I mean come on, this is clearly driver error, if he would have purchased the full self driving package for the totally reasonable price of $15,000 then he wouldn’t have needed to use his steering wheel on the highway at all and this whole situation could have been avoided.
Not related but the 15k self driving package is why I will never buy a tesla. I want an electric car but ill just wait longer for a competitor as i would personally feel like an idiot paying for the 15k or the other package they have.
No, masterminding the illegal bombing of two countries (Loas and Cambodia during the Vietnam/American War) with horrendous long term outcomes for the civilian population and also plotting coups and unconditional support for brutal dictatorships that kill their own citizens with impunity makes you one.
Yes Vietnam was a shitshow -- but it was Nixon who was the chief executive who decided what to do. I have no love for Kissinger, but his job was giving advice (no matter how cold) on how to win the absurd war. My point is, of all the players in that saga, Kissinger seems to get a greater portion of disdain.
The warm air flowing to the Artic is royally messing with Jet stream and amplifying the energy of Rossby waves. The heat dome, the polar vortex, the floods in Europe are all connected to this phenomenon and connected to global warming. Living in the Pacific Northwest I though things would be “ok” here until 2030, but after this recent heat wave I knew for certain I was absolutely and naively wrong.
Are they really sequestering it? If I understand their tech correctly they are recycling it back into fuel which then gets burned and the CO2 goes back into the air? It’s a fascinating process but unlikely to undue our decades of harm.
They claim that their technology will "replace fossil fuels". If it actually hits a price point where that's possible than I'd expect it to not be a problem either way.
I guess in that future we're getting power mainly from renewables and using hydrocarbons as power storage? We'd probably be using those same hydrocarbons to make plastics and the like as well.
Still, halting new fossil fuel extraction would be an excellent first step, even though the energy costs don't make much sense to me.
Yeah, that's how I understand it also. But they are talking about putting it in (plastic) goods "that store it forever". So I'm thinking that they could just solidify it somehow and bury it in the ground? Feels fairly cheap?
But I'm not clear on wether their price point includes the revenue they get from selling the carbon (in the form of fuels or plastic)?
I.e, does it cost them 36 USD, or 351 USD? [0]
[0]: 36 USD + (1 tonne of Co2 / 19 lbs of Co2 per gallon of fuel) * 3 USD / gallon of fuel ≈ 36 + 105*3 = 351 USD. Makes a huge difference...
Thanks for you response (and looking forward to the announcement you mentioned in your other comment).
That's so much better than what I could have thought!
Even though my skeptical self almost falls in the "too god to be true" category I see you mention on Twitter, I'm very excited about following Prometheus' progress :-)
BTW: Make sure to let people know when/if human-drinkable ethanol "fuels" from Co2 are available for order! ;-)
This is tragic, the US, Japan, Canada, GB, AUS, the EU need to band together to counter China’s egregious rights abuses instead of solely pursuing their own business and national interests. They could all offer residency programs for the bright students and others that are currently suffocating there. China can’t punish all these countries together. If no one stands up Taiwan will be next to fall and then China would have unprecedented power by controlling the chip industry….
In the current climate if the US doesn't move nobody will (or it will just be a "look at me" gesture)
Why do I think so? Because the US accumulated that unprecedented power you refer to, and Japan or GB or Canada trying anything from themselves just means they'll be pissing in the wind until the US decides to do it as well.
The EU seems to me the only exception to that, but then I am not sure its majority sees a big difference between dealing with China instead of dealing with the US.
PS: GB already offers specific routes for HK residents to come over.
The EU foreign policy needs unanimity, and some of the governments (mostly Hungary right now) will not allow it to take positions against abusive dictatorships.
So it'll be many years before the EU becomes a foreign policy power.
China is also Germany's second largest trading partner. France and Germany basically head the EU, so it's very unlikely that the EU will take a strong stance against China until this changes.
Invest into manufacturing and infrastructure on US, European, African and Southern American soil. The leverage that China has is that way too many Western nations and companies have both their supply chain and the only market that is growing in China.
By investing into a "Western New Belt Road" - not just in terms of infrastructure, but also in other measures like stabilization by drying out the market of drug cartels via legalization or military peacekeeping operations - the EU, India and US combined could turn the tide against China.
What China did was to use market in exchange for access of technology. Many developing countries do not have such ambition, are happy to be in the same position forever.
A reckless disregard for any kind of protection - no matter if for workers or the environment -, generous government subsidies, and an abundance of young and healthy workers ready to be exploited.
There are no actions the US, EU, Japan & Co. can collective take that will alter China's political system from the outside.
It's why whenever people talk about ganging up on China, they're always extremely vague about it. That's because it's entirely bunk. Do something! What? Something! Do a thing! Which thing? The thing! It's identical to bumper stickers that (used to) say: Save Tibet, it's largely empty virtue signaling or wishful thinking. It's not realistic.
You can sanction them. It does not matter. You can stop all trade with them. It does not matter. They're free standing now, their domestic consumer market doesn't need the US & EU. Their banks don't need outside financing. Their government doesn't need outside financing. Their households have $65-$80 trillion in wealth. They don't require the West's technology trade, they can clone most of it. And so on.
The world population count will add two plus billion people outside of the US, Europe and Japan in the next ~30-35 years. Those people will all do business with China, no matter what the US/EU/Japan do. Those 2.x billion people will represent an economy comparable to the EU.
Trump's Admin took a severe counter-China / stop-China position (as staunch as we'll ever see in the US), it made no significant difference. China is more powerful now than they were five years ago, both economically and militarily. Their share of global manufacturing has never been higher.
Their military can't be opposed anywhere near their borders, they're the world's clear #2 military now, and are increasingly superior to Russia (which can't come close to keeping up in either hardware numbers or technology at this point). At the rate that China's military capabilities are accelerating, they'll easily be twice as powerful militarily overall as Russia within the decade, including having at least four aircraft carriers and a vastly superior space program to what Russia has. Russia will soon be a joke compared to China in military terms (which tells you what the EU is going to look like next to China). So, there's zero threat to pose to China militarily to alter their behavior. The US also has no interest in committing suicide to fight with China, eg over Taiwan. The odds are that Taiwan is already gone, it's just a matter of buying as much time as possible to diversify off of relying on Taiwan for tech manufacturing. The US plan is to make it difficult on China, to add expensive drag to the context, everyone in DC knows the US can't stop China from taking Taiwan if they want it.
And China is going to keep getting stronger in most respects for the next decade or two. During that time Russia will be entirely stagnant, and so will most of Europe. China will tower over everyone except the US (China will have an economy twice the size of the EU given a few decades). The US will be borderline stagnant (average US growth will continue to push toward zero across this decade and next, a long-term trend), as it can't afford its present level of military spending or government spending at all. Meanwhile China's military spending and capabilities will expand while the US capabilities go sideways or contract. China knows all of this, time is on their side.
What's left? Nothing. Attempts would be feeble at best, it would change nothing. We're 30 years past the time to try to flip or contain China, if it was ever possible to begin with. The sole reason to blockade China today (politically, economically), is for your own moral reasons (which is an entirely fine reason), not to try to change China (which isn't possible) or otherwise meaningfully restrict them. The West de facto blockaded Soviet Russia for decades, however that's not what stopped them, that's not what collapsed their system. The West barely traded with the USSR. It took 3/4 of a century for that monstrosity to fail regardless. China's system is at least several times more sustainable at this point than the USSR ever was, and dramatically more potent economically.
Whatever change might happen in China will be of their own doing. Whatever leadership follows Xi will be the next opportunity for the people of China to have a shot at altering their trajectory. That could easily be decades away yet. China is unlikely to ever liberalize, the best you're ever going to get is either Deng Xiaoping or Xi/Mao in terms of authoritarianism; it's for exactly the same reason Russia will never liberalize, there is no other means to hold their territory together other than through authoritarianism, it would immediately begin to unspool otherwise. Things that would not exist organically/naturally (such as the USSR, or Russia's present territory), will cease to exist unless you hold them together through great actions of force. Tibet and Hong Kong do not willingly belong to China, nor will Taiwan, as an example of that in action.
The obvious counterweight to China is India, which has a similar population and a rapidly growing economy. However, they're several decades behind China on all fronts (economy, wealth, education, infrastructure, you name it) and with Modi at the helm and COVID continuing to wreak havoc it's entirely plausible that they go into reverse gear again.
India offers no counterweight in the next few decades. They offer considerable further weight, that much is true.
As you note, they're running decades behind. There's some hope that the West & Co. can bolster India, accelerate their ability to help stand up to China in the region. The US will need all the help it can get, as it will be unable to continue to serve that role on its own. When the US was 10 to 1 or 5 to 1 vs China, as in the past (1970-2005), it was still not an easy task to wrestle with them; when the US is 1 to 1 vs China (and in their backyard), forget about it.
It's just an incredible gap for India though. By the time India gets to $5 trillion in GDP (from $3t now), China will be up at $22-$23 trillion or so, and far larger than the EU. The US adds an economy the size of Japan or Germany every seven or eight years and it's still not enough to counter China.
India realistically can't help any more than Japan does. It's a modest push-back potential, some limited regional containment. China does at least value having a veneer of global respect. All authoritarian systems want others to pretend they're moral, to pretend that they deserve respect. They always crave that. That's why the USSR and North Korea always wanted recognition from the US, they crave that fake uneared stature, which they can earn no other way with their type of system (systems that rule solely through extreme violence and force, rather than through any manner of democracy and human rights).
Besides all the economic matters, nobody is going to full-on war with China, and that includes India. I just don't see what significant difference India makes, unless we're talking about the year 2070. Certainly it's far better to have India as added weight on the scales, but it still doesn't matter in terms of altering China's thinking or behavior. The other problem, is that India really can't offer much assistance in restraining China in the Asia Pacific region, which is where most of China's more serious ambitions are in the next few decades.
Modi is a wicked man. It’s really sad what’s happening in India.
I wouldn’t say India is several decades behind China on all fronts, though. Cultural exports (Bollywood) are on par with China. It’s hard to produce exportable culture under severe authoritarian regimes.
So what’s your big plan? Sounds like fatalism to me, and I’m not buying it. China is just the latest authoritarian government to look unstoppable from the outside just like the USSR once did. It does not have the internal agility necessary to thrive long term. Already China’s diplomatic “wolf warriors” are making fools of China on the international stage, and China is increasingly unable to pragmatically adjust. This ossification will continue under Xi.
I feel like different people have different views depending how close they are geographically or financially to China. I don't think the diplomatic "wolf warriors" has any effect on anything tangible. It's not like international stage laughing has slowed down China's geographical expansion so far.
I doubt it'll be the doom of the West anytime soon but it's not going to be pretty for countries near China in the next 20 years. For countries next to China, it's probably about how bad the terms can be, how much land/sea they can keep* and whether that comes later or sooner. The big plan is to help those countries develop and slow down China influence's expansion.
I do think as the population become more educated, more liberal values will take hold so maybe more Western education can help. However, Chinese government control is quite vast and they are flexible as well. China is also doing very well economically so it's easier to turn a blind eye to stuffs.
> “wolf warriors” are making fools of China on the international stag
Firm commitment to XJ / HK crackdown, wolf warrior diplomacy and counter sanctions are sensible strategy that's paying off tangibly counter to western reporting. PRC showing teeth on core-issues is setting norms to be treated as large player who can act with relative impunity on core-interests (like US), demonstrating unwavering commitment and mitigating cost to future actions (read: Taiwan). How many PRC elites have been extradited after PRC retaliated over Meng, how many (non-US) sanctions after PRC clapped back when EU thought it could sanction cost free? None. PRC is seeking level of impunity commiserate with status as #2 global power, and seeing how watered down / theatric diplomatic statements that followed US meetings with partners have been, it's working. Very few countries are credibly committed to PRC containment.
>unable to pragmatically adjust
There's a reason every major bloc is copying PRC's industrial policies. Because it's pragmatic and more agile.
Russia looked unstoppable from the outside, but from the inside it was crumbling.
China is not crumbling. They don't have a controlled economy in the direct way that the Russians did, and as long as they have economic prosperity ... they'll do just fine.
I don't see them screwing that up.
It doesn't matter that much who's diplomats look like fools, it matters what the GDP is, how powerful the military is, how much control and leverage they have.
China probably will never do well on 'soft power' but they're going to probably do just fine with 'regular power' for the forseeable future.
China faces some big challenges moving in to the future.
One is the demographic challenge of a declining population. Most Western countries face a similar challenge of low births, but many of them significantly counteract it through mass immigration; China however doesn't have that and shows no signs of being open to introducing it.
Another is that many people will put up with an authoritarian system as long as they see it producing high-levels of economic growth, but it is unlikely that China can sustain those high levels forever, and people may prove less willing to put up with the lack of freedom in worse economic times.
Another is that while China is good at playing technological catch-up it still hasn't demonstrated much capacity to produce genuinely original technological innovations. And here there is the argument that open societies have an inherent advantage in producing those innovations over authoritarian societies such as China. If that is true, then that is going to give the US and its allies a permanent economic advantage over China.
These challenges are not going to be the immediate downfall of the CCP. But in another 30 or 40 years?
China is beyond playing 'catch up'. They might not be making the world's best software or jet engines, but they are making their own innovations in a wide variety of areas.
I don't think they will ever become the export powerhouse like the US, but we will see them move up the chain.
A lot of the low-level R&D in products already comes from China.
Also - the Chinese will put up with authoritarian culture because 1) they look at it entirely differently 2) they've never known anything else and especially 3) the surveillance of the CCP is orwellian. They will never let any idea challenge their status. The Chinese population at large will never have the opportunity to explore any alternative but what is told to them. Within that bubble, most are 'fine with it'.
Frankly, so long as China tried to have some kind of independendent judiciary and weren't putting people in prison for their ethnicity ... or kind of following the Singapore model I think the 'Rest of the World' would have no problems. And of course, if they weren't grabbing chunks of international waters as their own.
> China is beyond playing 'catch up'. They might not be making the world's best software or jet engines, but they are making their own innovations in a wide variety of areas.
Can you point to some specific examples of significant technological innovations created in China in recent years? Or technology areas in which China is the world leader?
There are still a lot of areas in which China is playing "catch-up" – semiconductor manufacturing (Taiwan doesn't count), aviation (China wants to challenge the Airbus-Boeing duopoly with Comac, but Comac is still a fair way behind both), just to give a couple of examples. What is an example of an area in which China has the technological lead?
> California can't build a single fast train, while China is laying down more rail than anyone in history in a very short period of time.
The US has had high-speed rail since the 1960s (Metroliner service, now the Acela Express), in the same decade that the technology was introduced in Japan and France. The failure of the technology to see further adoption in the US is due to politics, economics, competition from alternative transport modes, etc, not due to any purely technological issues. China's lead in implementation of high-speed rail is due to a political decision to invest in deploying it, not because China has any significant lead in the underlying technology.
> Soon they will start building commercial aircraft and wipe out Boeing and Airbus in everything but domestic markets.
Comac hasn't wiped Airbus and Boeing out yet. That is surely their aim but time will tell whether they actually manage to achieve it. Their main customer base is Chinese airlines, who will follow the CCP’s instructions in buying local. Comac will likely have some success in Africa and parts of Asia, but is unlikely to challenge Airbus and Boeing's lock on major first-world air carriers. The US is unlikely to allow US airlines to buy from Comac, and will encourage allied governments to apply the same policy.
It doesn't sound like fatalism at all. Recognizing and accepting reality - things as they actually are - isn't the same thing as being fatalistic. As opposed to being wildly delusional about the context for example, which is the guiding philosophy of the do-something-to-stop-China cohort. You can't stop China as they imagine it and thinking that it's possible is quite irrational.
Doing a conservative extrapolation on China's economy and understanding how much larger they're going to be than eg the EU given another, say, 20 years, is not fatalism either. It's obvious that China is already exceeding Russia militarily, and the trend is extreme (not subtle), so the gap will get a lot bigger in the next 10-20 years accordingly. That too is not fatalism. Accepting the bounds and facts of reality is not fatalism, rather, it's a necessary first requirement to then be able to generate a practical, rational course of action.
Who said I have a big plan. Why should it be big? What difference would a big plan make against China, it would never (should never) get off the drawing board. The Pentagon has lots of big plans; ask them about their big plans for the Middle East in the 1990s, or their big plans for Vietnam in the 1960s, or Russia in the 1990s.
Pretending things are not as they are, is how you get big disastrous plans of the sort the Pentagon is good at coming up with. That's how Iraq happens, that's how Syria happens. A superpower with a big plan to contain another superpower a world away - gee, that doesn't have an obvious outcome does it. So the US burns its treasure to contain China, while China doesn't burn its treasure to contain the US, the outcome to that is straight-forward (and again, also not fatalism; we don't have to behave that way). The US will expend most of its effort punching itself in the face, while China focuses on extending regional dominance. China doesn't have to go anywhere, it's their backyard; the US has to expend great resources just to be there.
It is not the job of the US to change or contain China, it's highly questionable whether we could contain China much at all, and it's not at all necessary in order for our people to prosper. Similarly, China doesn't have to contain the US for their people to prosper (as witnessed by the past 30 years). Just like we don't need to invade Venezuela, Iran, Myanmar or North Korea so that our people can prosper. The US is in desperate need of a priority adjustment: we need to start improving the lives of our people, or else.
I have a modest plan, which is all that is in reach of the US to achieve in the next few decades. The US is going bankrupt at the Federal level, it has to monetize ever greater sums of its own junk paper to continue normal government function (ie it has to steal from the wealth of its population to keep the lights on). Social spending obligations will continue soaring for decades yet, as such the US faces a dramatic reckoning of having to choose between playing global military superpower and the welfare of its own people. It can no longer do both. The cap on what the US can do in Asia is quite clear. Just start from: "not much," and you'll be in the right neighborhood. Just ask North Korea about their nukes. Maybe the US will sail a few boats off of China's coast, through the Straight, very exciting stuff.
A modest plan that the US can actually put into action that is focused on its own people, not on the absurd notion of a superpower from North America pretending it can afford to contain or control a superpower in Asia.
Sure, China will ossify, somewhat, under Xi. That's unavoidable in a dictatorship. They still have slack to fill out yet, easy gains. They still have a couple hundred million people living on ~$5-$7 or less per day. A quarter of their population is still living a third-world lifestyle. Lifting those people up to the economic level of Bulgaria will add trillions to their economy; things like that are easy wins for China. Technological advancement is not difficult for China, with or without Xi, so they'll continue to make rapid progress in military, tech, space, aerospace, biotech, etc. Momentum often carries large systems a great distance even after they stop functioning well (just ask the US). China isn't done building out its national infrastructure either, they have decades left of that yet. They still have exceptionally inefficient farming, which can be boosted to first-tier levels. They still have a lot of nuclear & renewable energy to build out. There are another two billion new consumers to be born in the next 30 years, to be fulfilled by China's manufacturing. The China economic engine isn't going to stop because of Xi, he's restricting and damaging their max potential. China is still a boulder rolling down a hill as far as Asia is concerned.
- Gradually reduce trade dependency on China. That includes diversifying away from Taiwan on tech manufacturing as quickly as possible and diversifying away from China on rare earth metals. The US has to get a lot more serious about this, the big globalist faux-US corporations will need punched in the face to get them in line (ie more stick than carrot; they've already been given a lot of carrots, it didn't work). This one is a lot easier than sparring with China, yet the US is failing at it. Which tells you how any Big Plans(TM) will go.
- Invest far more heavily in domestic R&D, science, technology, tech manufacturing, and manufacturing in general. That will be necessary just to attempt to keep up with China in the coming decades. The US talks a lot about doing this and its follow-through is often mediocre. Cut the corp tax rate for domestic manufacturing to 15%. Reduce burden and regulation everywhere we reasonably can, make it easier to manufacture in the US (which doesn't mean getting rid of all regulations).
- Reform US immigration. Mirror the approach Canada, Australia and most smart, affluent nations follow. Make it very easy for high-skill labor to come to the US and gain citizenship. This is a huge advantage over China, one they can never possess, we need to maximize on it. This is an easy win (if the US were still high-functioning).
- Double annual US infrastructure spending for at least the next 20 years. That should include: build five regional high-speed rail systems (Federal project, use Federal power to move roadblocks out of the way, including enviro laws, be as vicious as necessary); build several new nuclear power plants per year, should be federal projects treated with national security importance; bolster and rebuild the US grid, we're nowhere near ready for an all-electric vehicle future; build a lot more wind power, including off-shore, it's our best bet for easy gains on renewables. Debt is cheap (we're buying our own paper), and we're going to financial hell no matter what we do now, so we might as well fix our eroding infrastructure and improve the quality of life for future generations while we're at it. The US talks about doing these things, and never really does them. The joke of an infrastructure bill in DC won't do much, like putting a band-aid on terminal cancer.
- Stop trading with China on badly unequal terms. Block foreign investment into China by US citizens & corporations, and block investment into the US by China. Block all real-estate purchases by Chinese citizens and corporations. Block all business acquisitions by Chinese companies across the board. Increase blocks on technology transfer.
- Reduce US military adventurism toward zero. Close at least 3/4 of all US military bases around the globe. Abandon the Middle East militarily, including entirely pulling out of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, et al. Those days are permanently over. Reduce a lot of the US military presence in Europe, cut it in half. Redirect a portion of that to Asia Pacific; some of it doesn't get redirected, as we can't afford all of it, some of it has to go away.
- Start focusing on treating our own people a lot better (reduce the prison population, get rid of mandatory minimum sentencing, legalize most drugs, decriminalize all drugs). Attempt to regain some of the moral stature that has been burned up by various DC stupidity across decades. This matters if you plan to appeal to the rest of the world in a forever confrontation with China. We have to represent positive, humanist qualities that the CCP doesn't and can't. Otherwise what's the point.
- This goes with the last item. Refocus US military spending on improving the lives of Americans, not blowing up the Middle East or foreign adventurism in Europe or Asia. It doesn't matter what the subject is, whether it's healthcare or infrastructure, our money is better spent there than on sprawling our military around the globe. Redirecting $300 billion per year from military spending to healthcare, education and infrastructure would be a good start. Our healthcare system has failed, it's time to start using Federal power to squeeze costs out of the system and implement universal coverage. There's no reason we can't reduce healthcare costs by 15-25% over time given how out-of-line our expenses are, which helps pays for expanding Medicaid up the ladder to achieve universal coverage. Biden should be abusing executive orders like crazy in this direction.
- Continue to gather as many allies in Asia as possible and get them pointed in the same direction as a cooperative. Pull NATO's interests into Asia a bit more. The US is already doing some of this (eg with Vietnam, India and other traditional allies in the region), but it's not easy, China has lots of carrots to offer as well as sticks. The US has already peaked in Asia, China's influence in Asia will get far larger yet. The US can only slightly slow down China's gains in Asia, not stop the process. The goal should be to make China's adventurism very expensive, that's the best that can be realistically accomplished.
- Invest more heavily into accelerating the development of regional rivals to China, including India and Vietnam. Our interests align on this matter. The more they can do for themselves, the less we have to do in the region, the better. For the same reason it was in the US interest for France, Britain and West Germany to reboot quickly after WW2 (less need for the US presence in Europe), it's in our interests for India, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc to develop even faster.
You'll notice my plan isn't focused primarily on confronting China in Asia. That's because that shouldn't be our focus at all. No more than it should be the focus of Germany, Britain or France. The primary focus should be on improving the US, not worrying about containing China. We can't contain China.
The CCP isn't going anywhere, and we can't dictate human rights within China. Trying to deny reality isn't useful in such a context. You can't stop them from doing whatever they want to Hong Kong, you can't force them to adopt some other system of government, you can't stop genocide within their borders if they're intent on it, just as you can't force them to accept freedom of expression/religion/press/speech. The US & Co. can't even accomplish such aims in weak nations like Myanmar, North Korea or Cuba.
The US as a superpower has long been living beyond its means. Those days are coming to an end one way or another, just look at the credit card bill. We'll be well served to focus on the quality of life of our people for a change.
> It doesn't sound like fatalism at all. Recognizing and accepting reality - things as they actually are - isn't the same thing as being fatalistic. As opposed to being wildly delusional about the context for example, which is the guiding philosophy of the do-something-to-stop-China cohort. You can't stop China as they imagine it and thinking that it's possible is quite irrational.
Accepting reality? Years of life in China will make anybody lose touch with one, especially living in the most Potemkin town of them all.
> It's why whenever people talk about ganging up on China, they're always extremely vague about it. That's because it's entirely bunk. Do something! What? Something! Do a thing! Which thing? The thing! It's identical to bumper stickers that (used to) say: Save Tibet, it's largely empty virtue signaling or wishful thinking. It's not realistic.
First, the West has a giant arsenal of means not simply "to do something", but outright destroy China as a state. The West remains the preeminent political, military, economic power of the world by a giant extend, way more than China, Russia, Iran + 10 other rouge states combined. You don't "contain" your enemy, you defeat him, this is how the West needs to start thinking.
— It's a giant power, the West only needs to use it. The West has a way more means than China has to do anything to the West. The direct military attack being only one of many things possible on the list. It's just the Western unwillingness to admit that it can do something, because admitting to it will be be followed by a compulsion of doing so.
West's internal problems are a malaise of heart, while its problem with China is a malaise of mind. The material problems can be fixed, but what's being kept created by your own mind cannot: the Western fixation on impotent "realpolitik China strategy" is one of this kind, and its fixation on China's economic strength is another.
China as a state entity existing in a physical world is much a lesser threat, and danger than the China which exists in the heads of Western elites, and all kinds of wormtongue "strategy advisers", Kissingers, and co.
I'm fully agreeing on the point that the West can't win without a dramatic change happening inside their heads first. For the West to defeat China, first it will need to defeat itself, and own weaknesses, all what holds it back.
Foreign policy making wormridden by "political strategists," pathological addiction to backstabbing of critical allies, refusal to look at politics from classic military dimension;
Elite culture dominated by defeatist people selling wholesale "China model" koolaid like Tim Cook, and Sundarajan Pichai, universal hostility to useful business, and industry by political backstabbers, useful idiots, and wanton saboteurs-profiteers;
The giant Trump electorate, you will have to find a way to live along with these people, but that doesn't mean surrendering to them! Propaganda of inaction, and isolationism exactly of this kind led to US staying out of WW2 until it was tool late;
The USSR and China aren't really comparable. At its height, the USSR had an economy about 60% of the size of the US's. The idea of the USSR as a threat to the USA (or even core US allies) was basically american paranoia in the post-Stalin era. What's more, a lot of the institutional dysfunction of the USSR was the legacy of Stalinism - it's hard to have a healthy society when everybody is used to being terrified of the man in charge.
China is already much bigger in terms of relative economy than the USSR ever was. Frankly, I doubt that they are an 'opponent' to the US in the sense that China hawks would have it, but they are way more credible as a 'superpower' than the USSR ever was. The USSR just had a lot of soft power with people in the global south because ex-colonies are typically not that keen on the world order established by their colonizers.
It's to describe the habit of Chinese diplomats and other mouthpieces of the CCP to threaten and verbally assault other nations when China is criticised.
I don't know how it could go long term, but for the moment I think the US actions are not without effect.
Trump's big moves were overly relayed by the press, but I think there are deeper stances that have been continuously influencing other countries decisions.
Euro countries removing Huawei from their infrastructure for instance in not benign, and happened basically as the US shifted its weight around. The US has a history of spying on the EU, so it's not just these countries doing a "safe bet" move.
Now this is such a big subject and most of it is over my head, but I think the current tension is happening mostly because for better or worse things can change.
You’re bullshitting, as evidenced by how hard China pushed against Trump’s changes. One doesn’t need to crush China to change its incentive gradient. Besides, worst case scenario, the non-Chinese countries can isolate their economies from China to at least shield their own autonomy.
Maybe 10-15 years ago it would be possible, right now all the countries you've listed are strongly depended on Chinese manufacturing. Average person in any of those countries will easily swallow restricting freedom in HK, Urguys or Christians persecution, but will be mad without next generation gadgets that are all produced in China.
It would require a really big effort to drop dependency on China, I don't think politicians and societies are ready for this.
One more thing: when it comes to relations with China there is no such a thing like EU. Every country has its own agenda and interests, every country wants to win as much as possible for themselves, right now Germany is cutting a trade deal with China and there is no less important subject for them than some HK rights.
And you are right, Taiwan is next on the list. I've read some analysis that in 6 years China will develop its army to that extent, that US will not be able to defend Taiwan.
Taiwan is buying from the US expensive planes, tanks, which would not matter that much in the future war, where a relatively cheap loitering munition or a drone can destroy very expensive tank or plane. This was good for US military industry, but from the Taiwan defense perspective that's not a smart move.
In 2019 they raided the Australian national broadcaster's headquarters, and the home of a journalist, because of 'national security secrets' [1].
A couple of days ago, a 21 year old journalist and comedian was arrested by a counter-terrorism unit because he helped make youtube videos criticising a government official [2]. Nothing serious about national security is required anymore.
The laws in Australia are terrifying; the government has extraordinary powers that can force you to build encryption backdoors and you're not allowed to tell anyone, not even your employer. So who knows what happens that the public never hears about.
People were also arrested for making facebook posts just talking about covid protests.
That's exactly what the UK has done [1], and to a lesser extent, Australia as well [2]
However, I don't think trying to grab all and all Hong Kong residents who are privileged enough to emigrate is necessarily the solution to the problem. Hong Kong will still fall to totalitarianism, even more so without the intelligentsia.
Taiwan importance is its geography. If China is able to control Taiwan it would not have any restriction for its shipping lanes and military. Its a much more important asset in the long run compared to HK.
> the US, Japan, Canada, GB, AUS, the EU need to band together to counter China’s egregious rights abuses
Countries living in glass houses cannot throw stones on others. Moreover each country has it's own flaws, so before asking others to correct each one of them needs to correct themselves (like those countries ruling establishment in China enjoy majority support and minority like in any system democratic or communist or authoritarian is suppressed or prosecuted). All these system needs to change in which minority are protected from tyranny of majority.
> They could all offer residency programs for the bright students
Agree with you they should also include every prosecuted community in the world in this program not just Hong Kong. Indeed program should be wide open to prosecuted minority from any country not just China. The bastion of democracy can demonstrate it in action not words, to really change the status quo.
I don't hold my breathe for it, given most democracy also works on majoritarian politics it will be hard given national self-interests trumps humanity.
> ruling establishment in China enjoy majority support
We don’t know the support because anyone who dares to speak up is silenced. People are too scared to say they don’t like the government.
The claim is that the CCP has 95% approval rating. But the local governments have a 10% approval rating.
The local governments are The Central government. Nothing the local governments do is done without The Central governments oversight and approval. So that 95% approval isn’t real. But I sure as hell wouldn’t say I disapprove if I lived in china.
I find the 95% figure hilarious, frankly. As if 95% of any population on the face of the planet could agree on anything, much less a population of over a billion.
It being as high as it is tells me it's fake. Not fake as in falsified directly, but definitely fake in that the citizens opinions are manipulated via information control. The later makes perfect sense with the 10% figure for local governments. You can lie to people about how things are going far away, but you can't lie to them about how they're going in their backyard.
5% disapproval is basically the lizard man constant, aka how many people believe our politicians are actually lizards wearing human skin. So claiming 95% approval is essentially claiming 100% approval. Patently absurd. Even in the days after 9/11 when America was memorably united as one, approval of Bush hit 90% (briefly), not 95%.
It’s effectively impossible to have lasting super-high approval as a government anyway, because you’re in the business of picking winners and losers.
Fun trivia: in Italian journalistic vernacular an hyper majority with no dissenting voices like this is called a "Bulgarian majority", referring to the former communist rule and obviously fake data.
As much as times change, dictatorships stay the same.
This is 30+ years of polling showing consistent trend with methodologies scrutinized by multiple parties. And since when are statistics of approval ratings comparable to US election polling?
>It’s not hidden knowledge that a lot of Chinese people are scared to say anything bad.
Because that's not actual knowledge so much as conspiratorial thinking and lazy propaganda. PRC citizens criticize with impunity frequently, especially via methods that has little chance of blowback, i.e. polling, local protests vs public criticisms that goes viral.
Oh please. Local protests in china always result in police brutality and arrests. Just a few weeks ago there was video footage of students protesting the changes to their degrees sitting on steps and the police hitting them. Let’s not try and pretend people are not scared to go against the norm. The vast majority of PRC you talk to outside of china will tell you they absolutely love their country and hate the ccp. Don’t pretend that sentiment doesn’t exist inside china for the vast majority of good people suffering at the hands of the ccp.
Yes and who do they appeal to? Central government, which comports with all studies showing high satisfaction with Beijing's performance. And risk of physical protest is qualifiable different than participating in a poll, PRC folks bitch about politics via relatively cost free methods everyday.
>vast majority of PRC you talk to outside of china will tell you they absolutely love their country and hate the ccp.
Maybe if you hang with FLG crowd and base opinion off epochetimes. Apart from dissidents or minorities who actually suffered repression which are the minority, the vast majority of mainland diaspora acknowledge central gov is what made modern PRC great, even if begrudgingly. Of course negative sentiment towards government exists... 5% against central gov as data shows. Everyone, everywhere bitches about politics, local and central, difference is PRC citizens overwhelmingly feels central gov is performing well. And in context of national approval, one evaluates based on performance of central gov like top executive branches / politburo members. Again this is consensus of 30 years of polling that's been scrutinized every which way by western institutions.
The proof is really in the pudding, if the CCP were as popular as they claim, they wouldn't have a rational reason to crack down on competing political parties and fair elections. They know they aren't so popular, that's why they don't allow the public to have a choice.
Say the chance of developing FTL travel is totally minuscule but still inevitable given a long enough time horizon . Once that technology is developed by its very essence it spreads rapidly almost like the development of the wheel.
But all our assumptions or beliefs about what is possible and what can/would be observable is based on our, well, current understanding of reality.
Since generally speaking, humans know or understand a bit more today than they did yesterday, it seems likely that there are things that today we think we know but do not know or know incorrectly. Thus, our rules about what is observable may be flawed. We may be missing evidence of other civilizations and visitors.
Given the vastness of time and space and the fact that we DO know that there is a lot that we do not know (as opposed to not knowing what we do not know), it seems more reasonable to err on the side of we-probably-don't-know.
