That said China is not wholly innocent in not doing the same.

I mean, the fact that you’ve got to caveat your caveats on this illustrates the dynamic at play. Chinese bureaucrats are focused on land and sea borders, building trans-Asiatic trade routes, and securing friendly relations with rich underdeveloped nations in the Global South. American bureaucrats are ambushing fishing boats, kidnapping presidents, starving entire islands of people, and bombing hospitals and schools.

They still push for influence for soft power

To what end, though? Not to be That Guy, but…

One of these countries is pursuing a very explicit policy of ethnic cleansing for the purpose of resource extraction and white nationalist enrichment. The other is doing industrial development, domestic enrichment, and cultural preservation, with an explicit but ultimately benign bias towards the national leadership.

At some point, Westerners criticizing China sound like the KKK - hoods and burning crosses and all - denouncing the NYPD while reading chapters from Howard Zinn’s People’s History. Even if you do land on a salient point, it comes across as nakedly opportunistic and insincere. Even more so when you’re doing Woke Land Acknowledgement for Tibet, while orchestrating fascist regime change all over Latin America.

And then what comes of it? Now we’ve got a Canadian PM stuck banning Chinese EVs to prop up the American gas-guzzler industry in the name of… national sovereignty? Economic independence? The newest Philippian dictator is fighting a turf war over a string of Pacific Islands for the benefit of who? Six billionaire families that run the island nation like their own private fief? In the name of… freedom and justice for all? American aircraft carriers lining up to flatten wedding parties in Yemen, before a glide bomb connects with their laundry room or the crew mutinies over half-rations of dog food?

Who is this critique of China in service of, exactly? Nobody in the know seriously believes these criticisms are coming from civil libertarians or liberal democrats. Everything is just in service to the all-consuming machine of techno-feudal corporate expansion for a handful of white nationalist oligarchs.

There was a lot of hysterical social media and agitation on behalf of a vocal minority inside Hong Kong. Even then, Hong Kong was already a police state under UK rule. It was one of the reasons Western libertarians loved the place (and it’s spiritual twin Singapore).

The idea that a Chinese aligned government would need to extradite someone from Hong Kong to the mainland only makes sense if the person in question was a fugitive from the mainland hiding specifically in Hong Kong. Which would make about as much sense as an American fleeing the US criminal justice system in Guam or Puerto Rico.

As to

China has stated it would recognize not so much independence of Hong Kong but its self autonomy that allows it to run.

The Hong Kong political structure remains intact. The leadership has all rolled over to Chinese aligned bureaucrats. And the modern-day pro-Democracy protests are an echo of the same pro-Democracy movement that sprang up under British rule back in the 1980s.

This is where Western spin sells people on “Evil China” by neatly sweeping the history of these regions under the rug. You get an earful about China being anti-democratic, when it inherits an anti-democratic UK colony that it promises not to reform. You get an earful about abhorrent Chinese labor practices (the 996) that predate the hand-over and are exempted from mainland labor protections for the same reason. You read about an extradition from Hong Kong to Taiwan and get an earful of spin about how this threatens people in Hong Kong from Hong Kong. And then you read about a Hong Kong riot that kills a couple of Hong Kong cops, rephrased as Tiananmen Square 2.

All this on the back of Chinese reforms that prohibit crypto-scams, crack down on medical quackery, reform predatory loans in the housing market, and dramatically improve labor and environmental standards nationwide, which just so happen to rub a bunch of MAGA-aligned US mega-corps the wrong way.

Do you remember what precipitated the Hong Kong protests?

Habara ass response.

I don’t see China behaving much better if they ever become a super-power

I’m not sure what else they’d need to do to qualify, shy of actually building out a global network of military bases. In that case, sure. If they start acting like the US, then they’re no better than the US.

But for the time being, what I’m seeing - and I’ll quote Dr Lubinda Haabazoka, Director of the University of Zambia Graduate School of Business and former President of the Economics Association of Zambia on this one

Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture.

To date, I’ve seen a lot of Chinese Hospitals (and factories and ports and colleges) opening up across the world. Meanwhile, the only thing guys like Trump and Starmer seem to want to contribute are frowns, finger wags, and 500 lb bunker busters onto wedding parties.

Tibet came under the rule of the Qing dynasty of China in 1720 after the Qing expelled the forces of the Dzungar Khanate from Tibet

:-/

Details?

The three-week incursion into Vietnam in 1979 was certainly a bad decision by the Chinese government. Idk if it stacks up against the American 13 year invasion, occupation, terror-bombing, and torture/assassination campaign that became emblematic of US Foreign policy. Easy to forget the scope of the difference between the two interventions, given how often modern China-watchers love to bring up the former while neglecting the latter.

But do you have anything perpetrated by the Xi administration specifically? Or just something a sitting administrative official actually presided over?

we can’t discount the possibility of Xi being as stupid as Trump and Putin.

I’m trying to think of a comparable series of blunders the Chinese have committed.

Xi’s much more in the mold of an Obama or a Merkle than Putin or Trump

it might be smart to take taiwan now

Or just peacefully integrate socio-economically over the next 50 years. You kill a lot less people that way

China and Taiwan already do an enormous amount of trade. And some of Taiwan’s biggest companies are heavily invested on the Chinese mainland.

Despite the DPP’s fervent desires, that’s not going to change. So now the only question is whether an isolationistv party can continue to hold a majority in a country with an increasingly China centric economy.

How many years and how fortuitous do the circumstances have to get before people stop insisting an invasion is imminent?

There’s an enormous amount of value in China and Taiwan remaining friendly trading partners. Westerners refuse to acknowledge this.

China takes Taiwan - ram prices will go through the roof

Guess who has figured out how to make cheap high end RAM already?

If China feints towards Taiwan, the Taiwanese government flinches, and the TSMC factory goes to in smoke, China becomes a top 3 provider of high end chips inside of the month.

I don’t think I’ve lived to see a president who wasn’t accused of this

Latin American dictators seem to be lining up behind him and Rubio like ducklings.

I think the next president is going to inherit an absolute rogue’s gallery of “friends”

Very important to know the difference and be clear eyed about it

All that sounds Woke to me

It’s helpful to understand what you actually have control over, rather than confusing good fortune for savvy decision making.

So much of the joke is that they won’t need to.

唯一的制胜之策就是不参与

even when you do have a choice, how often do you actually read what you’re agreeing to?

You don’t bother precisely because it’s an enormous amount of work for no discernable benefit.

What are you doing to do? Not rent a car or fly on a plane? Not own any electronics or motorized vehicles? Not rent an apartment? Not use software?

We have the option to try to vote with our wallets

Do we? What good is money if we can’t spend it?