Escalation between the US and China is inevitable.
China is fundamentally opposed to everything the US and Democracies around the world stand for politically. Likewise, the US and friends are fundamentally opposed to everything China stands for politically. There is no Universe in which two diametrically opposed juggernauts do not come into conflict. Conflict is simply inevitable when the stakes are this high and there is no greater power able to force deescalation.
Either China converts to Democracy or the US and friends adopt Chinese style authoritarianism, or one of the two belligerents collapses either on its own in the manner of the Soviet Union, or by force.
Could you please stop taking HN threads further into ideological and nationalistic flamewar? You've been doing it a lot, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for.
It's unfortunate that there are flamewars here but this is big news and it has dropped off the front page now. It would be sad if HN was no longer a place where relevant news like this could be discussed, just because it relates to China.
I doubt any reasonably productive thread will happen with any China-related thread, as they simply seems to be hijacked by people with a very US centric hawkish mentality.
This is a bunch o ideological BS. China just wants to make money, it doesn't care if the US is running a dictatorship or whatever. It is the US government that is trying to stir up ideological issues because it doesn't see any other way to compete with China. Everything was very fine while China was just supplying Walmart with cheap plastic stuff.
Xi’s China is abosolutely authoritorian, but that’s not what this conflict is about. This is more like US vs Japan in the 80s, where US wants to secure its influence and power, by keeping others down if necessary.
By some theory of games, mutual destruction between two opposing parties when they are aware of it simply doesn't happen. In addition, when one party knows that they are weaker than the opposing party, conflict cannot happen as the weaker party never escalates. So, Wars in modern age of information are hard to come by since we have a tremendous amount of surveillance and global recon.
It's not about tanks or numbers its national resolve and there each side can vastly misread the other. Each side believes it has greater resolve and is in the right. There is no quantitative way to measure this. The only way to to find out is to fight. Just like two people who size each other up, one may be bigger or faster but the will to prevail and willingness to bare any sacrifice and tolerate pain in order to achieve victory is intangible and cannot be known until it is tested.
Not only that, but it's so much easier to misread your opponent and the nature of the game when the dynamics are very high dimensional as they are now. It's not just about tanks or militaries anymore. Information warfare and misinformation campaigns, economic warfare, cyber warfare... When all of these potential channels of conflict exist it's very hard to reduce tension in any one domain without tensions rising in another, which in turn fuels an increase in general tension.
> It's not about tanks or numbers its national resolve and there each side can vastly misread the other.
Agreed, but to be perfectly honest, I would be 100% happy to see the US pull all manufacturing out of China and put it back on US soil. The US has gained a temporary price reduction in labor that is now evaporating, gained no access to the Chinese market or influenced China to open further, and has lost the actual ability to manufacture far too many goods.
If that means things will get more automated because of expensive labor, great! Then we should build our own robots, too. If things will get more expensive, then perhaps we will start throwing things away less and start worrying about longevity more.
And, you know, the US has a lot of unemployed people who will need jobs very shortly.
The US doesn't care about China being open. They care about maintaining domination.
The US has no issue replacing democratic governments with dictatorships as long as they keep their influence and power. If China was a democracy, we would see the exact same rhetoric.
And who in the US will do the work? It's not just the jobs that went overseas, it's also the factories, the molds, and the skills, on top of that we all apparently want cheap stuff.
Just because we elect morons, don't assume all of us are morons. Lots of people could do factory work for the right wages, and lots of capital is floating around that could build new factories. Sure, we're deficient in certain specific skills, but skills can be learned and processes can be designed around their lack.
GE learned the lessons and brought it back. Then shipped it back out. And now are bringing it back again.
The problem is nobody gets promoted for being solid--everybody needs to be a rockstar.
We need some innovation where small domestic businesses run rings around the big guns. The problem is--those aren't home-run businesses--they're solid and profitable so nobody wants to invest in them.
I don't think it will be such a dramatic shift. It will be more of a middle ground IMO. The mega corporations of US will be regulated by the government just like it happens in China. And China will end up with more rights and transperancy like a democracy.
I think it more likely that china will end up with these facilities in country, along with their typical good old fashioned protectionism freezing others out of the china market in that segment.
As horrible as this sounds, there will be a large number of entities in china that will view this as the opportunity of a lifetime.
throwaway is right though, free markets are much easier than political systems. It could be argued that china is already free market, and even still, that political system has not budged.
The democratic process incentivises transparency. You want to make public all the good work you're doing and the opposition wants to discover all the bad you did so they could turn the people against you in next elections. And it also does guarantee more rights (although eventually) as history has already proven.
This is not true. You're buying into the propaganda, sadly. Both powers care little about democracy. They care about their interests. No need to get nationalistic or even involved in the situation.
That's not really true. The Right is generally united on the point of wanting universal ID. Nothing totalitarian about a nation being able to reliably identify and distinguish its citizens.
Unfortunately the political Left believes that such ID, specifically when used as a means of election security, would lead to discrimination.
You are conflating two things: a national/"universal" form of ID, and voter ID.
Voter ID is the requirement to show ID at polling stations in order to vote. That's what the left is generally concerned about. It's a separate concern from whether a national ID card ought to exist.
On the other hand, the existence of a national ID card is generally opposed by people on the right, which is the opposite of how they feel about voter ID.
If it were assigned for free when you were born and there was no effort associated with getting it or working with it, then there would be no issue. The current problem is that a driver’s license takes a long time to obtain (because the DMV wait time sucks as we all know), and because it’s not free. This means that it’s a lot harder for someone holding down 3 jobs or working during DMV hours to get one. You are basically making it more difficult for an already under-represented group of people to vote. It’s not that it’s impossibly hard or totally preventative, it’s just another obstacle.
Those are both pretty simple issues to address. Many Democracies around the world use some form of voter ID and we could easily just follow their implementations with some adjustments.
If you are a citizen of the united states, you get a vote if you're 18, according to the constitution. No tests, IDs, or other things are required. To add any additional burden is counter to the constitution, and as a result any additional burden could be seen to prevent people from voting that have the right to vote.
Nevermind that when you add additional barriers, discrimination occurs against anyone that cannot meet the barrier, or does not want to meet the barrier.
Example:
- "tests" in the South during civil rights to prevent african americans from voting
- Requiring any sort of payment or money to create a Voter ID in a state. If the person does not have money or time this is discrimination and against their rights as citizens (you are not required to prove you are a citizen. your ballot can be provisional)
- Requiring someone be able to read. It's not a requirement to vote. Any forms requiring reading are a no-go.
- Requiring them to have a permanent address (again, leads to discrimination for those without addresses.
- Requiring someone take a lot of time they cannot afford to get an ID (again, some folks are working too many jobs to go to the DMV for a day)
Some places have tried to institute voter id laws that require ids that are difficult/expensive/time consuming to get, sometimes specifically making it harder for the most downtrodden segments of society to vote. That's really bad and so there's an outcry. Sometimes the nuance of "discriminatory ID requirements are bad" gets lost in the zeitgeist and circulates as "ID requirements are discriminatory and bad."
You might just be surprised at how many US citizens do not have a state issued ID card. There are just a lot of poor people who can't afford to pay for the ID or their parents never kept their birth certificate and they just don't have the slightest clue what to do to get another birth certificate. It perplexes me, but some people are just that broke or just can't get it together enough.
Maybe the commenter above is thinking of a different point, or coming at it from an oddly phrased perspective.
The Democratic party relies on a certain segment of immigrant or immigrant-related citizens to vote in support of them. And if licensing / IDs are perceived to target and identify who is not a citizen (your relatives, friends), then they could lose support. I suppose it could be seen as a kind of "discrimination". And if some social services, policing, etc were to be able to use such ID, then illegal aliens would certainly be more at risk of being discovered or face more stringent (less porous) treatment in the law enforcement system.
I personally think this is a ridiculous situation from every angle, and unfortunately it's all tied up in our immigration and economic policies, so it's hard to disentangle or fix.
Give the Id to everybody who wants it for free. If someone cannot prove citizenship, but they can prove having worked or lived in the US for more than 5 years (checks, bank receipts, etc.), give them citizenship.
There, problem solved. That way, you only discriminate against those who are either in the US illegally and are not working, or are working but have been illegally living in the US for less than 5 years, and both situations are fixable by the individuals themselves (work for 5 years and "earn" your citizenship).
Of course, what many want is an Id that can actually be used to prevent poor people from voting, while also being able to employ those same poor people at very low rates using the fear of "reporting them".
This is quite a common claim from the Left in the US. If you do a quick search in Left leaning publications on the issue of voter ID you'll see that stance dominates their discussion of the issue. I agree it's an extraordinary claim, but it's a conspiracy they've latched onto.
You can in fact see a child comment below where someone is commenting that the purpose of such ID is to disenfranchise the poor.
> This is quite a common claim from the Left in the US.
What about the source? Are you able to find anything that corroborates your extraordinary claim? Because I asked for a source, and you just reiterated your baseless assertion.
I dunno, this claim isn't extraordinary. MSNBC/CNN/Nytimes/WashPost say stuff like this all the time. It's a very common talking point. Certainly (in my opninion), the reason why some people are so interested in voter ID is to make voting harder.
> Voter ID's are discriminatory or pushed with discriminatory intent:
Your own link does not support your baseless assertion. The only claim is that so far voter ID laws have been crafted to exclude non-white US citizens from the electoral process.
Taken from your article:
> New studies suggest that the motivation of these laws is suppressing non-white voters, and worryingly, that they will be successful at doing so.
Do notice that the remarks refer to voters (thus, citizens with the right to vote) who, due to their race, are being excluded from casting their vote.
If that's the best source you managed to produce then I'm afraid that you were either lying or very confused, because your original claim has zero basis.
People don't have lawns because they are intensely interested in farming. They do it because they want a large, flat, soft area outside their house. You can't play badminton with bushes and flowers in the way.
That works up to a certain size. Beyond that it's just an anachronistic emulation of an aristocratic manor house with wealth displayed by all the hard working servants cutting an immaculate lawn by scythe.
Almost no one thinks of that when they think of lawns. They are admired by many because they are aesthetically pleasing to many, which incidentally is why they were maintained by the aristocrats in the first place.
Who are we to impose our aesthetic sensibilities on others.
My view is that the local people seem to prefer a park with cut grass, and these volunteers are helping them out. If the people want something else, they should decide.
Early in the outbreak I remember seeing some research that indicated people of Asian descent (East Asian) are genetically predisposed to more severe cases of this coronavirus, something to do with higher expression of the ACE-2 receptor.
> People from Asian and black groups are at markedly increased risk of in-hospital death from COVID-19, and contrary to some prior speculation this is only partially attributable to pre-existing clinical risk factors or deprivation;
I noted that. However, "partially attributable" doesn't suggest to me one way or the other whether or not they corrected for that impact in figure 3. Or maybe I'm misreading the sentence.
Not just US, the entire world is waking up to CCP's iron grip.
Europe, Korea, Japan, India and Australia are planning to recede from China's dependence on manufacturing.
This is an amazing time to be alive, I encourage people to look into manufacturing disciplines. As Elon put it (agree or disagree with him, but he is right about this) - "Someone's gotta build stuff. If you're not doing it, someone else is." Physical things don't just pop out of thin air. Every single thing except your body and natural substances are manmade. Someone decided how its gonna be built and how it will come into existence.
I believe that we need to reframe the debate around manufacturing from one about jobs to one about national security.
This mentally frees us to fully invest in manufacturing automation, which will neutralize any labor cost advantages China and other countries may have.
for the first time in a long time both party agree on this. i believed this is the U.S. failure for believing in China. U.S. bring China into WTO, open up trade and hollow out Midwest. what American get in return is Emperor Xi. CCP is not going to change and Xi already have more powers consolidated into him than any other previous CCP leader even Mao.
American's dream for a open and democratic China is long dead.
> American's dream for a open and democratic China is long dead.
There already is an open and democratic China across the Taiwan straight. And the USA has a looong history of rather ambivalent relationship with it, starting from the Chinese civil war (to the surprise of many, US has sided with Mao for quite a number of times)
For long, US policy was to purposefully keep the Republic of China weak, vulnerable, and dependent.
Were the US even 1% genuine in their commitment to seeing democratic China, they would not be consistently setting up Taiwan to be undermined politically.
Because during the cold war Taiwan wasn't nearly big enough to counterbalance the USSR. the PRC was, and when the US got bloodied in Vietnam and needed to pull out they wanted to make sure the USSR couldn't step into the hole they left behind and start pushing across the rest of Southeast Asia. Cue the PRC. Right after the US left, the PRC had their own war with Vietnam because they thought Vietnam was working with the USSR to conquer the rest of Southeast Asia and surround them, and the PRC and the US ended up working to isolate Vietnam over its invasion of Cambodia and put pressure on the USSR. With China holding down the fort in East Asia, the US could pull back its military spending from 10% GDP to 5% GDP in the 70s while the USSR got bankrupted by a new military threat.
Doesn't look like US politicians today are willing to throw Eastern Europe under the bus to flip Russia against the PRC like they threw Taiwan under the bus though.
I would be interested in seeing the supporting arguments and data for your latter claim. At a glance US gross manufacturing output lags China by about 7%, but per capita US manufacturing output is ~300% that of China. Between the Monroe Doctrine and NATO states, however, the "US manifold"'s productive potential is where it appears accurate assertions of relative dwarfism can be made. Without intimate familiarity of geopolitics, I would estimate all save 3-5 of the top 20 nations by manufacturing output fall clearly in the US sphere of influence.
This is because when comparing manufacturing outputs, you should look at it in PPP terms, not in absolute dollar terms, due to devaluing and other factors. When you want to calculate how many tanks, missiles, bombs and airplanes, PPP output is what matters. Or if you want to take a page out of the Soviet playbook, Gross Material Product.
The US manufacturing sector is 11.6% of GDP, so 2.33 trillion dollars PPP. In China, it accounts for 40% of the GDP, so more or less 10 trillion dollars of manufacturing output PPP (!). This is a manifold advantage.
The reason why this is to be done is because if you wanted to build say, a tank in the US vs China or Russia, you would need many more dollars for the exact same tank. So measuring manufacturing output must be done PPP.
During the cold war both the US and the USSR were self sufficient in terms of wheat and oil. China is one naval battle in the Indian ocean away from having a taste of Imperial Japan's oil shortages in WW2. If the USSR practiced state capitalism then we might still be locked in the twilight struggle with them today.
No, and no. There is no reason to believe that the USSR would have been able to develop beyond their level of development, that many capitalist nations aren't able to surpass, given the geopolitical and political situation. It seems to me that the fall of the USSR was due to political issues, and an unsustainable political system, more than anything.
China also doesn't require any naval transport from oil shortage. Indeed, it very conveniently has a major oil exporter to it's north. So unless you would wage war on the Russian and Chinese mainland, you have no hope of completely starving China of oil. You might reduce the amount of oil they have, but they have enough reserves to last until a tripling of Sino-Russian pipelines.
We're discussing a recent change in tone, behavior and overall policy. What you're describing is the product of previous administrations working hard to get on (the People's Republic of) China's good side, cozying up to China and trying to integrate it into the Democratic community.
I guess this might sound unreal, but I literally have not looked at AAA game graphics in over 10 years, so this looks absolutely stunning.
Back in 2009 my 360 died. I had been an avid console gamer before that, but I never replaced the Xbox and in 2010 went off to college, where I mainly played N64 with friends as well as games on my phone.
After I graduated I was busy with work and life and never got back into the gaming cutting edge. Sure I played StarCraft once in a while for old times' sake as well as different old Total War games cause they're awesome, but never the sort of major AAA release I used to play all the time as a kid.
I also never really looked at modern graphics since I didn't have friends who played modern games and never watched videos showcasing what games looked like.
Respectfully, there are a great many things wrong with the opinions in this post. I'll try to address them all with as few words as possible.
Chip self reliance is a good thing from a general geo-political standpoint, regardless of China.
China's aggression manifests in many covert operations, mainly information warfare.
The ruling CCP is diametrically opposed to most Western political and social values and itself feels very threatened by democracy and personal liberty. As such it is working very hard to destabilize the West and expand it's hard and soft power to export its authoritarian model around the world.
The end of the American "empire" is hardly guaranteed to happen any time soon, and while some weak willed and naive pseudo-intellectuals may be willing or even eager to roll over and let it die, many others with clear eyes recognize the benefits of your culture and country having power.
With power comes wealth. With power comes pride. With power comes influence. And with enough power comes global stability, which is what the US currently provides. Why would anyone in their right mind willingly give up such power? No, we will do everything we can to maintain it because it absolutely has real value that benefits all Americans.
Fundamental values, lives, wealth and influence are all at stake here. Those who do not recognize or do not care are fools. Let us hope they never get a hold of power.
>The ruling CCP is diametrically opposed to most Western political and social values and itself feels very threatened by democracy and personal liberty.
I'd like some folks from China to respond to my comment, to make sure I'm not talking out of my ass, but in discussions with my friends who are from Taiwan or from Guangzhou the Chinese seem perfectly fine with rejecting "Western political and social values" as long as it means stable and consistent security and economic growth. And frankly I don't blame them. There is no physical law that says western democracies == happiness.
But there is physical law (Newton's First Law) that implies without sufficient checks and balances systems ultimately become dominated by a single force.
Regardless, I and many other Americans like our system, so why should we allow to it be threatened by a power hostile to it.
> The ruling CCP is diametrically opposed to most Western political
Communism is a western political system...
> and social values
They aren't a western nation. Why should they adopt "western social values"? I hope the world wakes up to the sneaky neocolonial war cry - "western values" and stomps it out of existence before it gets out of hand.
How about american values for americans, chinese values for chinese, european values for europeans, muslim values for muslims, etc. How about people live under the values they want rather than being forced to adopt an alien and unamerican idea like "western values".
> and itself feels very threatened by democracy and personal liberty.
What pathetic nonsense. They feel threatened by western aggression. Stop with the propaganda bullshit. They aren't threatend by "democracy" and "personal liberty". They are threatened by people hiding behind "democracy" and "personal liberty" to attack and destabilize them.
> As such it is working very hard to destabilize the West and expand it's hard and soft power to export its authoritarian model around the world.
It's not china forcing people to adopt their "values". It's the west forcing china and the rest of the world to adopt our "values".
It's not china invading and destabilizing most of the world. It's the west that's doing so.
> No, we will do everything we can to maintain it because it absolutely has real value that benefits all Americans.
The American empire didn't benefit all americans. The american nation did. Nations exist to benefit the people, empires exist to benefit the international elites. The american empire benefited the wealthy international bankers and industrialists. And all empires eventually crumble because money is used for useless wars rather than investing at home. This is a fact of history.
>"What pathetic nonsense. They feel threatened by western aggression. Stop with the propaganda bullshit. They aren't threatend by "democracy" and "personal liberty". They are threatened by people hiding behind "democracy" and "personal liberty" to attack and destabilize them."
The CCP is indeed existentially threatened by freedom and liberty because their absolute rule is predicted on its antithesis. Open your eyes, friend.
> The CCP is indeed existentially threatened by freedom and liberty because their absolute rule is predicted on its antithesis.
The easiest way to spot a propagandist is the use of "CCP", so maybe you should steer clear of that? That's why the "CCP" doesn't allow the chinese to do anything right? Chinese can't travel overseas? Attend universities overseas? Can't work overseas? If "democracy" and "personal liberty" were such a threat why are there so many chinese in american universities?
> Open your eyes, friend.
Not your friend, pal. Why are you so concerned about the "CCP", buddy? Man, all of a sudden every propagandist seems to be so concerned with the survival of the "CCP".
That's part of something larger I've heard best described as market fundamentalism: the belief that markets and markets alone can take over and handle all aspects and functions of society.
Globalism was implemented in a market fundamentalist way. No special attention was paid to rights, fairness of trade, etc. because it was assumed that trade and markets and then (magic happens here) and then everything is great and liberal democracy spreads everywhere.
What really happened was corporations and international finance going trans-national and exempting itself from the rule of law and then leveraging foreign totalitarian or lawless regimes to break workers power at the wage negotiating table.
The real long term winners were totalitarians and would be totalitarians though, not the corporations or finance. Capitalists selling nooses and rope, as Marx quipped.
Pretty sure unions were nuked by Reagan and Thatcher before globalization and outsourcing were even a thing.
As a society, the boomers made a choice in the late '70s / early '80s: egoism should be rewarded and money is the measure of all things. Everything else was a consequence.
China is fundamentally opposed to everything the US and Democracies around the world stand for politically. Likewise, the US and friends are fundamentally opposed to everything China stands for politically. There is no Universe in which two diametrically opposed juggernauts do not come into conflict. Conflict is simply inevitable when the stakes are this high and there is no greater power able to force deescalation.
Either China converts to Democracy or the US and friends adopt Chinese style authoritarianism, or one of the two belligerents collapses either on its own in the manner of the Soviet Union, or by force.