china is a threat, absolutely. but this escalating rhetoric about china ‘enslaving’ and ‘conquering’ the west is hyperbolic in the extreme. it’s in no one’s interests to devolve into full-scale military conflict. why does dilbert keep fearing a china man leaping through his parents’ window with an armed grenade? it’s complete fucking nonsense.Larssen wrote:
We may say that military force is outmoded but also have to acknowledge that Chinese military spending is going through the roof, and that the constant cyberwarfare under the surface between the Chinese and the west can turn very ugly very quickly, even accidentally.uziq wrote:
blame western liberals for promoting market-based ideologies. we created the game and china are beating us at it.
do i hate black people? that’s news to me. i think china’s actions in africa are concerning enough; i’ve already mentioned that they’ve bugged and are spying on all the shiny new parliament buildings they’ve been building, ‘gratis’. but they’re not going to steamroll the west using military force, which is what dilbert’s rhetoric frequently invokes.
the west spent 30 years trying to open up china to market ideas and now we don’t like that they’re top dog at it. whoops.
i note australia is still dependent on their trade and we are all posting here on devices made in chinese sweatshops by serfs. that’s not irrelevant whataboutism. we have dragged them into the world system and need to think intelligently about how to disentangle ourselves, if that’s to be the political objective. i can’t see it happening myself.
everyone engages in cyberwarfare and espionage. the last time i checked, the US was the one sending aircraft carriers to the china sea and massing their forces in the region, not china sending gunboats up the hudson bay. this idea that china are a unique military threat, made off the back of a century of ‘pax americana’, is fucking hilarious. hasn't america been sabotaging nuclear reactors in iran and deploying widespread surveillance all over the world?
the eminent global order is facing change. i would rather america lead the world than china. no question. but china aren’t the one with a long history of regime toppling, assassinations, client states with military dictators, hijacking or destabilising foreign elections globally, etc. calling them ‘the aggressor’ in the context of the cold war is fucking laughable. china was the least aggressive player in the entire 19th and 20th centuries. even napoleon noted what a stroke of good fortune it was that the china dragon slept and left everyone alone.
Last edited by uziq (2021-07-28 09:13:09)