Haaretz: America vs. China? In This New Cold War, The Choice Is No Longer Obvious - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15111473
Trade and tensions between the U.S. and China
The Donald Trump administration uses every mechanism to cut China out of the global supply chain, but nothing seems to be working as a resolute China is unwilling to back down and dismantle its technological gains.

Not a day goes by without a strong statement against China from the Donald Trump administration. United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been particularly blustery. On June 19, he addressed the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, a platform set up by the Alliance of Democracies (created in 2017 by Ander Fogh Rasmussen, former head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO). China, Pompeo said, had become a “rogue actor” and Europeans must join the U.S. in a grand alliance against it.

I’ve seen tyranny first-hand’, Pompeo said. ‘And I’ve dealt with all manner of unfree regimes in my previous role as Director of the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and now in my current role as Secretary of State of the United States of America. The choice isn’t between the United States and China, but it is between freedom and tyranny.

Such is the old Cold War language, the cliches of freedom and authoritarianism, that the State Department had deployed against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Underneath the use of the word “freedom” sits uncomfortable facts, such as that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world and that it has been the primary instigator of bloody wars across the planet. Such facts are brushed aside. Pompeo can even bring up the CIA to establish the essential “freedom” of the West against China. No eyebrows were raised at the Copenhagen summit.

At an earlier time, China would have ignored these statements. But not now. Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, called Pompeo’s statements about China and COVID-19 “groundless”; he accused Pompeo of lying to the public. Xu Bu, China’s ambassador to Chile, has been outspoken in his criticism of Pompeo and the anti-China rhetoric that the U.S. has tried to spawn across Latin America. In the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, Xu Bu called Pompeo a “liar”. That both Wang Wenbin and Xu Bu have accused Pompeo of lying suggests a new attitude from Beijing; these are strong words in the world of diplomacy. Chinese diplomats have been making the case from Chile to Iran that their country has been actively engaged to the mutual advantage of both China and the individual countries; this, they say, is the opposite of the U.S. position, which facilitates agreements to the advantage of multinational corporations and not to the various countries of the world.

Matters have escalated rapidly. In late July, the U.S. told the Chinese Foreign Ministry that its consulate in Houston must be closed in a few days. No specific allegations were made against this consulate, but the general tenor is that this is part of a U.S. government attack on Chinese espionage against U.S. businesses. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that this was a “political provocation unilaterally launched by the U.S. side, which seriously violates international law, basic norms governing international relations, and the bilateral consular agreement between China and the United States”.

These diplomatic spats came after Pompeo made a tough statement saying that the U.S. would contest China in the entire territory of the South China Sea. This has already been U.S. policy for decades, but the mere statement of it in such a brusque manner and the deployment of the two U.S. aircraft carriers—the USS Nimitz and the USS Ronald Reagan—into the region significantly raised the stakes. China responded by sending forces onto two islands in the Paracel Archipelago to conduct live-fire drills. The Chinese government has said that it is responding to U.S. intervention, which “is the real pusher of militarisation in the South China Sea”.

Wrapped up in this war of words are a range of issues that the U.S. raises punctually to intimidate China: allegations of industrial espionage, allegations of currency manipulation, allegations around the coronavirus pandemic, allegations of human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Each issue is not taken seriously by itself, but the group of issues together are utilised to paint a portrait of China as either dangerous or unreliable, and—as the rhetoric gathers force—that the Chinese government must be changed. There is no doubt that behind the U.S. policy since 1949 has been a desire to overthrow the Communist government in Beijing; no doubt yet that the rapprochement in 1972 when President Richard Nixon went to China was merely a wedge in the Cold War and not a true reconciliation with the Chinese government; no doubt either that the current heightened tension is not merely about currency manipulation or Hong Kong, but about the desire to damage China’s rise in the world and change the political situation within China.

Flashpoint
On April 1, Admiral Philip Davidson—the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command—told Congress that he would like $20 billion to create a robust military cordon that runs from California to Japan and down the Pacific Rim of Asia. His proposal, titled Regain the Advantage,pointed to the “renewed threat we face from Great Power Competition. … Without a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China and Russia will be emboldened to take action in the region to supplant U.S. interests”. In January 2019, Acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan told U.S. military officials that the problem was “China, China, China”. This has been the key focus of all Trump nominees for the Defence Department, whether it be Shanahan or the current chief Mark Esper. Esper cannot open his mouth without blaming China. He told the Italian paper La Stampa that China was using the coronavirus emergency to push its advantage through “malign” forces such as Huawei and by sending aid to Italy. As far as Trump and Esper are concerned, China and to a lesser extent Russia are to be contained by the U.S. with armed force.

Missile gap in China’s favour
Senator Tom Cotton (Republican from Arkansas) has pushed the view that China’s military modernisation programme has created a missile gap in its favour. In March 2018, Cotton asked Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (now U.S. Ambassador to South Korea), about China’s missiles. “We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the western Pacific and our ships,” Harris told Congress. To remedy this, Harris suggested that the U.S. exit from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which Trump did in early 2019 (Trump blamed Russian non-compliance, but it was clear that the real target was this fear of a Chinese missile advantage). In August 2019, the U.S. tested an intermediate-range missile, signalling that its intentions long preceded its withdrawal from the INF.

In March 2019, Cotton went to the Heritage Foundation to say that the U.S. should start production of medium-range ballistic missiles, which should be deployed at bases on the U.S. territory of Guam and on the territories of its allies; these missiles should directly threaten China. “Beijing has stockpiled thousands of missiles that can target our allies, our bases, our ships, and our citizens throughout the Pacific,” Cotton said in characteristic hyperbole. Exaggeration is central to people like Cotton. For them, fear-mongering is the way to produce policy, and facts are inconvenient.

In November 2018, before the U.S. left the INF, Admiral Davidson spoke at a think tank in Washington on “China’s Power”. In 2015, Davidson said his predecessor Harry Harris had joked that the islands off the coast of the People’s Republic of China were a “Great Wall of Sand”. Now, he said, these had become a “Great Wall of SAMs”, referring to surface-to-air missiles. Davidson, from the military side, and Cotton, from the civilian side, began to say repeatedly that China had a military advantage by the “missile gap”, a concept that required no careful investigation.

The U.S. has the largest military force in the world. In April, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the U.S. military budget rose by 5.3 per cent over the previous year to total $732 billion; the increase over one year was by itself the entire military budget of Germany. China, meanwhile, spent $261 billion on its military, lifting its budget by 5.1 per cent. The U.S. has 6,185 nuclear warheads, while China has 290. Only five countries have missiles that can strike anywhere on earth: the U.S., Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France. Be in terms of intercontinental weapons orair power, China simply does not possess a military advantage over the U.S.

Every known inventory of weapons shows that the U.S. has a much greater capacity to wreak havoc in a military confrontation against any country, including China, but the U.S. understands that while it can blasta country, it can no longer subjugate all countries. Chillingly, the U.S’ allies are now moving their own forward policy: Japan has indicated that it will develop a “first-strike” position. India, however, has been aggressively joining U.S.-driven naval exercises in the Indian Ocean.

Admiral Davidson’s April report calls for “forward-based, rotational joint forces” as the “most credible way to demonstrate U.S. commitment and resolve to potential adversaries”. What the Indo-Pacific Command means is that rather than have a fixed base that is vulnerable to attack, the U.S. will fly its bombers into bases on the soil of its allies in the Indo-Pacific network (Australia, India, and Japan) as well as others in the region (South Korea, for instance); the bombers, he suggests, will be better protected there. China will still be threatened, but Chinese missiles will—so the theory goes—find it more difficult to threaten mobile U.S. assets. Davidson’s report has a stunning science fiction quality to it. There is a desire for the creation of “highly survivable, precision-strike networks” that run along the Pacific Rim, including missiles of various kinds and radars in Palau, Hawaii, and in space. He asks for vast amounts of money to develop a military that is already verypowerful. Furthermore, the U.S. is committed to the development of anti-space weapons, autonomous weapons, glide vehicles, hypersonic missiles, and offensive cyber weapons—all meant to destabilise missile defence techniques and to overpower any adversary. Such developments presage a new arms race that will be very expensive and further destabilise the world order.

Trump’s trade war has oscillated between blunt statements about cutting out China from the global supply chain and sanctioning Chinese Communist Party members to being concillatory to Chinese production and to China’s role as the supplier of goods and credit to the world. Reality is hard to stomach, and the trade war itself seems grounded in enormous doses of unreality. Tariffs on Chinese goods assume that these goods do not already have inputs from the U.S. in them (which they do have) and they assume that the goods are not being produced on behalf of U.S. multinationals (which they are); Trump’s trade war hurt Chinese exports, certainly, but they also damaged the global economy considerably. Latitude for a scorched earth policy against China’s trade is simply not available.

Australia, a loyal U.S. ally, for instance, was partly shielded from the coronavirus recession by its trade with China. Keith Pitt, Australia’s Minister for Resources, said in late July, “Resources have been a shining light of Australia’s economic story. The sector has managed to keep pretty much all its people employed and engaged, that is over 240,000 direct jobs. If you look at iron ore specifically, 62 per cent of China’s iron ore imports came from Australia in 2019-20.” Any escalation of trade wars between China and Australia will hurt the latter’s economyfatally. India decided to ban Chinese-made apps, which account for a large percentage of apps, but found it impossible to substitute them with apps made elsewhere, which is why clones of these apps have now returned to Indian phones. Any attempt to cut China out of the global supply chain in general—a stated U.S. policy—will simply not be possible in the short or medium term. Reliance on China for its industrial production—not only of the extraction of raw materials but of the production of high-tech commodities—is almost total for all countries in the world; it will be expensive, in the midst of the coronavirus recession, to pivot on such an enormous scale.

Hong Kong and Xinjiang
Neither the issue of Hong Kong nor the issue of Xinjiang is important for themselves. To imagine that Western governments, which had no problem with the destruction of Iraq and Libya and the archipelago of “dark sites” for torture (including the U.S. base at Guantanamo), now have a special concern for Muslims is to bedevil the imagination; accusations about human rights violations in Xinjiang are being made for political and commercial ends not on strictly human rights grounds. Certainly, the new laws over Hong Kong’s security, minor compared to the lack of any political freedoms in Saudi Arabia, can hardly be the actual issue that detains the British government; as it seeks to sanction China, it increases arms deals to Saudi Arabia. These issues—Hong Kong and Xinjiang—are part of a wider assault on China’s role in the world, to weaken China in the public imagination since China cannot be easily weakened economically.

5G Technology
It is one thing for China to be the workshop of the world, to deliver its workers for multinational corporations. It is another for China to become a key technological producer in the world. That is the reason why the U.S. government—pushed by Silicon Valley—has gone after the technology company Huawei. The next generation of high-speed wireless technology, 5G, is currently being dominated by Huawei, with Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia far behind. No U.S. firm is near these three in the production of 5G technology.

In April 2019, the U.S. government’s Defence Innovation Board released a report that noted: “The leader of 5G stands to gain hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue over the next decade, with widespread job creation across the wireless technology sector. 5G has the potential to revolutionise other industries as well, as technologies like autonomous vehicles will gain huge benefits from the faster, larger data transfer. 5G will also enhance the Internet of Things by increasing the amount and speed of data flowing between multiple devices and may even replace the fibre-optic backbone relied upon by so many households. The country that owns 5G will own many of these innovations and set the standards for the rest of the world. For the reasons that follow, that country is currently not likely to be the United States.” Since U.S. firms are unable to manufacture the equipment currently made by Huawei and others, only 11.6 per cent of the U.S. population is covered by 5G. There is no indication that AT&T and Verizon will be able to manufacture fast enough the kind of transmitters needed for the new technological system.

The erosion of U.S. firms in the telecommunications industry can be directly attributed to the deregulation of industry by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Many firms fought to gain market share, with different mobile standards and carrier plans with different configurations that made it hard for consumers to switch companies. This fragmented market meant that no firm made the necessary investments towards the next generation. It has meant that U.S. firms are at a grave disadvantage when it comes to the next generation of technology.

The rapid advance of Huawei and European firms threatens both U.S. technology firms and the U.S. economy in general. Over the past few decades, the U.S. technology firms have become the main investors in the U.S. economy and are the engines of its growth. If these firms falter before companies such as Huawei, then the U.S. economy will begin to splutter on fumes. Trump’s war against Huawei is not as irrational as it seems. His administration—like others before it—has used as much political pressure as possible to constrain the growth of technology in China. Accusations of theft of intellectual property and of close ties between the firms and the Chinese military are meant to deter customers for Chinese products. These accusations have certainly dented Huawei’s brand, but they are unlikely to destroy Huawei’s ability to expand around the world.

The attack on Huawei, with the U.K. now agreeing with the U.S. that it will not use its products, is a centerpiece of the anxiety over China. Mexico’s candidate for the post of chief of the World Trade Organisation, Jesus Seade, said that he would like to use his job to ease the tension between the U.S. and China. He would like to create a robust “dispute resolution mechanism [which] could help settle U.S.-China trade tensions”. But this misses the point. The tension is not over a lack of mechanisms to settle the dispute, since China and the U.S. have repeatedly spoken together about the differences. The problem is that the U.S. acknowledges that China’s rapid technological growth is a generational threat to the main advantage that the U.S. has had for the past decades, namely its technological superiority. It is to prevent China’s technological ascent that the U.S. has used every mechanism—from diplomatic pressure to military pressure; but none of these seem to be working. China, for now, is resolute. It is unwilling to back down and dismantle its technological gains. No resolution is possible unless there is an acknowledgment of reality: that China is equal to if not more advanced in terms of its technological production than the West, and that is not something that needs to be reversed by warfare.
https://mronline.org/2020/08/03/trade-a ... and-china/
#15115898
Atlantis wrote:Nobody wants a world under Chinese hegemony, and the Chinese simply don't have the means to achieve that hegemony either. If they were to try, they would face too much opposition.


China doesn't want Hegemony either, their massive investment in afro-eurasian economies minus all the military bases is blatant proof of that. There is massive expenditure and subsequently risk with no means of recovering the investments. China wants prosperity, and to become richer it needs all developing economies on earth to become richer.

The US is salty it can't compete on this nation building front, and the world is getting tired of being bullied militarily. There is simply no place for US foreign policy anymore outside of the 5-eyes puppet dominions. I will enjoy the upcoming Us civil war. You want violence and carnage? Enjoy it domestically as much as you like. The world is tired of your murderous shit.
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Igor Antunov wrote:China doesn't want Hegemony either, their massive investment in afro-eurasian economies minus all the military bases is blatant proof of that. There is massive expenditure and subsequently risk with no means of recovering the investments. China wants prosperity, and to become richer it needs all developing economies on earth to become richer.

The US is salty it can't compete on this nation building front, and the world is getting tired of being bullied militarily. There is simply no place for US foreign policy anymore outside of the 5-eyes puppet dominions. I will enjoy the upcoming Us civil war. You want violence and carnage? Enjoy it domestically as much as you like. The world is tired of your murderous shit.


I'm skeptical of a new Chinese-American Cold War, and skeptical of an American Civil War, not because people are very rational but because people are legitimately afraid, and should be. We the American people didn't expect this ''nation building'' to go on forever, we would like to focus on building our own nation up and keep our Elites focused on that as well.
#15115939
Igor Antunov wrote:China doesn't want Hegemony either, their massive investment in afro-eurasian economies minus all the military bases is blatant proof of that. There is massive expenditure and subsequently risk with no means of recovering the investments. China wants prosperity, and to become richer it needs all developing economies on earth to become richer.

The US is salty it can't compete on this nation building front, and the world is getting tired of being bullied militarily. There is simply no place for US foreign policy anymore outside of the 5-eyes puppet dominions. I will enjoy the upcoming Us civil war. You want violence and carnage? Enjoy it domestically as much as you like. The world is tired of your murderous shit.



Military poses much less threat than governments nowadays.

Even I would agree the PLA being much more disciplined than the American military, but the problem does not lie with the military. The problem lies with the government. China does not respect rule of law (they rule by law), and are ruthless and violent to whoever against them.

The Hongkongers who were brutally treated by the police in the previous year did not see justice served because of the protection of those wrongdoers from the higher orders. Quite to the contrary, the government instead imposes a law which enables them arbitrarily persecute anybody who even dare to openly go against them.

Therefore, I find ZERO reason that your view of "the US being the worse bully" holds.
#15115953
Patrickov wrote:Military poses much less threat than governments nowadays.

Even I would agree the PLA being much more disciplined than the American military, but the problem does not lie with the military. The problem lies with the government. China does not respect rule of law (they rule by law), and are ruthless and violent to whoever against them.

The Hongkongers who were brutally treated by the police in the previous year did not see justice served because of the protection of those wrongdoers from the higher orders. Quite to the contrary, the government instead imposes a law which enables them arbitrarily persecute anybody who even dare to openly go against them.

Therefore, I find ZERO reason that your view of "the US being the worse bully" holds.


This is mostly manufactured nonsense, when you place it against the reality on the ground, which is why I no longer take US or related opinions on China seriously. Hong Kongers are free to fly anywhere they want, as are almost allChinese on the mainland Covid cross-border shutdowns notwithstanding. Yet we get this continuous narrative of poor oppressed millions trapped in an open air prison....nonsense.

Hong Kong protesters were treated MUCH better than any protesters anywhere in the US, France, etc in the past 10 years. Police were far more careful, far less deadly and order was restored far more effectively without blatant violence on the part of the government. All the destructive violence came from the protesters themselves, which is also the case in the US, except the cops there are not afraid to kill. The police killed nobody in Hong Kong. Some prominent journalist working with the CIA was arrested for colluding with a foreign regime? No shit. He'd be having an even worse time in the US if the roles were flipped.

Persecution and state imposed violence go hand in hand, and in the US the persecution is far more severe if you oppose the state. Demonstrably so, as we see day in day out. We can compare directly now.

The Uighur genocide meme is a another blatant lie freely deployed every day, being drilled into susceptible people's heads. The propaganda only works on the west. 57 Muslim majority countries sent a team to investigate, and found nothing. The Uighur population doubled from 4 to 8 million in the past few decades according to the UN.

May 2018 visit to Xinjiang https://www.oic-oci.org/topic/?t_id=186 ... 338&lan=en.

March 2019 resolution of visiting multiple non-Islamic states, including China. Refer to page 5.

“20. Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat's delegation upon invitation from the People's Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People's Republic of China.”

https://www.oic-oci.org/docdown/?docID=4447&refID=1250

January 2019 second round of political consultations and refers specifically to combating terrorism and violent extremism.

https://www.oic-oci.org/topic/?t_id=205 ... 669&lan=en


The bleating and lies as usual come from the 5 eyes cartel who have killed millions of Muslims.
Unworthy victims: Western wars have killed four million Muslims since 1990

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/u ... slims-1990

Why the sudden love for Muslims? In France thousands of Sunni extremists have also been forced into reeducation schemes. Nobody bats an eye.
France will send radicalised Islamists to re-education centres under a €40 million plan to tackle extremism, which the prime minister says is the biggest threat to the nation since Hitler.

The suspects will be taught their patriotic duties and forced to undergo psychological treatment in an attempt to counter jihadist indoctrination.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fran ... -7wg9vrrgd

And this manufactured propaganda campaign continues beyond China; where has china engaged in persecution and violence on other people and nations? Another meme related to this foreign policy angle is the African debt trap. What debt trap? The western debt trap?
Image


It is all propaganda nonsense by the usual suspects. China just wants to get rich.

And its well on its way:
The new Shenzhen turns 40 and it’s the #1 Chinese city in terms of GDP-per-capita: $30,000.

https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/2020 ... 51c50.html

And in the realm of tech which is very relevant to Shenzehn, it being a tech hub;

Donald Trump is losing his tech war with China

https://www.businessinsider.com/donald- ... ?r=AU&IR=T

The new cold war is not viable. Only one side wishes to wage it, add to that only one half of one side (the neocons) and it is making a feeble effort that has thus far backfired in most realms because China has tapped into the global economy, and the Us no longer carries enough economic weight or political capital to block China's rise on such a scale. The economy part is self evident, the political is becoming very clear; see what happens in regards to Iran which China is now courting with a $400 billion package; France and Britain abandoned the US neocons sanctions regime.

All the US has left to it is the ability to militarily attack and ruin small nations at great cost to its own economy. Or to self destruct the US dollar as a reserve currency in the hopes of hurting China's trade prospects. That won't do much. Those wars of ruin are expensive and I don't think ruining Iran would have any effect on China's grand plan to expand and consolidate its industrial and resource base across most of Afro-Eurasia. Blocking China from trading in USD's is no longer viable, most countries would opt to then trade in yuan and China would provide that liquidity physical or in digital form. China is the more important economic partner even to most self described US allies...let alone the majority of the planet.

Image

Now that Russia and China are in bed, and the EU is effectively divorced from US policy (see Germany's pipeline with Russia), China has unlimited resources to work with, unlimited opportunities to leverage, and those can't be touched. The rise in the east will continue as America's domestic problems continue to mount. The two party divide is now a race divide. So easy to exploit.
#15115954
Igor Antunov wrote:This is mostly manufactured nonsense, when you place it against the reality on the ground, which is why I no longer take US or related opinions on China seriously. Hong Kongers are free to fly anywhere they want, as are almost allChinese on the mainland Covid cross-border shutdowns notwithstanding. Yet we get this continuous narrative of poor oppressed millions trapped in an open air prison....nonsense.


Those incidents happened before the epidemic.

Igor Antunov wrote:Hong Kong protesters were treated MUCH better than any protesters anywhere in the US, France, etc in the past 10 years. Police were far more careful, far less deadly and order was restored far more effectively without blatant violence on the part of the government. All the destructive violence came from the protesters themselves, which is also the case in the US, except the cops there are not afraid to kill. The police killed nobody in Hong Kong. Some prominent journalist working with the CIA was arrested for colluding with a foreign regime? No shit. He'd be having an even worse time in the US if the roles were flipped.

Persecution and state imposed violence go hand in hand, and in the US the persecution is far more severe if you oppose the state. Demonstrably so, as we see day in day out. We can compare directly now.


"No one being killed" is debatable. Many believe that some was beaten to death in the incident on 31 Aug 2019, but the government covered it using its state machinery.

But the more important point is any unnecessary violence needs to be accounted for, but when we ask for it, China decides to hand the opposite.

Actually HK police did "learn" from the American counterpart. Western police violence at least is not compounded with government endorsement -- the said police officers were often fired and persecuted in the US. Zero of this happened in Hong Kong.

Many people chose to read Jimmy Lai because his media's journalism are perceived to be nearer to the truth than Communist propaganda, which is full of lies. Blame China for their failure, not CIA.
#15115963
Igor Antunov wrote:This is mostly manufactured nonsense, when you place it against the reality on the ground, which is why I no longer take US or related opinions on China seriously. Hong Kongers are free to fly anywhere they want, as are almost allChinese on the mainland Covid cross-border shutdowns notwithstanding. Yet we get this continuous narrative of poor oppressed millions trapped in an open air prison....nonsense.


Why would China stop activists from fleeing?

Igor Antunov wrote:Hong Kong protesters were treated MUCH better than any protesters anywhere in the US, France, etc in the past 10 years. Police were far more careful, far less deadly and order was restored far more effectively without blatant violence on the part of the government. All the destructive violence came from the protesters themselves, which is also the case in the US, except the cops there are not afraid to kill. The police killed nobody in Hong Kong.


In France 11 died, but I think only one died from police violence, the others died in traffic accidents because the yellow wests used the block roads. However, in France there were a lot of serious injuries that I haven't really seen in that number from Hong Kong. In that sense I do agree that the Hong Kong police looks rather professional. As for the initiators of violence, you must have missed the thugs that were hired to beat up protesters.

Of course that doesn't take into account that Hong Kong protesters might simply be less prone to violence. After all they're probably largely students and part of the "elite".

Igor Antunov wrote:Some prominent journalist working with the CIA was arrested for colluding with a foreign regime? No shit. He'd be having an even worse time in the US if the roles were flipped.


He was the boss of a newspaper and you know as well as I do that China doesn't allow a free press and the CIA accusation is simply a pretense to crack down on it.

Igor Antunov wrote:Persecution and state imposed violence go hand in hand, and in the US the persecution is far more severe if you oppose the state. Demonstrably so, as we see day in day out. We can compare directly now.


Persecution in the US is televised 24/7 while in China it's mostly hidden. If I were to name it, you would simply dismiss it as Western propaganda.

Igor Antunov wrote:The Uighur genocide meme is a another blatant lie freely deployed every day, being drilled into susceptible people's heads. The propaganda only works on the west. 57 Muslim majority countries sent a team to investigate, and found nothing. The Uighur population doubled from 4 to 8 million in the past few decades according to the UN.


I don't think anyone said it's a genocide. Apart from that, most Muslim majority countries are authoritarian regimes and give a rat's arse about human rights, even those of Muslims. They don't want to piss off China because it doesn't respond kindly to such accusations.
#15115964
Igor Antunov wrote:China doesn't want Hegemony either, their massive investment in afro-eurasian economies minus all the military bases is blatant proof of that. There is massive expenditure and subsequently risk with no means of recovering the investments. China wants prosperity, and to become richer it needs all developing economies on earth to become richer.


How do you know what China "wants"? Most people don't even know what they want themselves if they dig down deep in the heart of their hearts. But you are confident about knowing what "China wants"? By China here you probably mean the CCP or the leadership. Does anybody fully understand what the internal circle around Xi or the central decision makers of the CCP want? I doubt it. Do they know it themselves? Not with any degree of certitude. Anyways, it's subject to change according the changed circumstanced. What will in the end be decided is a result of a dynamic, internal and external, that nobody can predict with certitude.

Thus, your claim to know the designs of the Chinese leadership is spurious.

What we do know, on the contrary, is the mechanism of power of a centrally governed totalitarian country that has the potential to dwarf every other economy on this planet. Thus, the question is not what China wants, the question is what this will invariably lead to because humans are humans:

China will try to replace the US as the first imperial power in the world. That is an absolute certainty. Are they smart enough to succeed? No way!
#15115966
Rugoz wrote:I don't think anyone said it's a genocide.


Totally side note and not related to the argument itself, I know, but Biden's campaign said it:
https://www.axios.com/biden-campaign-ch ... a04ba.html
#15116000


Atlantis wrote:How do you know what China "wants"? Most people don't even know what they want themselves if they dig down deep in the heart of their hearts. But you are confident about knowing what "China wants"? By China here you probably mean the CCP or the leadership. Does anybody fully understand what the internal circle around Xi or the central decision makers of the CCP want?


We know China wants to abolish poverty at home and abroad defends countries targeted by the U.S. empire, such as Syria and Venezuela. :excited:

You can read the books of their leader or whatever the CCP put out, if you're interested. They're not shy about speaking about what they want, but that stuff isn't news in the West because news in the West is all about demonising China.

#15116006
skinster wrote:We know China wants to abolish poverty at home and abroad defends countries targeted by the U.S. empire, such as Syria and Venezuela. :excited:


Sure skinster, as long as you do as you are told you'll be fine. Don't talk to the Dalai Lama, don't even mention the three Ts (Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen), don't talk about human rights, don't talk about the Uighurs and concentration camps, and most of all, don't forget to sing in praise of Chairman Xi from morning till late at night. You'll be just fine, you'll be just fine as long as you don't mind corrupt party cadres confiscating your land. Just obedience, Skinster, learn obedience and you'll be fine.
#15116013
Thanks for sharing how much you've been brainwashed by anti-China propaganda, but it already shows.

Thanks also for moving from "China is imperialist!!" to "China might be imperialist given the chance!!" after you couldn't prove that lie either. Now you're putting a lot of things you've been brainwashed by into one paragraph and you think you have a clue, even though some of those have already been dealt with and proven to be bullshit.

The Dalai Lama who was on the CIA's payroll for many years, we must trust what he has to say on China, sure. :D

And the funniest parts is your attempts to patronise me. Bitch please, I'm laughing at you. :lol:


"UUUHHH DUUUUH, WHAT DOES CHINA REALLY WANT DUUUUH? MY MEDIA WON'T TELL ME AND I'M TOO STUPID TO LOOK MYSELF DUHHHH"
#15116019
skinster wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Tbf2bpgs-E



We know China wants to abolish poverty at home and abroad defends countries targeted by the U.S. empire, such as Syria and Venezuela. :excited:

You can read the books of their leader or whatever the CCP put out, if you're interested. They're not shy about speaking about what they want, but that stuff isn't news in the West because news in the West is all about demonising China.




What is certainly true in China and the surrounding area is that the Chinese Communist Party puts its own interests above everything else, and that poses a far greater problem than the West putting their interest above everything else. If anything, many of us see Western interest synchronize with our own interest more than Chinese interest, not to mention Chinese Communist Party interest.

Qiao is a propagandist, and so is Member skinster. Both do not deserve whatever freedom and rights they currently enjoy.

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