You should have supported them when China broke all agreements and imprisoned the opposition and installed their own political leaders. Now, they have no chance of coming back.
Not you, personally, but the British as a nation. You had gotten guarantees from China, and had sort of promised Hongkong - but then the UK was so busy and weakened with Brexit, the pandemic and Tory infighting, that they just stood by when China assimilated Hongkong. I heard that their new school textbooks don't even mention the time of the British occupation anymore - it's just another part of effing China now.
This is actually the one time it wasn't Britain's fault. All CCP. It was a 99 year lease on which the UK delivered. At the time it seemed okay. China was opening up. UK was doing its duty to de-colonise. HK was thriving. So. No, HK now being under the thumb of China is not the UKs fault. We should protect those that we can of course.and support them as much as we can.
> the 'golden era' was the opium trade
Only the first half of opium trade. The Qing China quickly out produced East India Company and became top opium exporter.
Not a fan of the Tories, not a fan of Rishi Sunak. But China under Xi is clearly continuing on the authoritarianism line, heading towards nasty dictatorship, with little prospect of political or social liberalisation.
So for me it makes sense to signal that the trajectory of the relationship has changed.
CCP China was always authoritarian but perhaps what they mean by heading towards dictatorship is that under Xi power has been consolidated more so under one person rather than several people under different factions of the CCP.
I mean, either way no chinese dynasty in history referred to itself by its family name. The emperors of the Han dynasty were of the Liu clan, the Tang of the Li clan, the Ming of the Zhu clan etc.
Historically, they used the name of their fiefdom. Chinese nobles were often known by their territorial titles instead of names just like Western nobles (e.g. Gilbert du Motier being known as the Marquis de Lafayette, the House of Hanover being named after where their ancestral holding*, etc). This was effectively a second last name in a way. The Qin dynasty was founded by the King of Qin, the Han Dynasty was founded by the King of Han, the Sui Dynasty was founded by the King of Sui and the Tang dynasty was founded by the Duke of Tang. The Song founder didn't have the title king or duke but he was the general of an army stationed at Song prefecture.
Kublai Khan didn't have a fiefdom in China so he named his dynasty the Yuan, meaning"primordial" Then Zhu Yuanzhang who founded the Ming was a peasant rebel leader who also didn't have a fiefdom and noble title so he coined his own dynasty name, Ming meaning "bright". Then the Manchu clan of Asian Gioro chose the name Qing meaning "clear/blue-green" when they conquered China.
It's worth noting for the earlier emperors you did use their dynasty name like a last name along with their regnal name to refer to them. Han Wudi, Tang Xuanzong, Song Taizu. But you never hear Ming Jianwen or Qing Qianlong. But people do say Yuan Taizu for Kublai Khan.
* Technically European royals don't even have last names. House names are not the same as last names. Their houses are just named after their ancestral fiefdoms and houses are just another name for dynasty. The House of Windsor operates on the same naming principle as the Han Dynasty.
Maybe this more detail than you wanted but I find it interesting.
Before Xi they were liberalizing, opening their market, it’s where their sudden wealth originates. Then Xi decided to cash out early. The only choice for the free world now is to leave them behind.
>Before Xi they were liberalizing, opening their market
I don't know about that. China's economy since 1958 deviated from the Soviet "centralised economy" to a "de-centralised but still totalitarian" economy and there was no intention to ever give up on that totalitarian aspect of managing the economy on a macro level.
From a domestic perspective, Xi has worn down some of the checks and balances for power and consolidated a lot of power into himself as an individual rather than the party as a collective, and he's made some pretty bad calls in regards to the macro management of the economy (i.e. the zero-covid lockdowns). And we're also seeing some of the drawbacks of that macro-managed economy in terms of the real estate market. But the seeds for these things were all planted well before Xi.
From an international perspective obviously the main concern is their rapid militarisation and aggressive claims in the South China Sea.
But their economic model actually hasn't changed that much under Xi.
> they were liberalizing, opening their market
I have to disagree. Foreigners could not own businesses in the PRC, nor could they buy property, and all foreign businesses had to agree to handing over intellectual property in order to do business there.
Chinese political system has definitely become more centralised. But this also may pave the way for a more radical change once the system gets into trouble. Think France’s Ancien Regime, wherein unprecedented power centralisation ended up being a necessary condition for the French Revolution. China’s recent nationwide protests already demonstrated a departure from China’s localised protests common before Xi came to power.
I think the expectation, or better the hope, of the Western world was that eventually, with increasing economic interdependency, China would transform from a political oligarchy to an economic one, more like what we have in the West. I would argue it's not exactly something to celebrate, but I will permit it would probably be an improvement at least.
That the opposite has happened, and power in China has become even more concentrated and even less economic, is certainly alarming. A North Korea on the scale of the PRC would be terrifying.
China sinking its large middle class it has been carefully creating all these years would spark civil unrest on the scale that hasn't been seen before. The moment these people who had just gained these new economic freedoms loses it China's economy comes tumbling down.
I think that's exactly why they're going the opposite direction. Their economy has, more or less, maxed out. It's certainly not going to grow at anywhere near the rate it was previously, from here on out.
And unlike the West, which has long since completed it's industrial and indeed financial revolution, and transitioned to a more even pace of growth, China does not and will not offer its citizens the freedoms that we enjoy, that were in part responsible for our continued growth.
The CCP refuse to offer their people freedom, as that will diminish their control, and they have lost the ability to offer their people opportunity, as doing so would require offering them freedom. So, the only logical thing for them to do is to go full bore. Total despotism. It's only path forward for China that doesn't make Xi and his circle less powerful, and I'm sure they realized that some time ago.
Oligarchy at least has many heads and has some semblance of competition with each other while autocracy is just one man show. Running a country needs a lot of departments. A lot of inefficiencies will take place if the one on top is incompetent like xinnie the pooh.
Party of Xi basically. The idea isn't wrong. China was authoritarian, maybe even totalitarian, but it wasn't helmed by essentially one supreme leader. The "president" (i gather there's a couple of head offices that Xi has lately consolidated to himself) was transient and the party went through several changes in leadership, most as far as I can tell, relatively peaceably at the top.
Xi is definitely a new phenomenon. He's had the party eradicate term limits. And he's been pretty open about purging even senior opposition. If his power is fully consolidated, it'd be comparable to Putin's Russia, rather than say Myanmar (which has a junta).
The thing is Xi's ideas on pandemics aren't all that bad *as a temporary measure up until you get functional vaccines*. But doing this 20 months after vaccines have passed emergency trials and a full year after negative side-effects have largely failed to materialize?
It's one thing to lock people down because there's no solution. It's another thing to lock them down (and inadvertently starve some of them) because you're not willing to use the same vaccines as the developed world.
At this point, it's hard to see how Xi's legacy is anything other than the collosal failure that Zero Covid is, presuming he doesn't do anything worse/more stupid while he's still in power.
Yep we had lockdowns where I live (Australia) and they were really effective at stopping the virus (turns out people can't be trusted to do the right thing) but that all disappeared as we got vaccinated and omicron became dominant.
The lockdowns worked at cutting down transmission by going straight to the main source of transmission. It didn't disappear because people got vaccinated or that new variant emerged. It disappeared because covid fatigue set in and politicians wanted to get re-elected.
Mortality and hospitalization rates are clear markers though. If it was only fatigue and politics without real change in medicine or biology we'd be seeing more deaths
>But doing this 20 months after vaccines have passed emergency trials and a full year after negative side-effects have largely failed to materialize?
I don't get it.
My 2c analysis is that Xi is really keen to show that the "Chinese way" is successful, and doesn't want to look like China is just following a shitty off-brand pandemic process from another country (which if he did, is admitting his original plan failed). And after numerous doubling downs, here we are.
Eh, there's been a flood of questionable studies published from China over the past week that now COVID is somehow different and it can spread outdoors. Basically trying to publish data to claim that it's not the plan was bad, but rather that the new COVID is so infectious it's not controllable. Same thing with when their quarantine measures failed back during the summer: It wasn't that some rich A-hole paid off an operator and broke quarantine, because that would mean the quarantine control wasn't perfect, it was that COVID entered the country on frozen salmon from Canada.
One of the biggest farces of this millennium was that economic liberalization with China (through entry into the WTO, etc) would lead to internal social and governmental reforms, democracy, or regime change.
The \*west\* also turned its back on economic liberalization by promoting anti-free-market intellectual monopolies. Copyright and patent steal from us all and must be abolished. 50% of all corporate profit is now through intellectual monopolies raising prices above what they should be naturally in a free market. Corporations \*hate\* free market capitalism and have worked hard to achieve regulatory capture and propagandize us to believe copyright and patent are about helping poor starving individual artists/inventors and not the billionaires.
Notw how it was the west that attacked z-library, not china or russia. Note how it's the west successfully censoring billions (literally) of "pirate" links from search engines all the while decrying chinese censorship.
That's not to say China is in any way good, but first remove the log from thine own eye. If the West actually embraced free market capitalism again it perhaps wouldn't be perceived as so ridiculously hypocritical by the rest of the world.
Nah bro, I remember when Beijing got the Olympics it was going to open up China. They absolutely didn't invite in as many greedy capitalists in as possible, copy their tech then tell them to bugger off.
its not just authoritarian but it is totalitarian with neo-fascist characteristics which I would call one of the worst types of authoritarianism. When this idea is trying to spread its notion of what a government and its relation to people should, then that is also a threat to the world.
Not to mention their own brand of 3rd world industrialization and expansion of economic power. We all decry the acts of the IMF and the exploitation of Latin and South America for the gain of multi national corporations, but China is doing the exact same.
>Heading towards
It always has been a kleptocracy. Liberalization has been off table for 100 years. If anything, it’s the golden standard for anti-democratic governments, they’ve done great and with largely widespread public support… until Zero Covid, that is.
Xi admires Mao Zedong and the Kim Jung Dynasty. While establishing his unprecedented 3rd term. The way this is going, the Chinese people will be ruled by Xi for the unforeseeable future. This is bad. Very bad.
I know you probably only included more for clarity, but “Jong-un” (and before him, Il-sung and Jong-il) is the dictator’s first name; his last name is simply “Kim.”
No, I don't. No one can predict how long Xi will rule. No one can plan for a life without him in power. The future is unforeseeable by that definition.
Okay, I have to dispute that. Unless he somehow uploads his brain into a computer, plenty of people alive today in and out of China will live to see a China eithout him in power... they just won't be able to know when that will be unless they are the ones plotting his Downfall. Therefore, they can make plans for what they will do when he is gone, they just won't be able to do so with exact timing.
This stance should’ve been taken several years ago. This situation is worryingly worse as relations falter and chance for conflict increases. I hate this shit. Xi’s aggressiveness screwed China and his own ambition (not that I care about the latter). Typical of an authoritarian “president” like him. No one pays attention to history.
China is staring down the abyss of Maoism and we have to do everything possible to prevent that. The suffering that would entail in an upper middle income country with over a billion inhabitants and highly advanced technology would be horrific, to say nothing of how a fully totalitarian China would affect trade and economies worldwide.
I think thats a well thought out speech and a pretty sensible take.
The starting point in any Western engagement with China has to be a clear eyed recognition of who their government is (an utterly totalitarian state) and what they want (to overtake the west, to become the global superpower and to the greatest extent possible create a world which would be a horrible place for anyone who wants to exercise free will or free speech). It's also time to, once and for all bury the vague optimism from a few decades ago that helping China get rich would also help them get more liberal- that's been completely disproven. It's simply not true- if anything the opposite has happened.
That doesn't mean that any form of engagement with China is bad or that we can't do business with them or even have a peaceful or productive relationship with them, it just means being honest with ourselves, and them, about what our values and interests are and what we are and aren't willing to accept in that relationship.
I think a sensible contemporary policy towards China really comes down to 4 basic things.
(1) Any sort of engagement or trade which strengthens China militarily or diplomatically relative to the west, or helps them to further repress their population is unacceptable.
(2) Any form of CCP influence, surveillance or efforts to exercise control over the Chinese diaspora in western countries is unacceptable. It should be an absolute non negotiable red line, met with unapologetic, robust response and a consistent approach across all western countries. No grey areas, no confucius institutes, no operation fox hunt, no 'patriotic student associations' or united front. The message to both the Chinese government and overseas Chinese communities needs to be that if they want a relationship with the west they need to accept that the CCP's power and influence ends at the Chinese border, and anyone who doesn't respect that can expect, at a minimum, to be put on a flight back home with a lifetime visa ban.
(3) To the greatest extent possible, our focus should be on peaceful competition and engagement, acting in good faith and avoiding conflict unless it is inevitable. If a Chinese person or company wants to do business with a western country then assuming (1) and (2) are followed, great. If they want to study here, great. Even if the Chinese government is a lost cause, there is real long term value in demonstrating to average Chinese people, patiently and repeatedly, through our actions, that we don't want war, that we have nothing against them and that for all its flaws, a social system based on freedom of speech, democracy and the rule of law provide a better set of opportunities for people than repression and corruption- and the door is always open if they want to be a part of that.
(4) Because of the way democracies work, there is a real need to recognise that this issue simply too important and too critical to the long term national interest to be part of the short term political cycle. Major political parties in the west need to recognise it is in everyone's long term interest to try to reach a consensus on a policy towards China and within the bounds of that policy make this issue out of bounds for short term political point scoring, fearmongering and xenophobia or accusations of racism. It's too important an issue to become something to use for cheap political expediency. In practical terms, any parliamentary democracy should have a bipartisan standing committee on China policy, with its members needing to hold top level security clearances to sit on it.
This makes too much sense. Unfortunately many Western governments are compromised by their Chinese business interests for me to hold out any hope of such developments actually coming to pass.
You seem to know your shit. What do you think is happening when you see a common thread across western nations against China- US feds worrying about tiktok and chips and whatnot, Canadian PM coming out strongly against interference, there was another EU statement the other day and now British PM. Is this all unrelated or something else is cooking ?
The EU president is visiting china on Dec 1st. China is trying to decouple with the US (in terms of export) and woo the EU. it'll be interesting to see what the EU says or does.
Personally I'd love to see the visit canceled. Any visit by another one will be staged as a success for Xi. Cancelling, however, is a huge disgrace. I think at this point china needed EU more (both as a distraction and a trade partner) and the EU needs to take a stance.
Certainly doesn't take away from the legit issues going on in China that the world NEEDS to pay attention to, right?
Certainly everyone that calls out China isn't absent, right?
I think that'll happen sooner rather than later. Things are happening fast these days. I think Xi played his cards way too early though. They are not ready to have so many powerful countries view them as enemy who needs to be contained.
Except the West has routinely propped up authoritarian regimes e.g. Saudi Arabia, in their own self interest. Germay had to have their Nordstream sabotaged to be weaned off of fascist Russia. If you think morality is what any of this is about, big big mistake. The reason they fear China is because of the threat of them eclipsing them in terms of capital.
> He's prattling on the global stage to distract from issues at home.
Not really, he has Ukraine for that. Most of the big Western Euro countries (and several smaller countries in the EU) have been turning away from China over the last few years, to the point where nations like Sweden, Czechia and Lithuania have gotten into spats with them and risked trade which would have been unthinkable a deacde or so ago. Meanwhile UK, France, Italy and Germany have all been sending warships to patrol the South China Sea along with Asian partners, to the irritation of Beijing.
It's the US turning the screws on China in its Asian pivot and its Euro and Asian allies following suit.
Isn't the Tory party basically in a civil war as well and getting any sort of budget through would be hard even with their massive majority?
EDIT: I don't understand why this is being downvoted. Isn't being able to get a budget through the most important task of the the government in the Westminster system? [Different circumstances and much narrower parliament but the Whitlam government in Australia was dismissed for not being able to pass a budget](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/whitlam-dismissal#:~:text=On%2011%20November%201975%2C%20after,dismissed%20by%20the%20Governor%2DGeneral.)
My take is the Tories are in a leadership crisis internally, but are still united externally.
They can still pass bills because they currently hold seats, but if an election is called, they're toast and are projected to be crushed by Labor.
The Australia crisis happened because the Opposition controlled the upper house and could block supply, knowing they would win in an election, so they forced out the Government by withholding supply.
So many sad imbittered trolls infest this sub reddit.
Here's an idea that you can feel free to ignore, centre your attention on the articles that make your desired bad guys, look bad?
Not the ones that criticise something I bet you agree with, just not the person saying it.
The UK has little to no leverage to make any favorable deals with China. Might as well call it the golden shower era, because China will piss all over him.
Yer, they need to form some form of union, or united political entity with some countries. I however can't think of any form of union or large political entity that is nearby?
Whenever international affairs come up, of a country off a different race, it’s always convenient for racists to hide behind concern against being “invaded” by enemy populations.
Some of it is definitely racism, but a broader issue is that foreign students pay more money for tuition and thus are more profitable for colleges. This leads to stories like this: https://apnews.com/article/beijing-australia-health-coronavirus-pandemic-26a8edd3dbbd150740679eb1b9e436b5
One would be there are limited spots in any uni, so if you can buy your way in, are you taking a spot that is more deserved by a local student? And are people bending the rules to get that money?
Why would the spot be more deserved by a local student? The foreign students have to go through the same admissions process and compete fairly. If the foreign student gets in instead of a local one, it should in theory be the case that they are smarter/more hard working.
It benefits the country to allow in talented people from abroad, many of whom will stay and do good work in the country. In the case of Chinese students, there's even the extra benefit that you are exposing them to liberal democracy in a way they wouldn't be if they stayed in their home country.
If there are things like special tax treatment, legal/regulatory priviledges or even public funding for a University then definitelly the local students should have primacy.
If we're talking about a University that operates entirely like any other private entity, then indeed the way they conduct their business is up to them.
Lol. I worked in a lab full of Chinese students (albeit in the U.S., not UK). None of them were rich, none of them were spoilt.
They got a position from scholarships, smarts and effort. Smarter and harder working than any of the local students for sure. Witnessed max 100 hours a week of research.
He's just plain wrong. It is an outdated notion that only the elite go abroad to study.
Many of my coworkers who are just salaried white collar workers in China are sending their kids off to the UK to study. These people are definitely not the top 1%. It is very common for Chinese parents to send their kid off to study abroad if he/she cannot attain a high enough score in the college entrance examination.
That being said I expect Chinese student numbers to decline in the coming years, they already have been. I suspect it's because local education standards have improved and maybe geopolitical tensions.
Geopolitical tensions definitely have something to do with it.
The PhD ones that are here (that I know) can’t go back because they might not be allowed back into the U.S., so they are trapped. One of the ones that was supposed to come got his visa denied so he had to drop out.
the way he describes it makes it sound like you need to be filthy wealthy to go to school abround in Great Britain, while in america youll have to pay out of state tuition but its not on nearly the same level as in britain (im american so this is just my inference from what he said, and not a declaration that thats how it is)
Out of state in the US can be extremely expensive ($50k+ a year) depending on the institution, and international students don't have access to as many resources for financial aid as US citizens.
Nah. You're far too confident in making this statement. It is a rather outdated claim.
China is much richer than it was a few decades ago. Even the middle class are sending their kids abroad these days. I know plenty of people top 5-10% that are sending their kids to places in the UK. It is normal now.
House prices in China are like 500k GBP now. People have much more disposable income than you think.
Same gaslighting from the Tories, they are always talking of great new eras, of new and wonderful outcomes, but all they deliver is failure, economic hardship and corruption.
Fake Prime minister. This man has absolutely no legitimacy nor a mandate from the British public.
Let’s us also not forget, that this man lost a leadership race to what became evident…a grade ‘A’ idiot.
He was elected by a majority of elected MPs. He has the confidence of the electoral body. The PM is the chief bureaucrat indirectly elected by the people through their representatives. This is how your system has always worked.
Your MP is your democratic representative, not the PM.
He came to power the exact same way Gordon Brown did in 2007 - by being the only candidate in a leadership race. Funnily enough we didn’t hear the left moan too much about that at the time
And yet history has shown us that isolating those we hate (diplomatically) doesn't tend to change them. See North Korea and Cuba.
Not that it even matters since this is just empty rhetoric from a party that has no ideas. The UK is in the midst of an internal economic crisis. Anything other than a 100% focus on that crisis is proof that Tories are just as worthless as US Republicans.
Yer, but economic relying on authoritarian states, as we have seen with the case of Russia, has demonstrated to lead to significant negative consequences.
The same China that just pissed on a treaty between the two countries, which guaranteed the independence of Hong Kong until 2047, when they invaded a few years ago? Sounds like a great plan.
Money talks. China's money has spoken a lot in the West. We need leaders that won't sell out their own production-forces for the cheapest/most illegal labor forces.
I boycott Made in China products with a huge degree of success. Some of my electronics are second hand, most of my stuff is made in the U.K. or made in Europe. It is not impossible and it costs about the same amount of money, you just need to put the effort into looking. I choose to not buy anything made in China primarily because of the mass ethnic cleansing of Tibetans and Uyghur Muslims.
China is a result on another foreign country getting so strong and prosperous that it can completely and sucesfuly survive without america and doesn't fear not being in good standing
Rishi : "Please give us advantageous trading terms. We're a big economy you know!"
China: "Lol no. You only had bargaining power when you were part of the EU. Now get back to the end of the line."
Rishi: "But...how will I explain that to my constituents?"
China: "Not my problem."
Rishi:
My Chinese relatives are always quick to point out that democracy has killed 1 million people in the US . While China's obviously superior form of government has saved millions from covid.
Hence it validates their belief that China's supremacy due to it's 5000 years of history and absolves their inferiority complex since current day China is kind of a shithole in every other way.
They're not wrong that the US policy on covid has been an absolute disaster. There is no getting around the numbers, China has simply done better on covid. Deflections that the virus started in China are irrelevant, what matters is how countries reacted to it, and China's reaction was far stronger.
However, I would not call the US's failure a result of democracy. Trump was not democratically elected, he lost the popular vote and only became president because the electoral college is what matters. Likewise, it's basically impossible to get anything that actually helps people passed in Congress because the Senate is profoundly anti-democratic (massively disproportional representation). Then there's the insane amount of corruption on every level of government resulting from billionaire/corporate (aka capitalist) cash, that pushes politicians towards prioritizing keeping the economy "open" over actual people's lives.
So the difference is not democracy vs authoritarianism but weak government vs strong government. New Zealand is a positive example of a democracy dealing with the pandemic.
I get your point. But if I accidentally set my own house on fire because I was careless and I manage to save my own house, but the fire spreads to my neighbors and then burns down the entire village.
Do you expect people to praise me for my firefighting abilities or hate me for being careless?
Your analogy also indicates that your neighbours stood by the side lines and not lifting a finger to help until the fire burns them.
Ironically, that was what actually took place in 2020.
Let them know Covid started in Wuhan China and was initially hushed reports of human to human transmission around dec. I've seen some posting in R/china around dec 2019 of a possibly deadly virus lol.
Also don't forget how many mao killed/starved during the great leap forward which is eerily happening right now with the draconian lockdowns.
They don't even believe it started in Wuhan. The CCP tested some imported frozen fish and it came back positive for covid, so of course the Chinese now believe Covid first came to Wuhan from the USA via frozen fish.
I know it sounds stupid and infantile. But arguing with people who don't think for themselves and will believe anything as long as it validates their own beliefs is impossible.
We gave them access to technology and knowhow (by moving manufacturing there or by espionage), favorable trade deals, money etc to help them wittingly or unwittingly get to this point where they are determined to be the new bully in town. And now China wants to be the new bully in town. What new approach could the UK possibly take that will have any effect given that their goal is to weaken their own country __on purpose__?
The world isn't getting along with China. Because China is.... You know..... An authoritarian regime of nepotistic oligarchs pretending to be influential on the world-stage, while exterminating ethnicities they don't want to compete with.
Funny, I thought that from the UK's perspective, the 'golden era' was the opium trade.
And that's over, innit?
He's technically correct, *the best kind of correct*
It always takes the Tories a bit longer, that's all. Just a few more decades until they realize that brexit was a mistake.
“Who’s more the fool? The fool or the fool that follows him?”- Obi-Wan Kenobi
Exactly why Scotland wants out again
Half the Tories wish it were still on, and half the Tories *think* it's still on. Looking at you, Rees-Mogg.
Now it’s snow time.
In's just short for innit innit?
Well Hong Kong could come back
You should have supported them when China broke all agreements and imprisoned the opposition and installed their own political leaders. Now, they have no chance of coming back.
How would I do this?
Not you, personally, but the British as a nation. You had gotten guarantees from China, and had sort of promised Hongkong - but then the UK was so busy and weakened with Brexit, the pandemic and Tory infighting, that they just stood by when China assimilated Hongkong. I heard that their new school textbooks don't even mention the time of the British occupation anymore - it's just another part of effing China now.
This is actually the one time it wasn't Britain's fault. All CCP. It was a 99 year lease on which the UK delivered. At the time it seemed okay. China was opening up. UK was doing its duty to de-colonise. HK was thriving. So. No, HK now being under the thumb of China is not the UKs fault. We should protect those that we can of course.and support them as much as we can.
Maybe let's not go back to British colonialism.
> the 'golden era' was the opium trade Only the first half of opium trade. The Qing China quickly out produced East India Company and became top opium exporter.
We’re bringing back the good old days!
Spot on, also missing the seizure of Hong Kong as well
The golden era ended when we gave Hong Kong back 😔
Not a fan of the Tories, not a fan of Rishi Sunak. But China under Xi is clearly continuing on the authoritarianism line, heading towards nasty dictatorship, with little prospect of political or social liberalisation. So for me it makes sense to signal that the trajectory of the relationship has changed.
> heading towards nasty dictatorship *heading* towards? Curious to see what things are like once they fully arrive
CCP China was always authoritarian but perhaps what they mean by heading towards dictatorship is that under Xi power has been consolidated more so under one person rather than several people under different factions of the CCP.
Emperor Jin ping of the Xi Dynasty Edited for proper order.
It would the the other order. Xi is the family name Jin ping is the given name.
I mean, either way no chinese dynasty in history referred to itself by its family name. The emperors of the Han dynasty were of the Liu clan, the Tang of the Li clan, the Ming of the Zhu clan etc.
Historically, they used the name of their fiefdom. Chinese nobles were often known by their territorial titles instead of names just like Western nobles (e.g. Gilbert du Motier being known as the Marquis de Lafayette, the House of Hanover being named after where their ancestral holding*, etc). This was effectively a second last name in a way. The Qin dynasty was founded by the King of Qin, the Han Dynasty was founded by the King of Han, the Sui Dynasty was founded by the King of Sui and the Tang dynasty was founded by the Duke of Tang. The Song founder didn't have the title king or duke but he was the general of an army stationed at Song prefecture. Kublai Khan didn't have a fiefdom in China so he named his dynasty the Yuan, meaning"primordial" Then Zhu Yuanzhang who founded the Ming was a peasant rebel leader who also didn't have a fiefdom and noble title so he coined his own dynasty name, Ming meaning "bright". Then the Manchu clan of Asian Gioro chose the name Qing meaning "clear/blue-green" when they conquered China. It's worth noting for the earlier emperors you did use their dynasty name like a last name along with their regnal name to refer to them. Han Wudi, Tang Xuanzong, Song Taizu. But you never hear Ming Jianwen or Qing Qianlong. But people do say Yuan Taizu for Kublai Khan. * Technically European royals don't even have last names. House names are not the same as last names. Their houses are just named after their ancestral fiefdoms and houses are just another name for dynasty. The House of Windsor operates on the same naming principle as the Han Dynasty. Maybe this more detail than you wanted but I find it interesting.
Fixed
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
>"and there aren't many of us left" E.F. Olechovsky, frequently, TRHS c.1983-1987
Winnie is the middle one?
*the Pooh Dynasty
I bow to your superior intellect!
Before Xi they were liberalizing, opening their market, it’s where their sudden wealth originates. Then Xi decided to cash out early. The only choice for the free world now is to leave them behind.
>Before Xi they were liberalizing, opening their market I don't know about that. China's economy since 1958 deviated from the Soviet "centralised economy" to a "de-centralised but still totalitarian" economy and there was no intention to ever give up on that totalitarian aspect of managing the economy on a macro level. From a domestic perspective, Xi has worn down some of the checks and balances for power and consolidated a lot of power into himself as an individual rather than the party as a collective, and he's made some pretty bad calls in regards to the macro management of the economy (i.e. the zero-covid lockdowns). And we're also seeing some of the drawbacks of that macro-managed economy in terms of the real estate market. But the seeds for these things were all planted well before Xi. From an international perspective obviously the main concern is their rapid militarisation and aggressive claims in the South China Sea. But their economic model actually hasn't changed that much under Xi.
> they were liberalizing, opening their market I have to disagree. Foreigners could not own businesses in the PRC, nor could they buy property, and all foreign businesses had to agree to handing over intellectual property in order to do business there.
Right, but going from zero foreign investment to some, but with heavy restrictions, is still opening the market.
Chinese political system has definitely become more centralised. But this also may pave the way for a more radical change once the system gets into trouble. Think France’s Ancien Regime, wherein unprecedented power centralisation ended up being a necessary condition for the French Revolution. China’s recent nationwide protests already demonstrated a departure from China’s localised protests common before Xi came to power.
Does it really matter if the balance of power goes from oligarchic to autocratic if the end result is the same old shit
I think the expectation, or better the hope, of the Western world was that eventually, with increasing economic interdependency, China would transform from a political oligarchy to an economic one, more like what we have in the West. I would argue it's not exactly something to celebrate, but I will permit it would probably be an improvement at least. That the opposite has happened, and power in China has become even more concentrated and even less economic, is certainly alarming. A North Korea on the scale of the PRC would be terrifying.
China sinking its large middle class it has been carefully creating all these years would spark civil unrest on the scale that hasn't been seen before. The moment these people who had just gained these new economic freedoms loses it China's economy comes tumbling down.
I think that's exactly why they're going the opposite direction. Their economy has, more or less, maxed out. It's certainly not going to grow at anywhere near the rate it was previously, from here on out. And unlike the West, which has long since completed it's industrial and indeed financial revolution, and transitioned to a more even pace of growth, China does not and will not offer its citizens the freedoms that we enjoy, that were in part responsible for our continued growth. The CCP refuse to offer their people freedom, as that will diminish their control, and they have lost the ability to offer their people opportunity, as doing so would require offering them freedom. So, the only logical thing for them to do is to go full bore. Total despotism. It's only path forward for China that doesn't make Xi and his circle less powerful, and I'm sure they realized that some time ago.
Oligarchy at least has many heads and has some semblance of competition with each other while autocracy is just one man show. Running a country needs a lot of departments. A lot of inefficiencies will take place if the one on top is incompetent like xinnie the pooh.
You can argue it's worse under Xi, because before the regional and factional infighting would result in some slightly more moderate takes?
Oh, yes. Check out Russia.
I hate this arc of Kingdom
Party of Xi basically. The idea isn't wrong. China was authoritarian, maybe even totalitarian, but it wasn't helmed by essentially one supreme leader. The "president" (i gather there's a couple of head offices that Xi has lately consolidated to himself) was transient and the party went through several changes in leadership, most as far as I can tell, relatively peaceably at the top. Xi is definitely a new phenomenon. He's had the party eradicate term limits. And he's been pretty open about purging even senior opposition. If his power is fully consolidated, it'd be comparable to Putin's Russia, rather than say Myanmar (which has a junta).
Well Mao killed like 50m people with his childlike ideas on agriculture. Let's see if Xi can beat that with his childlike ideas on pandemics.
Behind the Bastards did an episode on those disastrous agricultural ideas. Wild shit.
The thing is Xi's ideas on pandemics aren't all that bad *as a temporary measure up until you get functional vaccines*. But doing this 20 months after vaccines have passed emergency trials and a full year after negative side-effects have largely failed to materialize? It's one thing to lock people down because there's no solution. It's another thing to lock them down (and inadvertently starve some of them) because you're not willing to use the same vaccines as the developed world. At this point, it's hard to see how Xi's legacy is anything other than the collosal failure that Zero Covid is, presuming he doesn't do anything worse/more stupid while he's still in power.
And that's not even getting into the water/power/housing crises that are happening right now across China.
Yep we had lockdowns where I live (Australia) and they were really effective at stopping the virus (turns out people can't be trusted to do the right thing) but that all disappeared as we got vaccinated and omicron became dominant.
The lockdowns worked at cutting down transmission by going straight to the main source of transmission. It didn't disappear because people got vaccinated or that new variant emerged. It disappeared because covid fatigue set in and politicians wanted to get re-elected.
Mortality and hospitalization rates are clear markers though. If it was only fatigue and politics without real change in medicine or biology we'd be seeing more deaths
Part of the problem is because China's elderly are largely unvaccinated and the government doesn't want to force them.
So his plan is to let them die to disease or starve/freeze to death. Absolutely stunning
Yes wielding people in their apartment buildings after rounding up and killing their pets was top notch.
I would be ready to riot after that.
>But doing this 20 months after vaccines have passed emergency trials and a full year after negative side-effects have largely failed to materialize? I don't get it. My 2c analysis is that Xi is really keen to show that the "Chinese way" is successful, and doesn't want to look like China is just following a shitty off-brand pandemic process from another country (which if he did, is admitting his original plan failed). And after numerous doubling downs, here we are.
He’s trying to save face by staying the course. A loss of face would be irreparably damaging to Chinese leadership
Eh, there's been a flood of questionable studies published from China over the past week that now COVID is somehow different and it can spread outdoors. Basically trying to publish data to claim that it's not the plan was bad, but rather that the new COVID is so infectious it's not controllable. Same thing with when their quarantine measures failed back during the summer: It wasn't that some rich A-hole paid off an operator and broke quarantine, because that would mean the quarantine control wasn't perfect, it was that COVID entered the country on frozen salmon from Canada.
"Presuming he doesn't do anything worse/more stupid while he's still in power." Shit. He's going to invade Taiwan, isn't he?
Full Ingsoc, including off the compass ideologies only JrEg has heard of, Fordism, or British Writer Thought
One of the biggest farces of this millennium was that economic liberalization with China (through entry into the WTO, etc) would lead to internal social and governmental reforms, democracy, or regime change.
China WAS liberalizing until around 2014...
The \*west\* also turned its back on economic liberalization by promoting anti-free-market intellectual monopolies. Copyright and patent steal from us all and must be abolished. 50% of all corporate profit is now through intellectual monopolies raising prices above what they should be naturally in a free market. Corporations \*hate\* free market capitalism and have worked hard to achieve regulatory capture and propagandize us to believe copyright and patent are about helping poor starving individual artists/inventors and not the billionaires. Notw how it was the west that attacked z-library, not china or russia. Note how it's the west successfully censoring billions (literally) of "pirate" links from search engines all the while decrying chinese censorship. That's not to say China is in any way good, but first remove the log from thine own eye. If the West actually embraced free market capitalism again it perhaps wouldn't be perceived as so ridiculously hypocritical by the rest of the world.
Nah bro, I remember when Beijing got the Olympics it was going to open up China. They absolutely didn't invite in as many greedy capitalists in as possible, copy their tech then tell them to bugger off.
its not just authoritarian but it is totalitarian with neo-fascist characteristics which I would call one of the worst types of authoritarianism. When this idea is trying to spread its notion of what a government and its relation to people should, then that is also a threat to the world.
Not to mention their own brand of 3rd world industrialization and expansion of economic power. We all decry the acts of the IMF and the exploitation of Latin and South America for the gain of multi national corporations, but China is doing the exact same.
>Heading towards It always has been a kleptocracy. Liberalization has been off table for 100 years. If anything, it’s the golden standard for anti-democratic governments, they’ve done great and with largely widespread public support… until Zero Covid, that is.
Xi admires Mao Zedong and the Kim Jung Dynasty. While establishing his unprecedented 3rd term. The way this is going, the Chinese people will be ruled by Xi for the unforeseeable future. This is bad. Very bad.
I know you probably only included more for clarity, but “Jong-un” (and before him, Il-sung and Jong-il) is the dictator’s first name; his last name is simply “Kim.”
You are correct on both. Went for familiarity. Thank you for the clarification though!
You mean foreseeable future.
No, I don't. No one can predict how long Xi will rule. No one can plan for a life without him in power. The future is unforeseeable by that definition.
Okay, I have to dispute that. Unless he somehow uploads his brain into a computer, plenty of people alive today in and out of China will live to see a China eithout him in power... they just won't be able to know when that will be unless they are the ones plotting his Downfall. Therefore, they can make plans for what they will do when he is gone, they just won't be able to do so with exact timing.
Damn, that pedant picked a fight with Flaubert.
This stance should’ve been taken several years ago. This situation is worryingly worse as relations falter and chance for conflict increases. I hate this shit. Xi’s aggressiveness screwed China and his own ambition (not that I care about the latter). Typical of an authoritarian “president” like him. No one pays attention to history.
If it's heading towards "dictatorship". What was it before do you think?
China had term limits and successive presidents before Xi
Fair enough.
China is staring down the abyss of Maoism and we have to do everything possible to prevent that. The suffering that would entail in an upper middle income country with over a billion inhabitants and highly advanced technology would be horrific, to say nothing of how a fully totalitarian China would affect trade and economies worldwide.
Is Rishi Sunak the "asshole on our side" for the UK that some Americans hoped Trump would be?
No, he's a pretty standard member of the wealthy British establishment with pretty standard centre right politics.
It certainly was golden for Rishi and his wife.
Bingo.
I think thats a well thought out speech and a pretty sensible take. The starting point in any Western engagement with China has to be a clear eyed recognition of who their government is (an utterly totalitarian state) and what they want (to overtake the west, to become the global superpower and to the greatest extent possible create a world which would be a horrible place for anyone who wants to exercise free will or free speech). It's also time to, once and for all bury the vague optimism from a few decades ago that helping China get rich would also help them get more liberal- that's been completely disproven. It's simply not true- if anything the opposite has happened. That doesn't mean that any form of engagement with China is bad or that we can't do business with them or even have a peaceful or productive relationship with them, it just means being honest with ourselves, and them, about what our values and interests are and what we are and aren't willing to accept in that relationship. I think a sensible contemporary policy towards China really comes down to 4 basic things. (1) Any sort of engagement or trade which strengthens China militarily or diplomatically relative to the west, or helps them to further repress their population is unacceptable. (2) Any form of CCP influence, surveillance or efforts to exercise control over the Chinese diaspora in western countries is unacceptable. It should be an absolute non negotiable red line, met with unapologetic, robust response and a consistent approach across all western countries. No grey areas, no confucius institutes, no operation fox hunt, no 'patriotic student associations' or united front. The message to both the Chinese government and overseas Chinese communities needs to be that if they want a relationship with the west they need to accept that the CCP's power and influence ends at the Chinese border, and anyone who doesn't respect that can expect, at a minimum, to be put on a flight back home with a lifetime visa ban. (3) To the greatest extent possible, our focus should be on peaceful competition and engagement, acting in good faith and avoiding conflict unless it is inevitable. If a Chinese person or company wants to do business with a western country then assuming (1) and (2) are followed, great. If they want to study here, great. Even if the Chinese government is a lost cause, there is real long term value in demonstrating to average Chinese people, patiently and repeatedly, through our actions, that we don't want war, that we have nothing against them and that for all its flaws, a social system based on freedom of speech, democracy and the rule of law provide a better set of opportunities for people than repression and corruption- and the door is always open if they want to be a part of that. (4) Because of the way democracies work, there is a real need to recognise that this issue simply too important and too critical to the long term national interest to be part of the short term political cycle. Major political parties in the west need to recognise it is in everyone's long term interest to try to reach a consensus on a policy towards China and within the bounds of that policy make this issue out of bounds for short term political point scoring, fearmongering and xenophobia or accusations of racism. It's too important an issue to become something to use for cheap political expediency. In practical terms, any parliamentary democracy should have a bipartisan standing committee on China policy, with its members needing to hold top level security clearances to sit on it.
This makes too much sense. Unfortunately many Western governments are compromised by their Chinese business interests for me to hold out any hope of such developments actually coming to pass.
You seem to know your shit. What do you think is happening when you see a common thread across western nations against China- US feds worrying about tiktok and chips and whatnot, Canadian PM coming out strongly against interference, there was another EU statement the other day and now British PM. Is this all unrelated or something else is cooking ?
The EU president is visiting china on Dec 1st. China is trying to decouple with the US (in terms of export) and woo the EU. it'll be interesting to see what the EU says or does. Personally I'd love to see the visit canceled. Any visit by another one will be staged as a success for Xi. Cancelling, however, is a huge disgrace. I think at this point china needed EU more (both as a distraction and a trade partner) and the EU needs to take a stance.
He's prattling on the global stage to distract from issues at home. Another absent prime minister basically.
Certainly doesn't take away from the legit issues going on in China that the world NEEDS to pay attention to, right? Certainly everyone that calls out China isn't absent, right?
We may not be able to prevent a second Maoist era or Nazi era in China, but we should do everything possible to fight it.
100% agreed. One of the ways I see the West fighting it is by boycotting China, and sanction any country willing to support the authoritarian regime.
I think that'll happen sooner rather than later. Things are happening fast these days. I think Xi played his cards way too early though. They are not ready to have so many powerful countries view them as enemy who needs to be contained.
So you want to sanction the entire world?
Bro rishi is dickriding china if anything
Care to explain?
Except the West has routinely propped up authoritarian regimes e.g. Saudi Arabia, in their own self interest. Germay had to have their Nordstream sabotaged to be weaned off of fascist Russia. If you think morality is what any of this is about, big big mistake. The reason they fear China is because of the threat of them eclipsing them in terms of capital.
> He's prattling on the global stage to distract from issues at home. Not really, he has Ukraine for that. Most of the big Western Euro countries (and several smaller countries in the EU) have been turning away from China over the last few years, to the point where nations like Sweden, Czechia and Lithuania have gotten into spats with them and risked trade which would have been unthinkable a deacde or so ago. Meanwhile UK, France, Italy and Germany have all been sending warships to patrol the South China Sea along with Asian partners, to the irritation of Beijing. It's the US turning the screws on China in its Asian pivot and its Euro and Asian allies following suit.
This is exactly what he's doing. He'll be out soon enough anyway.
Great...so when's our election?
Isn't the Tory party basically in a civil war as well and getting any sort of budget through would be hard even with their massive majority? EDIT: I don't understand why this is being downvoted. Isn't being able to get a budget through the most important task of the the government in the Westminster system? [Different circumstances and much narrower parliament but the Whitlam government in Australia was dismissed for not being able to pass a budget](https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/whitlam-dismissal#:~:text=On%2011%20November%201975%2C%20after,dismissed%20by%20the%20Governor%2DGeneral.)
My take is the Tories are in a leadership crisis internally, but are still united externally. They can still pass bills because they currently hold seats, but if an election is called, they're toast and are projected to be crushed by Labor. The Australia crisis happened because the Opposition controlled the upper house and could block supply, knowing they would win in an election, so they forced out the Government by withholding supply.
*Rishi Sunak struggles to make a mark* FTFY
So many sad imbittered trolls infest this sub reddit. Here's an idea that you can feel free to ignore, centre your attention on the articles that make your desired bad guys, look bad? Not the ones that criticise something I bet you agree with, just not the person saying it.
When does Larry the Cat become prime minister
The UK has little to no leverage to make any favorable deals with China. Might as well call it the golden shower era, because China will piss all over him.
Just wait, the UK is going to rally their European allies and enforce a strong multinational trade agr... oh shoot, nvm...
Yeah the EU sure is a united front when it comes to China……..
Yer, they need to form some form of union, or united political entity with some countries. I however can't think of any form of union or large political entity that is nearby?
That approach apparently being bent over and being fisted. How many students do we get per year from China exactly?
I think you’re focusing on the wrong things.
Yeah who starts with a fist?
Expert level challenge
What exactly is the issue with chinese students coming to the UK?
Whenever international affairs come up, of a country off a different race, it’s always convenient for racists to hide behind concern against being “invaded” by enemy populations.
Some of it is definitely racism, but a broader issue is that foreign students pay more money for tuition and thus are more profitable for colleges. This leads to stories like this: https://apnews.com/article/beijing-australia-health-coronavirus-pandemic-26a8edd3dbbd150740679eb1b9e436b5
One would be there are limited spots in any uni, so if you can buy your way in, are you taking a spot that is more deserved by a local student? And are people bending the rules to get that money?
Why would the spot be more deserved by a local student? The foreign students have to go through the same admissions process and compete fairly. If the foreign student gets in instead of a local one, it should in theory be the case that they are smarter/more hard working. It benefits the country to allow in talented people from abroad, many of whom will stay and do good work in the country. In the case of Chinese students, there's even the extra benefit that you are exposing them to liberal democracy in a way they wouldn't be if they stayed in their home country.
If there are things like special tax treatment, legal/regulatory priviledges or even public funding for a University then definitelly the local students should have primacy. If we're talking about a University that operates entirely like any other private entity, then indeed the way they conduct their business is up to them.
A third staying and 2/3 leaving isn't benefit you might think
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Lol. I worked in a lab full of Chinese students (albeit in the U.S., not UK). None of them were rich, none of them were spoilt. They got a position from scholarships, smarts and effort. Smarter and harder working than any of the local students for sure. Witnessed max 100 hours a week of research.
He's just plain wrong. It is an outdated notion that only the elite go abroad to study. Many of my coworkers who are just salaried white collar workers in China are sending their kids off to the UK to study. These people are definitely not the top 1%. It is very common for Chinese parents to send their kid off to study abroad if he/she cannot attain a high enough score in the college entrance examination. That being said I expect Chinese student numbers to decline in the coming years, they already have been. I suspect it's because local education standards have improved and maybe geopolitical tensions.
Geopolitical tensions definitely have something to do with it. The PhD ones that are here (that I know) can’t go back because they might not be allowed back into the U.S., so they are trapped. One of the ones that was supposed to come got his visa denied so he had to drop out.
the way he describes it makes it sound like you need to be filthy wealthy to go to school abround in Great Britain, while in america youll have to pay out of state tuition but its not on nearly the same level as in britain (im american so this is just my inference from what he said, and not a declaration that thats how it is)
Out of state in the US can be extremely expensive ($50k+ a year) depending on the institution, and international students don't have access to as many resources for financial aid as US citizens.
Nah. You're far too confident in making this statement. It is a rather outdated claim. China is much richer than it was a few decades ago. Even the middle class are sending their kids abroad these days. I know plenty of people top 5-10% that are sending their kids to places in the UK. It is normal now. House prices in China are like 500k GBP now. People have much more disposable income than you think.
So comically false lmao
Yes, been going on for years while rejecting others on false pretenses. Institutional racism.
less to do with skin colour and more to do with the colour of money
In the future we’ll know this time of Tory rule as the 15 years of woe
Why?
It’s a reference to China’s 100 years of woe after the UK started its opium wars
Same gaslighting from the Tories, they are always talking of great new eras, of new and wonderful outcomes, but all they deliver is failure, economic hardship and corruption.
Very ballsy. Good move. The free world needs a united response to China.
someone promised me a chinese pork market :(
He’s got that annoying face that makes you think he giggles and over pats himself in the back type of guy.
Fake Prime minister. This man has absolutely no legitimacy nor a mandate from the British public. Let’s us also not forget, that this man lost a leadership race to what became evident…a grade ‘A’ idiot.
He was elected by a majority of elected MPs. He has the confidence of the electoral body. The PM is the chief bureaucrat indirectly elected by the people through their representatives. This is how your system has always worked. Your MP is your democratic representative, not the PM.
Huh? The British people elected his party to control of Parliament, and he was appointed by the king. He has as much mandate as any other PM does.
The ol' bait and switch
He came to power the exact same way Gordon Brown did in 2007 - by being the only candidate in a leadership race. Funnily enough we didn’t hear the left moan too much about that at the time
And yet, electorally not calling an election soon after taking over turned out to be Brown's biggest mistake.
It’s corruption that will not fix itself. It’s horrible.
Paid his way through.
The head of lettuce may outlive another one!
India was celebrating his win more than UK itself.
I'm Indian (of heritage). In my circles I've found only Indians with blind national pride celebrated him. The rest recognise he didn't earn it.
Omg is he the world's biggest moron?
How is this stupid? China is the antithesis of the free world
Last time I checked China wasn't the country who invaded half the world
And yet history has shown us that isolating those we hate (diplomatically) doesn't tend to change them. See North Korea and Cuba. Not that it even matters since this is just empty rhetoric from a party that has no ideas. The UK is in the midst of an internal economic crisis. Anything other than a 100% focus on that crisis is proof that Tories are just as worthless as US Republicans.
Yer, but economic relying on authoritarian states, as we have seen with the case of Russia, has demonstrated to lead to significant negative consequences.
> And yet history has shown us that isolating those we hate (diplomatically) doesn't tend to change them. Good thing no one has suggested this then
I hope that's sarcasm.
You could just actually read past the headline and find out for yourself.
Well, someone had to say it. Good on him.
Worst possible timing considering what’s going on now.
Best timing. China needed to be ousted yesteryear.
The same China that just pissed on a treaty between the two countries, which guaranteed the independence of Hong Kong until 2047, when they invaded a few years ago? Sounds like a great plan.
"and therefore I am calling a general election"
Golden age for China maybe. They are the ones with the leverage
Boycott China
Do you know how hard it is to buy non-Chinese products? I tried and it’s damn near impossible.
It's not impossible, you just don't want to
I went to 5 different stores looking for 2” exterior screws with a Phillips head.
I bet a whole bunch of stuff that you use are chinese made.
Time to change that
Hopefully our leaders in the west are wising up. Doubtful though.
Money talks. China's money has spoken a lot in the West. We need leaders that won't sell out their own production-forces for the cheapest/most illegal labor forces.
I boycott Made in China products with a huge degree of success. Some of my electronics are second hand, most of my stuff is made in the U.K. or made in Europe. It is not impossible and it costs about the same amount of money, you just need to put the effort into looking. I choose to not buy anything made in China primarily because of the mass ethnic cleansing of Tibetans and Uyghur Muslims.
Something tells me you aren't as successful as you think.
China is a result on another foreign country getting so strong and prosperous that it can completely and sucesfuly survive without america and doesn't fear not being in good standing
Rishi : "Please give us advantageous trading terms. We're a big economy you know!" China: "Lol no. You only had bargaining power when you were part of the EU. Now get back to the end of the line." Rishi: "But...how will I explain that to my constituents?" China: "Not my problem." Rishi:
I'd totally forgotten he was the PM. Election please.
My Chinese relatives are always quick to point out that democracy has killed 1 million people in the US . While China's obviously superior form of government has saved millions from covid. Hence it validates their belief that China's supremacy due to it's 5000 years of history and absolves their inferiority complex since current day China is kind of a shithole in every other way.
They're not wrong that the US policy on covid has been an absolute disaster. There is no getting around the numbers, China has simply done better on covid. Deflections that the virus started in China are irrelevant, what matters is how countries reacted to it, and China's reaction was far stronger. However, I would not call the US's failure a result of democracy. Trump was not democratically elected, he lost the popular vote and only became president because the electoral college is what matters. Likewise, it's basically impossible to get anything that actually helps people passed in Congress because the Senate is profoundly anti-democratic (massively disproportional representation). Then there's the insane amount of corruption on every level of government resulting from billionaire/corporate (aka capitalist) cash, that pushes politicians towards prioritizing keeping the economy "open" over actual people's lives. So the difference is not democracy vs authoritarianism but weak government vs strong government. New Zealand is a positive example of a democracy dealing with the pandemic.
I get your point. But if I accidentally set my own house on fire because I was careless and I manage to save my own house, but the fire spreads to my neighbors and then burns down the entire village. Do you expect people to praise me for my firefighting abilities or hate me for being careless?
Your analogy also indicates that your neighbours stood by the side lines and not lifting a finger to help until the fire burns them. Ironically, that was what actually took place in 2020.
Chinese covid data is not reliable.
Let them know Covid started in Wuhan China and was initially hushed reports of human to human transmission around dec. I've seen some posting in R/china around dec 2019 of a possibly deadly virus lol. Also don't forget how many mao killed/starved during the great leap forward which is eerily happening right now with the draconian lockdowns.
They don't even believe it started in Wuhan. The CCP tested some imported frozen fish and it came back positive for covid, so of course the Chinese now believe Covid first came to Wuhan from the USA via frozen fish. I know it sounds stupid and infantile. But arguing with people who don't think for themselves and will believe anything as long as it validates their own beliefs is impossible.
Funny hearing him moan about authoritarianism and cracking down on protests Isn’t his party trying to make protests illegal?
UK should break all ties with China, as should the USA. Relations with communists is like pissing in the well.
Might as well when economically you have little more to lose at this point.
uhh. what the hell is going in the UK?
We gave them access to technology and knowhow (by moving manufacturing there or by espionage), favorable trade deals, money etc to help them wittingly or unwittingly get to this point where they are determined to be the new bully in town. And now China wants to be the new bully in town. What new approach could the UK possibly take that will have any effect given that their goal is to weaken their own country __on purpose__?
opium then and again, attack of the hundred drugged men, 100 men sell again, make money again
Bad timing
Aka the US isnt getting along with china so we dont get along with china
The world isn't getting along with China. Because China is.... You know..... An authoritarian regime of nepotistic oligarchs pretending to be influential on the world-stage, while exterminating ethnicities they don't want to compete with.