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> Alas is right, China is poised to dominate … Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”? Seems like a win

by antonvs 11mo ago

> Alas is right, China is poised to dominate … Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”? Seems like a win for everyone else, no? What happened to “competition”, or is that something that’s only supposed to be beneficial within the US?

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”? He’s saying it as a realist. China is building the equivalent to America’s sanctions power in their battery dominance. In an electrified economy, shutting off battery and rare earths access isn’t as acutely calamitous as an oil embargo, but it’s similarly shocking as sanctions and tariffs.
- matheusmoreira 11mo ago
  > shutting off battery and rare earths access Trump just leveraged Magnitsky sanctions against brazilian authorities to obtain access to brazilian rare earths until 2030.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    Brazil? https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-rare-earths.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-rare-earth... Output in 2024 was 20 tons. The change in Chinese output between 2023 and 2024 was an additional 15,000 tons, going from 255,000 to 270,000 tons. The USA's own increased by 3400, from 41,600 to 45,000 tons. I'm happy to assume Brazilian output will grow, especially if the USA invests a lot in it, but is it going to even be close to enough to make up for where China's already at? China was about 70% of the global output.
    - matheusmoreira 11mo ago
      Honestly, I don't know. I just know this rare earths business, among other things, was somehow enough for Trump to drop the very deserved Magnitsky sanctions against a brazilian judge. I hope it was worth it. I have to believe it was. Because otherwise he delegitimized the Magnitsky Act and fucked us in exchange for nothing.
- dalyons 11mo ago
  Yes and no - yes it’s dumb to give up and let china have a defacto monopoly on the future of energy production. But no insofar as sanctions on battery and solar don’t hit the same as oil and other things. Because once you have them, they keep producing for you.
  - JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > sanctions on battery and solar don’t hit the same as oil and other things Oil hits hardest. I’m comparing financial sanctions to a battery embargo. Both are slow. Both are powerful.
ak217 11mo ago
China is governed by the CCP, which holds the world record for the number of people murdered by the state, feeds its citizens militaristic propaganda at scale, is currently controlled by a guy who fancies himself a dictator, and is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. It takes a dangerous kind of willful naivete to just ignore that fact.
- antonvs 11mo ago
  What kind of willful naïveté does it take to ignore the nature of the current government of the United States?
  - Zigurd 11mo ago
    He's not ignoring it.
  - ak217 11mo ago
    Yours? I'm sick and tired of whataboutism from people who are somehow motivated to carry water for aggressive dictatorships that threaten the rest of us. I've already lost my birth country to zombies like that (they call them z-patriots, or turbopatriots, the supporters of Russia's invasion of Ukraine). In case you missed it, my original comment was intended as a criticism of the current government of the United States.
- lossolo 11mo ago
  This is oversimplified view of the world and China. China being powerful is not something new, it was the world's largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries (with exceptions being parts of the 19th and 20th centuries, when Western Europe and then the US surged ahead after the industrial revolution). > is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. Your analysis is through the lens of Western culture. The definition and understanding of freedom and harmony are entirely different in China. I was in China and experienced this myself, so this is firsthand experience, not something I picked up from blogs or news. In the Chinese context, freedom is defined collectively so freedom from chaos, poverty, foreign domination etc, whereas here in the West it's individual liberty. Harmony and social stability are seen as more valuable than political pluralism, so authoritarian governance is culturally framed as legitimate. You know that 100 million Chinese travel abroad every year and all of them come back to China? Chinese leaders and citizens still remember periods of fragmentation and civil war. There is a widespread belief that adopting a Western adversarial political model could reintroduce instability and weaken national unity so something China cannot risk given its size and diversity (you know how many ethnicities there are in China?) This is their natural state. China has a long history of centralized, bureaucratic governance (over 2k years since the Qin Dynasty), where stability and order are prioritized.
nutjob2 11mo ago
It's alas for everyone but China. Who wants to be dependent on an aggressive totalitarian state? You can't compete fairly with China because the government applies massive subsidies and is coercive with both imports and exports. Right behind Russia, China is the biggest threat to global order and peace. It's no accident they are in cahoots.
- antonvs 11mo ago
  Where do you place the United States under the Trump administration in that list? I’m getting a strong sense of denial in this thread.
  - throwaway-11-1 11mo ago
    For real. I think there's a type of American that would rather hype up the evils of china than admit the distance the US has fallen from its purported ideals. This year I've seen students deported for criticizing Israel, mobs of poorly trained militarized federal police roaming neighborhoods violently disappearing people without trial, the number of homeless grow to 700,000, food kitchens with lines around the block and a president straight up selling pardons to drug dealers. Chinese totalitarianism just doesn't seem like such a huge contrast as it once did. At least they get an increase in quality of life for the tradeoff. Also a lot of this reeks of Sinophobia tbh
    - andrekandre 11mo ago
      > Also a lot of this reeks of Sinophobia tbh the grass is always browner on the other side...
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    IMO, depends where you are in the world. I'm in Berlin, I have more to fear from Trump's administration than from Xi Jinping's. If I was in the Philippines, I think it would be the other way around. Initially I also had Japan and Taiwan in that comparison, but thinking a bit harder, there's also a risk that Trump is isolationist, that means the risk from each is more like a multiplier than a simple comparison.

by antonvs 11mo ago

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> Are you saying “alas for citizens of the US who see things in competitive nationalist terms”? He’s saying it as a realist. China is building the equivalent to America’s sanctions power in their battery dominance. In an electrified economy, shutting off battery and rare earths access isn’t as acutely calamitous as an oil embargo, but it’s similarly shocking as sanctions and tariffs.

matheusmoreira 11mo ago
> shutting off battery and rare earths access Trump just leveraged Magnitsky sanctions against brazilian authorities to obtain access to brazilian rare earths until 2030.
- ben_w 11mo ago
  Brazil? https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-rare-earths.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-rare-earth... Output in 2024 was 20 tons. The change in Chinese output between 2023 and 2024 was an additional 15,000 tons, going from 255,000 to 270,000 tons. The USA's own increased by 3400, from 41,600 to 45,000 tons. I'm happy to assume Brazilian output will grow, especially if the USA invests a lot in it, but is it going to even be close to enough to make up for where China's already at? China was about 70% of the global output.
  - matheusmoreira 11mo ago
    Honestly, I don't know. I just know this rare earths business, among other things, was somehow enough for Trump to drop the very deserved Magnitsky sanctions against a brazilian judge. I hope it was worth it. I have to believe it was. Because otherwise he delegitimized the Magnitsky Act and fucked us in exchange for nothing.
dalyons 11mo ago
Yes and no - yes it’s dumb to give up and let china have a defacto monopoly on the future of energy production. But no insofar as sanctions on battery and solar don’t hit the same as oil and other things. Because once you have them, they keep producing for you.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > sanctions on battery and solar don’t hit the same as oil and other things Oil hits hardest. I’m comparing financial sanctions to a battery embargo. Both are slow. Both are powerful.

ak217 11mo ago

China is governed by the CCP, which holds the world record for the number of people murdered by the state, feeds its citizens militaristic propaganda at scale, is currently controlled by a guy who fancies himself a dictator, and is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. It takes a dangerous kind of willful naivete to just ignore that fact.

antonvs 11mo ago
What kind of willful naïveté does it take to ignore the nature of the current government of the United States?
- Zigurd 11mo ago
  He's not ignoring it.
- ak217 11mo ago
  Yours? I'm sick and tired of whataboutism from people who are somehow motivated to carry water for aggressive dictatorships that threaten the rest of us. I've already lost my birth country to zombies like that (they call them z-patriots, or turbopatriots, the supporters of Russia's invasion of Ukraine). In case you missed it, my original comment was intended as a criticism of the current government of the United States.
lossolo 11mo ago
This is oversimplified view of the world and China. China being powerful is not something new, it was the world's largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries (with exceptions being parts of the 19th and 20th centuries, when Western Europe and then the US surged ahead after the industrial revolution). > is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade. Your analysis is through the lens of Western culture. The definition and understanding of freedom and harmony are entirely different in China. I was in China and experienced this myself, so this is firsthand experience, not something I picked up from blogs or news. In the Chinese context, freedom is defined collectively so freedom from chaos, poverty, foreign domination etc, whereas here in the West it's individual liberty. Harmony and social stability are seen as more valuable than political pluralism, so authoritarian governance is culturally framed as legitimate. You know that 100 million Chinese travel abroad every year and all of them come back to China? Chinese leaders and citizens still remember periods of fragmentation and civil war. There is a widespread belief that adopting a Western adversarial political model could reintroduce instability and weaken national unity so something China cannot risk given its size and diversity (you know how many ethnicities there are in China?) This is their natural state. China has a long history of centralized, bureaucratic governance (over 2k years since the Qin Dynasty), where stability and order are prioritized.

nutjob2 11mo ago

It's alas for everyone but China. Who wants to be dependent on an aggressive totalitarian state? You can't compete fairly with China because the government applies massive subsidies and is coercive with both imports and exports. Right behind Russia, China is the biggest threat to global order and peace. It's no accident they are in cahoots.

antonvs 11mo ago
Where do you place the United States under the Trump administration in that list? I’m getting a strong sense of denial in this thread.
- throwaway-11-1 11mo ago
  For real. I think there's a type of American that would rather hype up the evils of china than admit the distance the US has fallen from its purported ideals. This year I've seen students deported for criticizing Israel, mobs of poorly trained militarized federal police roaming neighborhoods violently disappearing people without trial, the number of homeless grow to 700,000, food kitchens with lines around the block and a president straight up selling pardons to drug dealers. Chinese totalitarianism just doesn't seem like such a huge contrast as it once did. At least they get an increase in quality of life for the tradeoff. Also a lot of this reeks of Sinophobia tbh
  - andrekandre 11mo ago
    > Also a lot of this reeks of Sinophobia tbh the grass is always browner on the other side...
- ben_w 11mo ago
  IMO, depends where you are in the world. I'm in Berlin, I have more to fear from Trump's administration than from Xi Jinping's. If I was in the Philippines, I think it would be the other way around. Initially I also had Japan and Taiwan in that comparison, but thinking a bit harder, there's also a risk that Trump is isolationist, that means the risk from each is more like a multiplier than a simple comparison.