BF2S Forums Australian politics thread.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

The Chinese government is literally telling their people that the United States related COVID into their country on purpose. Their government rightfully sees the U.S. as their only rival. The people there are told that this is their century and the only thing in their way is the United States. Meanwhile naive liberals argue #NotAllChinese while Wall Street people send western manufacturing overseas since they are too shortsighted to see that the Chinese don't care about their international finance order.

Apart from not being able to speak Chinese our misunderstanding with that country also derives from the fact that many can't conceive of how truly big China is or where their priorities are. I'll give you the below quote to illustrate the point:

Bush asked Hu what he often asked world leaders: "What keeps you up at night?"

He confessed to Hu that his nightmare was another terrorist attack on US soil.

Hu, without missing a beat, responded that what kept him awake was creating 25 million jobs a year to feed the beast that is China's modernizing economy.

I will not disregard China's governance, human rights record, (inter)national aggressive rhetoric, but Xi Jinping and the average Chinese person are much less concerned about or bothered by/hostile towards the outside world than you and others believe.

To answer a broader point my 'defence' of 'China and Islam' has nothing to do with any warm feelings I would have towards these. Or with any problems I would have with western civilisation. The 'defence' is about you and your lack of coherent arguments. The fact is you're making sweeping judgments about religions and countries you scarcely understand. That lack of understanding is leading you to make wrong assumptions, wrong conclusions and would ultimately lead to wrong, terrible policies that would only set the world at large back decades. 'China is out to get us!', while in reality a significant portion of the population there still has trouble feeding itself, while others are forming separatist movements and the wealth disparity is a nightmare in the making. You think their leadership wants to be preoccupied with international politics? It's the internal politics and complexity that worries them most.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-04-23 10:23:18)

it has nothing to do with people living on spaces. they are creating tiny sand bars and stuffing them with runways.

strange that you construe china building bases in the south china sea as 'offensive neorealism' in a vacuum apart from america's 21st century aims in the region.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_containment_policy

read up on the obama-era 'pivot to asia policy' -- one of the more hawkish stances he took during his tenure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asia … nistration

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-23 15:36:19)

and after you threw economic inducements at the vietnamese government for 30 years, you mean? vietnam has been one of the prime destinations of western business investment for a large portion of the latter 20th century. there has been huge federal oversight and incentives made for it. 'soft power', macbeth.

i think there's an obvious level of realpolitik and cynicism involved in those relations. do you think japan or south korea really enjoys having US soldiers on its soil? lol.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-23 15:43:45)

weren't you just lecturing me about chinese history? you yourself linked to the wikipedia for the giant fucking war that happened between china and vietnam.

i never said america was the 'bad guy' and china 'the good guy'. just that their actions in the south china sea, their only access to the world's ocean trading routes, is perfectly rational in the context of america's own geopolitical strategy in the region. it is well known that america's foreign policy now has a greater focus on SE asia. it takes two powers for brinkmanship. you construing china as an 'evil' with designs to 'destroy the west' is moronic.

uziq wrote:

you sound clinically insane but i am not surprised. spend a little less time on the internet and in the company of chinese people. i have done and i'm not sure where you're getting this comic book impression from.

yes, china as a nation wants to become self-reliant and to move away from factory-line work making clothes and plastic toys for the west. is anyone surprised? they've been the pack-mules of the global economy for 30 years. china wants its own bourgeoisie and its own on-brand, pro-party intelligentsia. good luck to them. it doesn't mean they want to 'destroy' the west.

Hasn't your 'sophisticated, wealthy, intelligent and educated' ex-girlfriend now gone full retard and is now parroting anti-western propaganda?
You like Chinese girls, they're soft and weak, I get it.

But China has aggressed against every neighbouring nation it thought it had a military advantage over, its been building itself up to the point it probably has an advantage over every nation except America and Russia.

Its external behaviour is obnoxious, building military bases wherever it can, ramming its spyware laden telecoms systems on anyone it can, subverting organisations like the WHO, sending fishing fleets to world heritage sites to suck up every living thing.
Internally its Stalinist, with millions in detention and many executed on pretexts.

On this Wuhan Bat Virus business China has responded with secrecy, aggression, bullying, threats and blackmail.

China is not a democracy, part of the world community and as no intention to be either, they intend to dominate just as soon as they decide the time is right. Then the hipsters will be sorry.
Hopefully the world has now woken up to them.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-04-23 17:14:06)

Pochsy wrote:

Laressen, I appreciate the well written post regarding China's primary concern with domestic policy. How would their expansion into the south china sea against the wishes of the entire international community (for the most part) fit this argument? Is that merely a domestic policy to ensure their people have new soil to live on? Is this some form of offensive neorealism being put into practice to ensure a stable domestic policy landscape?

My argument was against the idea that China is out to subdue Australia and western civilisation at large. A few pages ago I already stated that the possibility of regional conflict is certainly there. However, to draw a direct line from China's regional grandstanding to the idea that it will militarily challenge western powers is a fantastical leap of the imagination. The regional grandstanding does have roots in (Han) chinese nationalism and supposed historic claims to certain territories surrounding China, and you're certainly able to apply some realist IR theories to the situation as well. But right now in the case of the PRC regional conflict would do very little to promote domestic stability. Would the Chinese aggressively claiming islands in the south china sea and/or Taiwan help its internal issues in HK, Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia - possibly elsewhere? No, not really. It may exacerbate them or incentivise other states to further destabilise China by supporting secessionists or cause other unintended & unwanted consequences. I also don't believe in the idea of actual war as a mere distraction for domestic political issues. Yes, we often see politicians conjure the image of the hostile enemy to subdue domestic criticism and distract from domestic failure, but while dangerous, there's still a leap to be made from that point to physical conflict. Usually, actually pretty much always, governments engage in warfare when several interests align and are threatened at the same time and when no other political solution is in sight. War is a potentially very costly gamble and rarely the preferred solution. The PRC leadership being very technocratic, you can expect them to internally carefully weigh that option regardless of the rhetoric to the public or international arena.

As for what the future holds, it is generally true that the more powerful the state the more it views the world in transactional and power-centred terms. Especially if the international order of things is not particularly to its liking. It's why people like John Bolton have been given a public platform for so long, why Russia acts a certain way. It's a plausible danger that as this century progresses the Chinese government will increasingly adopt this stance. Its strongly centralised power in Xi & the politburo committee could make neorealist theory very applicable as well. But there's a means of control here: a multipolar world that values and utilises institutions like the UN can force or motivate Chinese diplomatic engagement in the international arena, in turn fostering a stronger stake in and valuation of that institution on their end.

On the other hand, there's a good argument to be made for more constructivist and liberal theory as well. The codification of the equality of different ethnic groups in Chinese law (among other laws), the somewhat softened attitude against resistance to the Chinese government throughout the decades, the fact that all new elites are educated in the west, these indicate that there is a potential for long-term change and that within Chinese party politics a more liberal and consensus-seeking strain exists. Nevertheless, we do still see overt and covert attempts at sinicisation throughout the country, as strongly evidenced by government policy in Xinjiang and the slow but steady stripping of legal separation of HK. The future succes or failure of such policies and the development in Chinese party politics (more repressive or more open) will be strong indicators of how we'll see China behave in the next few decades. In that sense, the appointment of Xi as chairman and his tightening grip on the party was and is bad news, and if his successor is anything like him that'd be more bad news.

Still, as of yet, we're a very, very long way away from justifiably believing China wants to 'dominate the West'.

Chinese migrating abroad don't need to be agents of the state.
Its happened a few times here where Chinese have migrated, a few years later they get a phone call or a knock at the door 'You're Chinese first, you do our bidding or your relatives still in China will disappear'.

I see nothing positive about China, they are not engaged with the world.

That understanding relies on the assumption that western values (codified in law, understood in practice, lived by daily, etc) are, definitively, of preeminent value compared to those of the east. I would suggest that eastern philosophy and values have endured for millennia because of their inherent viability. Perhaps some fusion is possible, as in the case of Japan, but we can't be certain of what that fusion will look like at all.

I fear whatever integration happens won't be so benign.

Last edited by Pochsy (2020-04-25 08:47:25)

I think the question of why China sends their most promising minds abroad is due to them not having reached the innovation frontier yet. Their astonishing growth is mainly due to their ability to adopt the findings of other nations, be that technical or theoretical. Once they have the state of the art thinking on hand, I believe we'll see fewer people looking to go abroad for an education. There's already several extremely top-notch universities in China. Once they can build a top-notch system of suitable size to meet the needs of their country, there'll be less incentive to go elsewhere. It's more just a matter of time, I think.

It doesn't promote creative thinking currently--I agree there. But once they're past trying to reverse-engineer what other scholars, including those from the west, have developed, I anticipate they'll naturally begin to do original work themselves. I'm thinking of the case of India, which faces a similar issue.

Anecdotally, my father works as a mechanical engineer with projects supported by India and China (manufacturing, low-level design work, machining). Chinese engineers never make the same mistake twice. Once they are told how to solve a problem, they can apply it to any similar problem, which is the start of self-directed innovation. India has already moved past this. My father now has Indian engineers offering solutions and confirming ideas that any western engineer would have difficulty producing. India had years and years of technical copy-catting to start to move away from 'fragile' understanding and to 'robust' knowledge.

China deserves this reputation for cyber theft and corporate espionage to some extent, from Huawei admitting to outright copying Cisco code to Microsoft giving up on charging for Windows there due to Chinese piracy (admittedly in hopes of getting them on the app store instead) to name a couple examples. It's impossible to come up with an accurate figure of what Chinese IP theft amounts to, but the loss is significant.

Regardless of their engineering prowess or ingenuity and investments into technology and theory, it's going to take awhile for "made in China" to not be an insult, what with all the knock-offs, garbage-stuffed toys, and pet food that makes your dog sick.

I wasn't making an argument to pardon corporate espionage from western nations. Again, it's hard to pin an exact value to losses. The exact extent/nature of IP theft can be vague. But Chinese industry has garnered a reputation for shoddy or knockoff wares that will take them awhile to overcome.

Searching for stuff to read about, found this interesting multi-page article debunking "Apple robbed Xerox" and here. Of interest because it was one of the notions strongly pedaled to me back when I was in computer electronics/networking for work/school.

Also, the last Microsoft thing I bought was Office 2019.

Pochsy wrote:

That understanding relies on the assumption that western values (codified in law, understood in practice, lived by daily, etc) are, definitively, of preeminent value compared to those of the east. I would suggest that eastern philosophy and values have endured for millennia because of their inherent viability. Perhaps some fusion is possible, as in the case of Japan, but we can't be certain of what that fusion will look like at all.

I fear whatever integration happens won't be so benign.

It took the dropping of a fusion bomb on Japan for them to accept that fusion with the world order was the better option over world domination.

China is nowhere near that point yet. From what I'm seeing Chinese students studying in Western countries aren't picking up western values, they're becoming more assertive and nationalistic.
Xinping apparently sees himself as a 'man of destiny' whose role is to bring about Chinese resurgence, starting with the reintegration of Taiwan.

They'll soon be at the same or better level of innovation compared with the rest of the world, the key is going to be to stop handing them our wealth to build their army.