drain and collapse.
  - deah12 2y ago
    FYI, china has gotten much better at brainwashing over the past 10 years with the new age propaganda machine and increased censorship. Don't act like all this information is public.
aurareturn 2y ago
>I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. In my opinion, it's not about communist vs democracy, IP theft, ideology, Taiwan, etc. Elites hardly care. These are just the topics used by the government to get common people riled up. The sentiment comes from increasing competition from China in the upper value chain where these elites get their wealth from. These elites want China to manufacture phones for them. They don't want China to design phones and sell it to consumers directly. The same sentiment was found when Japan looked like it was going to take over the world economically. It's a lot easier for the government to get its citizens to become anti-China if they use anti-communist, IP theft, human rights, etc. propaganda. Commoners resonate with these much easier. It's not going to work as well if the government tells you to hate China because they're increasingly more competitive at high value things such as design and services.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  It’s easy to see why as well. Take Zuckerberg for example. He went in front of congress and spouted as much anti-china rhetoric as he can. He obviously does not want competition from Chinese social media companies such as TikTok. He wants TikTok banned. Meta even admitted that it hired a PR agency to try to connect TikTok to CCP. Take Elon for example. He definitely wants Trump in office because he knows if Chinese EVs ever make it to American shores, Tesla would have fierce competition. Trump wanting massive tariffs on Chinese goods matters little to Elon. Elon doesn’t care if he has to pay $5 for a Chinese good at Walmart instead of $2.50. Only commoners will suffer. But as long as Elon gets extremely high tariffs on Chinese EVs, he’ll be happy. For Schmidt, it’s clear that he has big ownership stakes in American tech companies. Chinese tech companies are a real threat to them in competition.
  - munksbeer 2y ago
    For what it's worth, we in the UK have pretty good labour laws and welfare systems, minimum standards, environmental protections etc. All of this has evolved over time as a way to ensure no race to the bottom happens and most people can lead a decent life. Now, some people may disagree with this on a philosophical level (libertarians for example), but it is what it is. If you now just mass import anything and everything from a country with much lower "standards" (I use the term to encompass all of the above and whatever else), then it means your own working population get cheaper stuff, but suffer from the loss of jobs. Not only that, but it creeps into everything. Where once you were high value design, even that starts leaking out of society into a country willing to undercut you on "standards". This is all very well known, so I don't really think it is much of a surprise that there is a push back. I'm just surprised that it hasn't happened more and sooner.
pluc 2y ago
The US cannot exist without enemies.
adastra22 2y ago
Maybe the fact that China is threatening Taiwan, our ally, with war on a nearly daily basis?
whoitwas 2y ago
USA has always been anti China because we perceive them as opposed to our (American) way of life. Whether it exists in reality or not, we view them as a communist dictatorship with no freedom and poor quality of life whereas we're the capitalist land of freedom. So China exists and grows by opposing American ideals and this scares Americans.
torginus 2y ago
Just watched a documentary of drone warfare in the Ukraine war. Many of the drones presented, that have been developed in the fires of war to meet evolving threats have no equivalents in the West, or their equivalents are orders of magnitude more expensive, and cannot be manufactured en masse. Most of these drones on both sides, are either lightly modified Chinese designs, or have a very large percentage of Chinese-made components. China has already managed to dominate a new mode of warfare and make a huge profit from it while supplying both sides of the deadliest modern war in Europe.
redwood 2y ago
There's a pent-up frustration about the imbalance... US businesses are not allowed to do business in China; meanwhile Chinese businesses run freely in the united states.. until that imbalance is fixed business executives are going to use any tool in their toolbox to raise the heat about china. This is the simple truth of the matter right now
dauertewigkeit 2y ago
I really don't see western elites caring about freedom, lol.
joshellington 2y ago
Without an enemy (or two) the entire post-1945 identity construct of the USA (and its allies) does not have a purpose. It’s pretty plain and simple.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  There's some truth in that, but it's a much more apt description of post-Soviet Russia. They celebrate their WW2 win like a bona fide religious event every year.
sgu999 2y ago
> in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful That's not what these people care about. Someone like Schmidt or Musk would be perfectly happy in a CCP-like regime, as long as they can be at the top. They were fine investing money in China when they thought the country was going to be a complete free market they could rule. That's also why they hate the EU so much, because sometimes the EU is bothering their corps a bit.
5350-uiop-1130 2y ago
the root of all authority is violence america wants to maintain the authority to dictate who gets what and for how much and to make sure they get first dibs on everything
michaelt 2y ago
> I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. About half of America's political elites owe fealty to Trump - so a tough, America First, anti-foreigner, every-other-nation-is-a-rival stance is currently in fashion.
aubanel 2y ago
Maybe it's an occurrence of Thucydides trap: the reigning power is afraid to lose its crown, and as a result becomes more and more aggressive towards the growing power. It seems to me that many Americans are personally sensitive about these issues of power. It's also the case with Russia : I agree that Russia is doing terrible things, but people tend to see the Russian enemy everywhere. Cf the arson on train lines in France at the beginning of the Olympics: even here where people are normally rational, every single comment was focusing on Russia and ignoring other possibilities. But actually it was done by French far-left activists.
- deah12 2y ago
  The thucydides trap is just some bs invented by US foreign policy circles about how war is inevitable. It's not.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
If I wake up to find that I’m going to die from ww3 over some nonsense involving Taiwan, I’ll make sure to die happy, knowing that the fifty cent army will be dying right around the same time that I do.
ls612 2y ago
The People's Republic of China is a revisionist aspiring superpower in east Asia, one of the three great industrialized areas on Earth, structured as a Han Chinese ethno-nationalist state. To make matters worse it aims to seize hegemony over east Asia and to dominate the Western Pacific. This directly implicates the United States as currently most of the non-PRC states in that region are either treaty allies of the USA (Japan, Australia, South Korea) or significant economic powers that provide many crucially important goods to the US (Taiwan, Vietnam). Furthermore, the PRC is embarking on a naval expansion only rivaled in history by the buildup of the German High Seas Fleet in the 1900s. This combines both a grand strategic objective (regional hegemony) with large-scale active efforts to acquire the tools to achieve that objective. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle; The US and other western powers have not faced any major war since 1945 because of atomic weaponry. However, the atomic posture and grand strategic situation between the USA and the PRC is far different from that along the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Both the US and China have nukes yes, but both only have strategic weapons, and those would likely only be used in a situation where the existence of the state was under threat. A war for dominance of the western pacific and east asian hegemony would not be an existential war for either power. This paradoxically makes a hot war far more likely than it was in West Germany, where tactical nuclear weapons were written into the battle plans from Day 1. Combine that with a Chinese state facing a "Now or Never" moment to attempt to achieve their grand strategic objectives as their demographic crisis approaches and the US rearms after 25 years of the unipolar moment, and the late 2020s and early 2030s are looking extremely dangerous. American elites are not stupid and understand this full well and this is why, in the past decade, anti-PRC sentiment has become universal across party lines. Ideology plays a relatively small role in this (beyond of course the fact that the PRC ideology has made them a revisionist power).
tim333 2y ago
>I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming Maybe from China's war like anti the rest of the world actions?

klyrs 2y ago

We'll settle for having more guns per capita

wesselbindt 2y ago

We didn't win the ideological battle against communism through liberal democratic means. That's a common misconception. The war against communism was fought and won with violence. Sometimes this violence was meted out directly by the US (in the case of Vietnam (about 0.5 million civilian casualties), North Korea (1 million), Cambodia (150k)), and in a lot of cases by local militias armed and trained by the US (Indonesia 0.5M dead, the Chile coup leading to Pinochet being in power). The forceful intervention of the US in foreign countries whenever they tried to be even slightly leftist is well documented. Heck, we even armed and trained Bin Laden in the fight against communism! Maybe within the US itself it was fought with liberal democratic means (although, McCarthyism is a thing), most of the world by population had to be convinced violently. That isn't to say that all communists were all nice and peaceful like the ones in Chile and Indonesia; Pol Pot and Stalin need no introduction. But to say we won the war with words and ideas dismisses the suffering and pain of millions as non-existent. And no matter where you stand on the debate, that's a bit disrespectful.

ngcazz 2y ago
Manufacturing Consent defines anti-communism as the US's national religion and a pillar of political power...
Jensson 2y ago
> The forceful intervention of the US in foreign countries whenever they tried to be even slightly leftist is well documented. This is nonsense, there are plenty of very leftist countries that USA didn't attack, so that provably wasn't the reason. Communism is first and foremost anti democratic and authoritarian in these countries, that is the main issue. If you take Sweden that was very close to going towards worker owned economy in the 80's USA didn't do anything to them, same with rest of Europe. Sweden since then became much more right wing and moved away from those ideas, but at the time it looked very likely.
- ah27182 2y ago
  The point the parent comment made still stands, why did the US fund so many coups/regime changes up until the modern day? Your answer as to why seems to be “communism is antidemocratic and authoritarian”. If that’s the case, why were so many Western backed regimes also antidemocratic and authoritarian?
  - Jensson 2y ago
    I don't know, I am not an expert, but I can say for sure it wasn't just "they did something left wing". My main point the attacks happened for some other reason, it could be more noble but could also be more ulterior like economic control etc. They aren't a raging lunatic that attacks anyone who tries to do left wing things, at worst they are a cold calculating evil villain that manipulates the world to their own benefit.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    American interventionism in the Cold War largely got started under Eisenhower. His administration’s policy could be best described as a reaction against Soviet moves (or perceived Soviet moves) in the countries affected. And so by engaging in regime change, the rationale was that this prevented that state from aligning with the Soviets. This seems to have worked in many cases but not in others, but I won’t get into the historical details here. The point is that lot of people seem to forget that the USSR wasn’t sitting at home, either, and was deliberately funding political actions around the world as a part of the Cold War. Whether that “justifies” US interventionism is a different question, but people seem to talk about it as if the US was acting in a vacuum.

anonylizard 2y ago

You completely do not mention, that China is MILITARY THREAT. 1. China takes Taiwan 2. China dominates all chip manufacturing 3. China dominates the AI industry 4. China overthrows the US tech industry supremacy by dominating global markets 5. US economy collapses (It is not exaggerating to say the tech industry is the lifeblood of US economic growth, just look at the stock market) The philosophical argument is actually irrelevant, since China isn't trying to export its ideology that much beyond some alliances of convenience. China never tried to win that argument either, it just blocked off the internet with its firewall, and focused on building its economy. China is first and foremost a military threat, then an economic threat. Hence why winning AI is so pivotal (AI drones will dominate battlefields and jobs).

sschueller 2y ago
Sorry but that take is insane. Don't you think that people in China just want to live just like people in the US? China dominating the Tech industry vs the US makes no difference to a majority of the people in the world. The US no longer being able to print money (without massive inflation) out of thin air would force it to be more fiscally responsible like many other countries have to be.
- anonylizard 2y ago
  Are you insane? China can only achieve that by forcibly conquering Taiwan, with minimum hundreds of thousands of casualties. China can't win a peaceful competition against the US in the long run, because China is undergoing total demographic collapse (Marriage/birth rates declining 10% yoy every year). China's plan is to sprint for the last stretch, while its population can still work. As for the US, it is really held together by the massive wealth from its tech and financial dominance. Given the enormous social fractures today (please don't forget that Trump was nearly assassinated 1 month ago), an structural economic collapse will mean civil war.
  - sschueller 2y ago
    Are you really claiming that there aren't as smart Chinese engineers as in the US? China is very capable of innovating on its own just like Europe and the US. There are even many Chinese that go to US universities and leave after graduation back to China.

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gexla 2y ago

A major item is the prevention of the proliferation of nukes. The U.S. has security agreements (or assumptions) with allies. If the U.S. appears weak, then allies freak out and nuke up. China and Taiwan are nearly at war. If the U.S. doesn't come through for Taiwan, then everyone gets nervous. Japan and S. Korea likely get nukes the fastest, since they are tech powerhouses. Then European countries may follow suit. Then, each enemy of every new entry to the nuke club also feels pressure to get nukes. Next, everyone gets in a race to build more nukes. Additionally, you get the same issue as with Russia. If a big power takes a smaller power, then where do they stop? What is to stop them from taking everything. And this is already happening. China has been in low level clashes with the Philippines to take forcefully reshape borders. If they do this to Taiwan and the Philippines, then they likely will do this to every country in a border dispute with China. And Taiwan is strategically important. Japan faces a greater threat from a China controlled Taiwan. That's why China wants Taiwan. The island is important to China's national security. In this world, you have a nightmare situation of more fingers on more triggers. More MAD targets for everyone. A greater possibility that someone actually pulls a trigger. And the thing is, China doesn't care about this. If every country on the planet being nuked up was the price to pay for domination, then so be it.

Aeolos 2y ago
> And the thing is, China doesn't care about this. If every country on the planet being nuked up was the price to pay for domination, then so be it. Citation needed.
- gexla 2y ago
  You don't need a citation. You can see from their actions. And China isn't going to come out and say this anyway. But the leaders of the country know what the results would be, and still they continue with an aggressive posture vs Taiwan and the U.S.
  - impomura 2y ago
    yup, their actions of not being involved into every single war going on right in the world.Very scary

gkanai 2y ago

As someone who spent 5 years in China pre-pandemic, China is a threat to many nations due to their growth. The Chinese govt. is specifically targeting key markets (EVs, solar, battery tech, steel, semiconductors) and China makes much more of those items that can be used internally in China. So China ends up driving any non-Chinese battery or solar panel manufacturer out of business. If Chinese EVs were to be sold widely in the US, they would be less than half the cost of any Western-made EV and would take over the EV market. A future where Chinese companies own the EV market in the US with all of the American user data going back to servers in China- that's just not a future the US govt. wants- no govt. (outside of China's own) should want that. Then there's the whole Fentanyl epidemic in the US and elsewhere. That is largely due to Chinese chemical manufacturers who are selling the chemicals to Mexico and then those drugs are smuggled into the US. There are many to blame here but the US has been pushing China to ban the sale of these chemicals outside of China for a long time without agreement. China realizes this is important to the US and it's being used as a key trade issue. "doubling down on liberal democracy" got us to where we are now wrt China. China doesn't respond to liberal democracy. They only respond to force or trade embargos, or tariffs. That's what was learned as Xi decided to become dictator for life.

skrebbel 2y ago
To nitpick a single point: > A future where Chinese companies own the EV market in the US with all of the American user data going back to servers in China- that's just not a future the US govt. wants I agree, but why do cars need to send data to servers again? I don't grok why Tesla does it and I don't grok why BYD does it either. What's wrong with the alternative where we allow real competition that benefits everyone, and then ban any features (eg sending data to servers) that the government gets nervous about? I don't see how this is any different from the myriad of other requirements on cars (eg mandated safety belts etc etc etc). I recognize that state-subsidised competition still isn't fair, so I support import tariffs that match those subsidies, but any further and you're just hurting competition and the consumer, right? Thing is, super cheap EVs and solar panels is exactly what we should want. There's a climate crisis going on and these things are a big part of the solution. With climate goggles on, to put import tariffs on the tech that's gonna save the world sound batshit insane. We should want those tariffs to be as low as possible.

reducesuffering 2y ago

It's actually about one major thing. Will China invade Taiwan, a country and 20 million people that have lived free of the Communist Party for 70 years, and if so, what does that mean for the US and allies to do something about it or let it happen? If the US tries to prevent it, that's a package of huge "war-like anti-Chinese (government) sentiment" ramifications that should've been grappled with a decade ago. If the US doesn't prevent it, Pax Americana is officially over, and the world will know what the collapse of World Order really looks like and what that means for the diminishing prosperity that first worlders are accustomed to.

kolme 2y ago
Pax Americana is a farce. There was always war going on and America was always involved, and for their own imperial interests. This narrative that the US are the good guys and they are the police of the world is the propaganda of the empire. It's coolaid. I don't think the Chinese or whatever other empire comes will be better. But this Pax Americana is just lies. Go tell Vietnam, Chile, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on about it.
- weweersdfsd 2y ago
  US sure do seem like the good guys, if you happen to live next to even worse guys, such as Russia. The US might want your natural resources, but that's less bad than Russia's desire to annex your entire nation and genocide its population.
  - kolme 2y ago
    Well, I don't know. If we look at the body counts, I think being in the receiving end of getting democratized by the USA is actually worse. But this is "whataboutism" and not addressing the point of my comment. The actual point of my comment is: the narratives of good guys / bad guys are silly propaganda. Geopolitics were never about morals, unluckily for us. Edit: for the record, by no means I like the Russian regime "better" than the west. Yes, Putin bad.

SophonTuring 2y ago

Freedom is better because it removes hurdles to more rapid evolutions of efficiency, which leads to better utilization of energy, bringing better material life for every human. Other than that, I'm genuinely curious about the origin of the "inevitable war that we have to win for humanity" sentiment. Where does this judgment come from? It's perplexing to hear such a deterministic and high-stakes view being expressed in elite circles. I wonder what specific factors or events have led to this conclusion, and whether it's based on concrete evidence or if it's more of a narrative that has gained traction. It would be interesting to understand the reasoning behind this perspective, especially given the complex and multifaceted nature of US-China relations. Are there particular think tanks, policy papers, or influential figures promoting this idea? I'd be very interested in tracing the development and spread of this sentiment, as it seems to have significant implications for international relations and policy-making.

oreally 2y ago
> Other than that, I'm genuinely curious about the origin of the "inevitable war that we have to win for humanity" sentiment. There is a line of evidence/thinking that says relations between democracies are a lot more stable. So if you make everyone a democracy there would be no wars and a lot more peace. And peace is what humanity (or each individual) aspires to be. Unfortunately this may result in some degree of intervention or politicking that others may not like. Intervention, specifically, is forcing judgement onto others. Regarding these elites, you could say it's a calling from whatever Christian god that tells them to spread whatever good they deem it to be. But it may just as well be hubris, or human nature - a superiority complex that comes from being at the top of the chain of 'merit' and status. Anyway, it's happened before. Even in the colonial times there were British who thought colonizing India was a 100% good thing for humanity. > Freedom is better because it removes hurdles to more rapid evolutions of efficiency, which leads to better utilization of energy, bringing better material life for every human. Anything taken to extremes is bad. The chinese that studied in America and decided to go back made such a decision when they saw things like school shootings and riots.

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bertylicious 2y ago

> freedom produces more wealth than totalitarianism - which the US won > The problem with China is that the argument is much harder to win > What gets me is that this is not something to win on the battlefield Authoritarian state capitalism already won this fight. Everybody is realizing that the marriage between liberal democracy and bourgeois capitalism is coming to an end. For Western societies, the only remaining ways to assert dominance are 1) war & violence, 2) becoming more authoritarian themselves, or 3) a radically new way Western societies organize production and the distribution of wealth.

bjornsing 2y ago
> Everybody is realizing that the marriage between liberal democracy and bourgeois capitalism is coming to an end. I’m not. What do you recommend me to read, in order to come to that realization?
refurb 2y ago
I’m trying to understand where this perspective is coming from? From most measures China has peaked. Its state capitalism has gotten it a housing bubble and investment in industries with not enough customers. Combine that with its falling birth rate and high youth unemployment it would seem that the failures, not successes, are on display.
rocqua 2y ago
How is it clear that authoritarian state capitalism has won the fight? China is still less productive per Capita than the west. Most of it's advantage comes from it's population size, and demographics are bringing that to a halt.
- deah12 2y ago
  [flagged]
torginus 2y ago
I disagree. People don't want to live under authoritarian regimes. I'm willing to bet that for many working professionals have moved to the West to escape authoritarianism at home, and were willing to accept lower living standards (smaller home etc.) in exchange for greater freedom and peace of mind.

impossiblefork 2y ago

Before this there was an explosion in anti-European sentiment as well. Lots of American newspaper articles disparaging European engineering and scientific work, disparaging European work culture, etc. Even now, if somebody here comes up with something they will be referred to as 'scientists' while others in the US will be referred to by name and university; and this stuff is on Wikipedia too. People like Håkan Lans, who in reality is a Polhem prize and Thulin medal winner, are presented as if though they were patent trolls. This became less prominent-- it's still going on, but still slightly less prominent, so maybe the US is capable of calming itself down.

logicchains 2y ago

>The problem with China is that the argument is much harder to win - china is doing well economically (kinda) - and has not given up its totalitarian control. China's GDP _per capita_ is still 4-8x lower than the US depending on how you measure it. Its overall GDP is just very big because its population is very big. Given the recent slowdown in the Chinese economy, it's looking like it'll take a very long time for per capita GDP (the living standards of Chinese people) to catch up to the US.

fragmede 2y ago
> per capita GDP (the living standards of Chinese people) note that the parenthetical isn't entirely true. it's a very mathematical measure of living standards, and sure, one number is much bigger than the other, which does mean something, but how happy are you really doomscrolling various feeds about how the world is doomed? The wrong person's gonna get elected, you just know it. How happy can you really be knowing that to be the future? Or, hey, know anybody who's died from fentanyl recently? There's a lot GDP doesn't capture. Hell, in terms of buying more things and driving the economy, you could look at it and say divorce is good for GDP since everybody is now buying twice as much stuff, not to mention all the lawyers bills. Not sure I'd argue that it's great for living standards though. so yes, let's compare GDP for what it measures, money number divided by people number, and see that our number is bigger, yay. But simplifying that to living standards is lazy shortcut thinking. If a FAANG engineer makes $400k/yr, but minimum wage is $15/hr or $30,000, their average pay is $215k, which sounds pretty great! The living standards for two someones making $215k are much nicer than for the one person making $30k. How much do you trust your neighbors? How about those city/rural/suburb folk, especially the ones the extremists on the opposite side of the political spectrum? That contribute to a good living standard? GDP isn't a good measure of living standards, it's a neat number to compare, and means something, but it doesn't define living standards.
torginus 2y ago
Honestly, I'm less and less inclined to believe in these numbers. If your average Chinese person lives in a comfortable, well-built apartment that costs 1/4th of what it would cost in the US, drives a car that's similarly built but cost $10k instead of $40k, and eats food thats the quarter of the price, could you convincingly state that he has the quarter of the actual wealth, even though the numbers would indicate that.

KoolKat23 2y ago

Well it's primarily driven by what's going on in China, not what's going on the US. The prior three decades were driven by the line of thought that a prosperous economy tends towards democracy and that prosperity prevents war. Allied to this, the expectation was that this would be mutually beneficial with both parties pursuing it in good faith. Since then, it's become clear it's not the case. China have found the loopholes, their lack of IP (intellectual property rights) enforcement and government corporate espionage have shown the relationship is asymmetric and to the detriment of the US. Xi has also strengthened his hold on power dramatically, breaking with his predecessors gradual loosening of control. This leads to more risk of irrational ideological driven decisions such as war, maintaining prosperity is no longer necessarily the main driving factor. Intelligence around Chinese military build up around Taiwan are concerning evidence of this. The Chinese economy's rapid growth is also slowing.

pas 2y ago
there was no loophole. the problem was that the USA did not enforce the reciprocity principles of WTO with regards to China. (mostly because business was booming. so short-term thinking got us here.)

bjornsing 2y ago

> What gets me is that this is not something to win on the battlefield - this is something where we (being liberal democracies) need to double down on liberal democracy- both the production of wealth and the use of that wealth to raise the living standards of all its citizens - in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful. I could definitely get behind this. Sadly it doesn’t seem to be what people want, at least not here in Sweden. The dominant branch of political thought is more like something something power of government and Swedish culture.

freddierest 2y ago

> I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. I think they're predicting large military spending and are seeking the power, influence, and money that can come from being an early leader.

refurb 2y ago

in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful. China isn’t going to roll over because life is better in the US. In the end it will come down to power and the ability to project it. You can do that a lot of different ways - politically, economically or militarily, but in the end whether life is better in the US won’t really matter.

immibis 2y ago
The Chinese state won't, but if freedom is really so much better, the people will find ways to escape non-freedom - just like they already do from every country that's obviously worse than the USA and the USA seems powerless to stop - and the Chinese state will have no choice except to become free or suffer brain drain and collapse.
- deah12 2y ago
  FYI, china has gotten much better at brainwashing over the past 10 years with the new age propaganda machine and increased censorship. Don't act like all this information is public.

aurareturn 2y ago

>I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. In my opinion, it's not about communist vs democracy, IP theft, ideology, Taiwan, etc. Elites hardly care. These are just the topics used by the government to get common people riled up. The sentiment comes from increasing competition from China in the upper value chain where these elites get their wealth from. These elites want China to manufacture phones for them. They don't want China to design phones and sell it to consumers directly. The same sentiment was found when Japan looked like it was going to take over the world economically. It's a lot easier for the government to get its citizens to become anti-China if they use anti-communist, IP theft, human rights, etc. propaganda. Commoners resonate with these much easier. It's not going to work as well if the government tells you to hate China because they're increasingly more competitive at high value things such as design and services.

aurareturn 2y ago
It’s easy to see why as well. Take Zuckerberg for example. He went in front of congress and spouted as much anti-china rhetoric as he can. He obviously does not want competition from Chinese social media companies such as TikTok. He wants TikTok banned. Meta even admitted that it hired a PR agency to try to connect TikTok to CCP. Take Elon for example. He definitely wants Trump in office because he knows if Chinese EVs ever make it to American shores, Tesla would have fierce competition. Trump wanting massive tariffs on Chinese goods matters little to Elon. Elon doesn’t care if he has to pay $5 for a Chinese good at Walmart instead of $2.50. Only commoners will suffer. But as long as Elon gets extremely high tariffs on Chinese EVs, he’ll be happy. For Schmidt, it’s clear that he has big ownership stakes in American tech companies. Chinese tech companies are a real threat to them in competition.
- munksbeer 2y ago
  For what it's worth, we in the UK have pretty good labour laws and welfare systems, minimum standards, environmental protections etc. All of this has evolved over time as a way to ensure no race to the bottom happens and most people can lead a decent life. Now, some people may disagree with this on a philosophical level (libertarians for example), but it is what it is. If you now just mass import anything and everything from a country with much lower "standards" (I use the term to encompass all of the above and whatever else), then it means your own working population get cheaper stuff, but suffer from the loss of jobs. Not only that, but it creeps into everything. Where once you were high value design, even that starts leaking out of society into a country willing to undercut you on "standards". This is all very well known, so I don't really think it is much of a surprise that there is a push back. I'm just surprised that it hasn't happened more and sooner.

pluc 2y ago

The US cannot exist without enemies.

adastra22 2y ago

Maybe the fact that China is threatening Taiwan, our ally, with war on a nearly daily basis?

whoitwas 2y ago

USA has always been anti China because we perceive them as opposed to our (American) way of life. Whether it exists in reality or not, we view them as a communist dictatorship with no freedom and poor quality of life whereas we're the capitalist land of freedom. So China exists and grows by opposing American ideals and this scares Americans.

torginus 2y ago

Just watched a documentary of drone warfare in the Ukraine war. Many of the drones presented, that have been developed in the fires of war to meet evolving threats have no equivalents in the West, or their equivalents are orders of magnitude more expensive, and cannot be manufactured en masse. Most of these drones on both sides, are either lightly modified Chinese designs, or have a very large percentage of Chinese-made components. China has already managed to dominate a new mode of warfare and make a huge profit from it while supplying both sides of the deadliest modern war in Europe.

redwood 2y ago

There's a pent-up frustration about the imbalance... US businesses are not allowed to do business in China; meanwhile Chinese businesses run freely in the united states.. until that imbalance is fixed business executives are going to use any tool in their toolbox to raise the heat about china. This is the simple truth of the matter right now

dauertewigkeit 2y ago

I really don't see western elites caring about freedom, lol.

joshellington 2y ago

Without an enemy (or two) the entire post-1945 identity construct of the USA (and its allies) does not have a purpose. It’s pretty plain and simple.

actionfromafar 2y ago
There's some truth in that, but it's a much more apt description of post-Soviet Russia. They celebrate their WW2 win like a bona fide religious event every year.

sgu999 2y ago

> in other words if we think freedom is better we make it so fucking obvious we live in utopia it’s painful That's not what these people care about. Someone like Schmidt or Musk would be perfectly happy in a CCP-like regime, as long as they can be at the top. They were fine investing money in China when they thought the country was going to be a complete free market they could rule. That's also why they hate the EU so much, because sometimes the EU is bothering their corps a bit.

5350-uiop-1130 2y ago

the root of all authority is violence america wants to maintain the authority to dictate who gets what and for how much and to make sure they get first dibs on everything

michaelt 2y ago

> I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming from in US elite circles. About half of America's political elites owe fealty to Trump - so a tough, America First, anti-foreigner, every-other-nation-is-a-rival stance is currently in fashion.

aubanel 2y ago

Maybe it's an occurrence of Thucydides trap: the reigning power is afraid to lose its crown, and as a result becomes more and more aggressive towards the growing power. It seems to me that many Americans are personally sensitive about these issues of power. It's also the case with Russia : I agree that Russia is doing terrible things, but people tend to see the Russian enemy everywhere. Cf the arson on train lines in France at the beginning of the Olympics: even here where people are normally rational, every single comment was focusing on Russia and ignoring other possibilities. But actually it was done by French far-left activists.

deah12 2y ago
The thucydides trap is just some bs invented by US foreign policy circles about how war is inevitable. It's not.

Der_Einzige 2y ago

If I wake up to find that I’m going to die from ww3 over some nonsense involving Taiwan, I’ll make sure to die happy, knowing that the fifty cent army will be dying right around the same time that I do.

ls612 2y ago

The People's Republic of China is a revisionist aspiring superpower in east Asia, one of the three great industrialized areas on Earth, structured as a Han Chinese ethno-nationalist state. To make matters worse it aims to seize hegemony over east Asia and to dominate the Western Pacific. This directly implicates the United States as currently most of the non-PRC states in that region are either treaty allies of the USA (Japan, Australia, South Korea) or significant economic powers that provide many crucially important goods to the US (Taiwan, Vietnam). Furthermore, the PRC is embarking on a naval expansion only rivaled in history by the buildup of the German High Seas Fleet in the 1900s. This combines both a grand strategic objective (regional hegemony) with large-scale active efforts to acquire the tools to achieve that objective. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle; The US and other western powers have not faced any major war since 1945 because of atomic weaponry. However, the atomic posture and grand strategic situation between the USA and the PRC is far different from that along the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Both the US and China have nukes yes, but both only have strategic weapons, and those would likely only be used in a situation where the existence of the state was under threat. A war for dominance of the western pacific and east asian hegemony would not be an existential war for either power. This paradoxically makes a hot war far more likely than it was in West Germany, where tactical nuclear weapons were written into the battle plans from Day 1. Combine that with a Chinese state facing a "Now or Never" moment to attempt to achieve their grand strategic objectives as their demographic crisis approaches and the US rearms after 25 years of the unipolar moment, and the late 2020s and early 2030s are looking extremely dangerous. American elites are not stupid and understand this full well and this is why, in the past decade, anti-PRC sentiment has become universal across party lines. Ideology plays a relatively small role in this (beyond of course the fact that the PRC ideology has made them a revisionist power).

tim333 2y ago

>I would love to understand where the war-like anti-Chinese sentiment is coming Maybe from China's war like anti the rest of the world actions?