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What to do about China


Argus

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6 minutes ago, Argus said:

This is important for Canadians to read.  I did cough a bit at this bit:
“All of the pillars of Chinese aggressiveness were already in place and clear to anyone who wanted to open their eyes,” he said. “The difference with President Xi is he became more visibly outspoken on China’s ambitions.”

 

So... is he saying his eyes were closed ?  

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12 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

This is important for Canadians to read.  I did cough a bit at this bit:
“All of the pillars of Chinese aggressiveness were already in place and clear to anyone who wanted to open their eyes,” he said. “The difference with President Xi is he became more visibly outspoken on China’s ambitions.”

 

So... is he saying his eyes were closed ?  

I think one of the worst compromises Harper made while in office - and he made many - was going back on his determination to treat China like a pariah state. In the first couple of years he was in office he was severely criticized by ALL the other parties, as well as much of the media and business groups for ignoring their entreaties to push trade with China, to go over there and make deals and get them to buy our stuff.

When the financial crisis hit he caved on that, as well as on balanced budgets To be fair, the China of 2008 was not the China of 2021.

China and its people are still steeped in resentment towards the West for what they call the years of humiliation, back when the Europeans controlled their coast and had troops there with gunboats floating up and down their rivers to enforce unfair trade pacts and allow for opium production and distribution in China.

Now it has power and is using it ruthlessly while it gathers more. It is building aircraft carriers and a blue water fleet and it won't be too long before some developing country which pisses them off, perhaps by refusing to give them control of their port when they fail to pay off a  loan, sees one of those fleets off its coast.

It will start small, but if unchecked, those ships will be floating off the coasts of western countries too. And most of us, including Canada, have almost no military to speak of, any more, and no plans to change that.

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18 minutes ago, Argus said:

It will start small, but if unchecked, those ships will be floating off the coasts of western countries too. And most of us, including Canada, have almost no military to speak of, any more, and no plans to change that.

 

It started years ago without the need for a large blue water navy...China has already challenged economic exclusion zones for fisheries and other resources around the world.  China has also deployed intelligence gathering ships (AGIs), same as the Russians/FSU to spy on other fleets and exercises.

However, China still lacks the ability to project power by sea/air outside of its region and does not have strong enough alliances to forward deploy and sustain land/sea/air power globally.   China is also dedicating resources to its belt and road economic strategy that is less dependent on global sea power.

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47 minutes ago, Michael Hardner said:

This is important for Canadians to read.  I did cough a bit at this bit:
“All of the pillars of Chinese aggressiveness were already in place and clear to anyone who wanted to open their eyes,” he said. “The difference with President Xi is he became more visibly outspoken on China’s ambitions.”

 

So... is he saying his eyes were closed ?  

His eyes were practically closed for a time during his time as PM.  But everyone's eyes have been opened in the last few years,  except Trudeau and ruling Liberals.

 

Uighur prisoners:

Uighur prisoners.jpg

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33 minutes ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

It started years ago without the need for a large blue water navy...China has already challenged economic exclusion zones for fisheries and other resources around the world.  China has also deployed intelligence gathering ships (AGIs), same as the Russians/FSU to spy on other fleets and exercises.

However, China still lacks the ability to project power by sea/air outside of its region and does not have strong enough alliances to forward deploy and sustain land/sea/air power globally.   China is also dedicating resources to its belt and road economic strategy that is less dependent on global sea power.

China has more ability to project power than anyone else but the US and Russia. It owns foreign ports of some African countries and is bribing its way to world influence. And no one is around to stand in their way if the US doesn't choose to. It's not like they need a lot of support to project power against Africa or South America or most of Asia or Polynesia.

And yes, their influence is largely economic, not military at this point. They will offer loans to third world countries they know can't be repaid, sweetened with bribes to their leadership, then take possession of natural resources or ports or other facilities. Nor are western leaders, both corporate and government, immune to those bribes.

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1 minute ago, Argus said:

And yes, their influence is largely economic, not military at this point. They will offer loans to third world countries they know can't be repaid, sweetened with bribes to their leadership, then take possession of natural resources or ports or other facilities. Nor are western leaders, both corporate and government, immune to those bribes.

 

Nothing new about that...western nations have done this for more than a century.   In the EU for example, Germany is still leaning on bankrupt Greece for unpaid loans.   China has come a long way from the famine years of old, but it still cannot feed itself.   China is on a roll, but it still has several vulnerabilities.

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2 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

It started years ago without the need for a large blue water navy...China has already challenged economic exclusion zones for fisheries and other resources around the world.  China has also deployed intelligence gathering ships (AGIs), same as the Russians/FSU to spy on other fleets and exercises.

However, China still lacks the ability to project power by sea/air outside of its region and does not have strong enough alliances to forward deploy and sustain land/sea/air power globally.   China is also dedicating resources to its belt and road economic strategy that is less dependent on global sea power.

 

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!!!!  

I'm glad somebody here is ignoring the paranoid idiocy and straight off the Epoch Times - propaganda, and going to the 'actions speak louder than words' evidence of what is really going on in global affairs!

After a century and a half of "Yellow Peril" propaganda, it has been completely lost on western observers....even the ones who get paid to plot out global strategies for governments and major global corporations, that China's long term strategy to become a major economic power, was based on bypassing the expensive and ruinous routes taken by previous global empires - USA and England, and focus on economic growth and power.

The problem for China...and the reason why they have recently got in the game of establishing an expensive and strong blue water navy, is because all through the 90's and 2000's China's economic alliances and trading deals have been threatened and even gone up in smoke whenever the US decided that one of their trading partners - Sudan, Venzuela or Iran needs democracy! And makes covert and overt moves to change the government...or in Sudan's case, just bust up the country into two separate and competing entities. And in the case of the new "South Sudan" republic, all of the development and trade deals + even more important - payments on development loans - all vanished after the civil war when a new government was created in the south, and decided that they owned nothing to the northern regime in the old capital, nor Chinese corporations and their government. 

If this happened to the US, you can be sure at least part of their blue water navy would be stationed off the coast, while aerial bombardments began to either inspire a change in government, or the leaders to 'get their minds right' and start honoring debt obligations to US, British and other NATO countries! 

So, China's in the military power game too now...anyone not happy about it, should have at least expected it to happen. Most of the new navy that China has been building up in recent years is to face off against American carrier fleets and gunboats that ply the South China Sea in their frequent "Freedom of Navigation" exercises. For a lot of psychopaths and arms merchants, the new militarized threat from China is exactly what they wanted! Because this gives them every excuse to bring back the old Cold War all of the generals and arms merchants have been missing in recent decades.

It's harder to sell $billions of new aircraft carriers and equip them for pissant 'wars on terrors' that go unnoticed unless it's about flying planes into New York skyscrapers...which showed evidence of a lack of proper radar and defense of the home front/ not a need to go on a spree of regime changes as the creators of "The New American Century" and other Neocon projects tried to project 20 years ago! 

 

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3 hours ago, Argus said:

 

China and its people are still steeped in resentment towards the West for what they call the years of humiliation, back when the Europeans controlled their coast and had troops there with gunboats floating up and down their rivers to enforce unfair trade pacts and allow for opium production and distribution in China.

And is that "resentment" grounded in factual reasons or is it fantasy? 

The US Empire certainly would never allow anyone else to run "freedom of navigation" exercises in the Caribbean, or anywhere off the coasts of either North or South America! 

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Now it has power and is using it ruthlessly while it gathers more.

How and where?

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It is building aircraft carriers and a blue water fleet and it won't be too long before some developing country which pisses them off, perhaps by refusing to give them control of their port when they fail to pay off a  loan, sees one of those fleets off its coast.

And if carriers and a blue water navy was all part of China's devious plans....as your Yellow Peril narrative portrays, WHY weren't they doing this from the start, instead of beginning all at once three or four years ago, according to DOD spokesmodels?

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It will start small, but if unchecked, those ships will be floating off the coasts of western countries too. And most of us, including Canada, have almost no military to speak of, any more, and no plans to change that.

It will start small, but if unchecked, those ships will be floating off the coasts of western countries too. And most of us, including Canada, have almost no military to speak of, any more, and no plans to change that.

 

'If we don't fight them over there, we'll have to fight them right here' ....... is that it?

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5 hours ago, Argus said:

Not to mention they'll send you a hundred million or so under the table if you're the president so you can inflate your Swiss bank account.

Sounds like you're describing US policy / rather than China here! For example, here's Slow Joe with the narco-trafficking president of Honduras at an "Alliance For Prosperity" meeting to discuss the importance of allowing foreign corporate investment to move unencumbered by labor, health and environment regulations in Central America: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/03/08/central-america-neoliberal-biden-plan/ 

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2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

If this happened to the US, you can be sure at least part of their blue water navy would be stationed off the coast, while aerial bombardments began to either inspire a change in government, or the leaders to 'get their minds right' and start honoring debt obligations to US, British and other NATO countries! 

Perhaps you could treat us to a list of when this happened. When the US or British bombarded some country that couldn't pay its bills.

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2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

So, China's in the military power game too now...anyone not happy about it, should have at least expected it to happen. Most of the new navy that China has been building up in recent years is to face off against American carrier fleets and gunboats that ply the South China Sea in their frequent "Freedom of Navigation" exercises.

 

Agreed, as China will have to learn to walk before it can run with the big dogs globally.   Starting with regional dominance, countering U.S. allies Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Australia.   And then there is that pesky Taiwan "One China" problem too.

Even assuming that China can successfully dominate the region militarily at some stage in the future, it is an altogether different matter to graduate to a level of global foreign policy dominance by projecting military power without the sanction and cover of international alliance(s).   The U.S. and NATO have already demonstrated global power projection without effective challenge by China, as China lacks the foreign policy underpinnings to get away with and sustain such actions.   Even Canada (as member of NATO) rides the "human rights" and "Responsibility to Protect" cover story to bomb the locals for a western neoliberal or neoconservative agenda.

China will struggle to build the alliances and thin veneer of legitimacy for nearly any military actions abroad.  Far easier to pursue the economic battles, fight U.S. dollar hegemony, and balance of payments.   Finish consolidation of Hong Kong, modernize strategic nuclear forces, try to catch the Americans in cyberspace...and outer space.

China knows what the main challenge is...America...and it watched the Soviet Union fail...for a host of reasons that it should not repeat.

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2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

And is that "resentment" grounded in factual reasons or is it fantasy? 

It's grounded in historical accuracy from over a hundred years ago, and in the communist government ensuring every child who goes through its school system is indoctrinated with things like that in order to incite resentment towards foreign countries.

2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

The US Empire certainly would never allow anyone else to run "freedom of navigation" exercises in the Caribbean, or anywhere off the coasts of either North or South America! 

The US would not and has not stopped any foreign ships, be they armed or not, from transiting through those waters since the Cuban missile crisis.

2 hours ago, Right To Left said:

And if carriers and a blue water navy was all part of China's devious plans....as your Yellow Peril narrative portrays, WHY weren't they doing this from the start, instead of beginning all at once three or four years ago, according to DOD spokesmodels?

It takes time to make enough money and to steal enough plans and to build enough ships.

 

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I am reading this book now.  This author has unique experience to be able to write this book.  He has five decades of geo-political experience in a high position in the U.S. military and intelligence.

Alliance of Evil establishes that without a doubt the United States and her allies are locked in a prophetic global confrontation on many fronts, a new kind of dual Cold War with the Russians and Chinese. The Russian Federation under a populist authoritarian leader seriously threatens the West ideologically, through cyber-space and militarily thanks to that country s heavy investment in sophisticated mass killing weapons. The People s Republic of China is a great power with global ambitions led by a new kind of authoritarian communist leader focused on rapidly growing the world s most populous nation economically and militarily. Together, China and Russia collaborate on many fronts to dominate the future world and that relationship could well become the catalyst that leads to the biblical end times. The Alliance of Evil reveals... *A realistic view of the prophetic scriptures regarding the end times and whether China, Russia and the United States are players in the final scenario. *Sixteen indicators of a new dual Cold War-like future with China and Russia pitted against the United States and her allies. *How the new dual Cold War is fanned by American arrogance, hubris which reflects the weakened, perhaps declining United States. *The similarities and differences between the old Cold War, United States versus the Soviet Union, and the new dual Cold War are stark, sobering and frightening. *How, as prophesied, China and Russia emerged as a new kind of great power duo which are now aligning themselves against the U.S. for a final showdown. *Four modern battlegrounds host the new dual Cold War confrontation; any one of which could well explode into apocalyptic global war. *How the Trump administration s national security strategy intends to shape the new dual Cold War international environment while avoiding kinetic conflict if that is possible. *A futuristic view of how the duo of Russia and China might morph … 

 

Alliance of Evil.jpg

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19 hours ago, Argus said:

It's grounded in historical accuracy from over a hundred years ago, and in the communist government ensuring every child who goes through its school system is indoctrinated with things like that in order to incite resentment towards foreign countries.

 

The anger and resentment in China against the west goes back long before Mao and the first Chinese communists started out 100 years ago! Look up the Opium Wars that China called "A Century of Humiliation" for starters. The anger and desire for revenge spurred the insistence that China become powerful enough to repel any foreign invaders and attempts at gunboat diplomacy from any source! So, if you think this all begins and ends with the Communist Party of China, you're in for a rude awakening! Likewise the CIA/MI-6 and their various ethnic and religious nutcase front groups they support. Most of the crap we hear and read about China now, is spawned by contributors to this Epoch Times...which is directly a construct of the Falun Gong religious cult that got banned in China over 20 years ago for trying to overthrow the government.....similar to the Turkish cult leader - Fetullah Gulen, whom the CIA had set up in rural Pennsylvania after he had to flee Turkey.

I couldn't give a crap about either side of this tempest in a teapot, but it's interesting how often the spooks expensive and best laid plans turn to shit! They become enraptured with a few useful foreign tools who tell them exactly what they want to hear (think back to "Curveball" and his weapons of mass destruction before Bush 2's Iraq Invasion) and by supporting hated and despised cranks within a certain targeted nation, the Washington establishment strengthens the regimes they are trying to weaken and destroy! It works every time!

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The US would not and has not stopped any foreign ships, be they armed or not, from transiting through those waters since the Cuban missile crisis.

How many ships going to and from Venezuela has the US Navy or Coast Guard stopped in international waters in the past couple of years?

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20 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Agreed, as China will have to learn to walk before it can run with the big dogs globally.   Starting with regional dominance, countering U.S. allies Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Australia.   And then there is that pesky Taiwan "One China" problem too.

Even assuming that China can successfully dominate the region militarily at some stage in the future, it is an altogether different matter to graduate to a level of global foreign policy dominance by projecting military power without the sanction and cover of international alliance(s).   The U.S. and NATO have already demonstrated global power projection without effective challenge by China, as China lacks the foreign policy underpinnings to get away with and sustain such actions.   Even Canada (as member of NATO) rides the "human rights" and "Responsibility to Protect" cover story to bomb the locals for a western neoliberal or neoconservative agenda.

China will struggle to build the alliances and thin veneer of legitimacy for nearly any military actions abroad.  Far easier to pursue the economic battles, fight U.S. dollar hegemony, and balance of payments.   Finish consolidation of Hong Kong, modernize strategic nuclear forces, try to catch the Americans in cyberspace...and outer space.

China knows what the main challenge is...America...and it watched the Soviet Union fail...for a host of reasons that it should not repeat.

Soviet Union?? 

There are many examples in history where oppressed nations and peoples become the oppressors (Israel being a prime example today), so it's not hard to see China moving from 'defending our territorial waters' to imposing its will on nearby island nations. 

But, the takeaway point (as you have more or less pointed out also) is that China was seeking to become a global economic power without having to waste (or invest) resources in military buildups or weapons research and development. This has mostly been forced on China because of stupid American Empire policy of demanding unilateral global control through this century....even as the USA's economy weakens and rots from the inside out!

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Know your enemy is not a bad thought. Reading this, though, produced, to me, a comparison which isn't very flattering to most western leaders. China's president grew up in tough, violent times, suffering, enduring, determined to fight his way through and get ahead. Western leaders, like Trudeau, Macron, Johnson, Biden/Trump, suffered nothing, fought nothing. They grew up in lazy lives of ease, wealth and comfort, unchallenged, undisciplined, soft.

And these are the people to lead us against the tough, ruthless men like Xi, Putin and Erdogan? I don't think so.

It does not take a psychologist to see that the seeds of his ruthless desire for order, his rigid toughness and perhaps even his political pragmatism may have been sown during his turbulent background, even if it is hard to disentangle the myths from the man. Like any smart modern politician, Xi knows the power of public relations and has worked hard over the decades to create an image that dovetails with both his personal and national desires.

Like his British host, Xi had an elite upbringing that involved attendance at one of his nation’s finest schools — although in his case, this led only to trouble and tragedy during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Xi, born in 1953, is the son of Xi Zhongxun, a Communist revolutionary hero who was close to Mao and became a vice premier. Although China was riddled with poverty, this prominent family lived in a compound for party chiefs with their own cooks, nannies and drivers. One official biography claims that his parents sought to ensure their children were not spoilt, so he wore clothes handed down from his siblings — including floral shoes from his sisters that were dyed black. His father, meanwhile, was so strict that friends said his treatment of his son bordered on inhuman, and Xi also attended the “CCP aristocracy school” in Beijing infamous for military-style discipline. Any hint of softness, said one classmate, was seen as weakness.

Disaster struck when he was nine. His father fell out with Mao amid party in-fighting, so was sent to work in a factory in central China and his family lost its prized home —although his mother Qi Xin retained her party job in Beijing. Worse came in the 1966 Cultural Revolution, with its brutal purging of senior officials as enemies of the state. His father was beaten, paraded on a truck through jeering crowds and jailed. The family home was ransacked by militants, his mother forced into hard labour on a farm. Xi, a bookish boy, was made to denounce his father and bullied by teachers as the child of a “black gang”, the term for disgraced officials. His older sister eventually killed herself after being “persecuted to death”.

The following year Xi’s school was shut down and turned into an exhibition to showcase the pampered privileges of the reactionary elite. At the age of 14, he was caught by a gang of revolutionary Red Guards, who threatened to execute him before making him read quotations from Mao. Another time, he fled from a meeting attacked by students armed with clubs, who caught and badly beat one of his friends. “I always had a stubborn streak and wouldn’t put up with being bullied,” he claimed later. “I riled the radicals and they blamed me for everything that went wrong.”

https://unherd.com/2021/02/why-president-xi-will-never-accept-defeat/

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10 minutes ago, Right To Left said:

But, the takeaway point (as you have more or less pointed out also) is that China was seeking to become a global economic power without having to waste (or invest) resources in military buildups or weapons research and development. This has mostly been forced on China because of stupid American Empire policy of demanding unilateral global control through this century....even as the USA's economy weakens and rots from the inside out!

Your reflexive anti-Americanism is the product of your upbringing in the middle-east and allows for little in the way of logic as you blame everything on them.

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Just now, Right To Left said:

Soviet Union??

...But, the takeaway point (as you have more or less pointed out also) is that China was seeking to become a global economic power without having to waste (or invest) resources in military buildups or weapons research and development. This has mostly been forced on China because of stupid American Empire policy of demanding unilateral global control through this century....even as the USA's economy weakens and rots from the inside out!

 

Yes...the (former) Soviet Union that China tried to ally itself with during the Cold War...it did not end well for either regime.   China benefited from Soviet military tech, and is back for another Russian booty call to ally against those western bastards like Canada and the USA.    

China knows who the big dog is...and so do you.

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On 3/14/2021 at 5:06 PM, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

Yes...the (former) Soviet Union that China tried to ally itself with during the Cold War...it did not end well for either regime.   China benefited from Soviet military tech, and is back for another Russian booty call to ally against those western bastards like Canada and the USA.    

China knows who the big dog is...and so do you.

The "Big Dog" is going to leave us all observing mushroom clouds rising on the horizon!

fwiw, the dispute over sovereignty and control of Eastern Siberia (territories that included the large port city of Vladivostok) that were seized during Russia's eastern push across Asia...and into North America (Alaska) that included large stretches that were seized from China and even led to forced expulsion of Chinese, could not be resolved during the 1950's.

And Khrushchev's big speech after consolidating full control of the presidency and the Communist Party - making Stalin an equivalent of Hitler...mostly to justify his reform plans (that almost got him killed during Stalin's time) to turn towards introducing capitalist methods of production and investment, did not go over well with Chairman Mao, needless to say! After that, a lack of clear policy direction and control under Kosygin and Brezhnev made a breakup of the political Communist International inevitable. And that was the beginning of the end of China's military cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Mao was always a Luddite by nature....believing that strength of numbers on the battlefield would overwhelm whatever new high tech toys China's enemies attacked them with. Mao even laughed at the Nuclear Arms race between the US and Russia because of his dismal view of technology (and likely out of practical considerations, because he knew that his nation would never be in position to join such a competition at the time).  Mao did remain to be a strong believer in guerilla warfare and felt that superior numbers would always defeat superior armaments...no doubt influenced by China's costly success at pushing back Americans in the Korean War, with little more than hundreds of thousands of poorly armed and equipped infantrymen.

Well, things are somewhat different now, but China may have been acting on pragmatism up till now, by refusing to join America's military spending arms race. But now that they are investing billions in new weapons and increasing their size, it looks like you warhawks may finally be getting the war you've always wanted to justify a return to Reagan era military madness!

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On 3/14/2021 at 4:36 PM, Argus said:

Your reflexive anti-Americanism is the product of your upbringing in the middle-east and allows for little in the way of logic as you blame everything on them.

Nice guess! But I did not grow up and have never travelled to the Middle East! My understanding comes from my study of history (especially the rise and collapse of empires), my growing awareness of the increasing propaganda and disinformation pumped at us constantly about our politics, technologies and economic systems, and last but not least, when I've talked to people who actually come from places that are under the targets of US, Israeli and Allied bombs and missiles, I try to take the opportunity to learn a little more from someone with a firsthand account. 

Those who have grown up in the ME usually don't know everything (otherwise they wouldn't likely accept living and working in one of the colonies). But, people who grew up and/or came of age not being able to go to school, lining up with their mothers for water and food rations, and being told in very strong terms that they were not allowed to play outside...even on the balconies of apartments...even on days when they did not hear any guns firing or any shouting etc.. It's a different take when you hear it from populations who have been terrorized by foreign forces who almost always move about unseen and unheard....until something blows up!

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3 hours ago, Right To Left said:

The "Big Dog" is going to leave us all observing mushroom clouds rising on the horizon!

 

This is by design...Canada is not part of the club, but still depends on the Big Dog's nukes.  China and the DPRK also has Canada reconsidering its decision not to join ballistic missile defense.

 

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Well, things are somewhat different now, but China may have been acting on pragmatism up till now, by refusing to join America's military spending arms race. But now that they are investing billions in new weapons and increasing their size, it looks like you warhawks may finally be getting the war you've always wanted to justify a return to Reagan era military madness!

 

Reagan's "madness" is very much appreciated in Eastern Europe.  U.S. defense spending is at historical lows as a percentage of GDP.    And unlike China's concerns over India and U.S. allies in the region, the U.S. is not faced with a credible military threat from Canada or Mexico, which can't even defend themselves.

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4 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Nice guess! But I did not grow up and have never travelled to the Middle East!

My error. It was Anticonservative who is from the ME. You two sound a lot alike in your anti-Americanism.

4 hours ago, Right To Left said:

My understanding comes from my study of history (especially the rise and collapse of empires), my growing awareness of the increasing propaganda and disinformation pumped at us constantly about our politics, technologies and economic systems, and last but not least, when I've talked to people who actually come from places that are under the targets of US, Israeli and Allied bombs and missiles, I try to take the opportunity to learn a little more from someone with a firsthand account. 

That's all pretty one sided, don't you think? You're listening to people who are anti-American to begin with.

4 hours ago, Right To Left said:

Those who have grown up in the ME usually don't know everything (otherwise they wouldn't likely accept living and working in one of the colonies). But, people who grew up and/or came of age not being able to go to school, lining up with their mothers for water and food rations, and being told in very strong terms that they were not allowed to play outside...even on the balconies of apartments...even on days when they did not hear any guns firing or any shouting etc.. It's a different take when you hear it from populations who have been terrorized by foreign forces who almost always move about unseen and unheard....until something blows up!

And somehow you blame all this on Americans rather than the violent, uncompromising winner-take-all nature of ME politics and religion?

And by the way, this topic is about China. I would think if you disliked the US for human rights abuses you'd dislike China much more if you were being even remotely unbiased. The worst US actions are in the distant past. China's are ahead of us as it expands its influence and power in the world.

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Xi’s big brothers do more than just watch you:

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Uighurs who were spared the camps now make up the most intensely surveilled population on Earth. Not all of the surveillance is digital. The Chinese government has moved thousands of Han Chinese “big brothers and sisters” into homes in Xinjiang’s ancient Silk Road cities, to monitor Uighurs’ forced assimilation to mainstream Chinese culture. They eat meals with the family, and some “big brothers” sleep in the same bed as the wives of detained Uighur men.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/

 

Edited by SpankyMcFarland
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19 hours ago, Argus said:

My error. It was Anticonservative who is from the ME. You two sound a lot alike in your anti-Americanism.

That's all pretty one sided, don't you think? You're listening to people who are anti-American to begin with.

Of course! Since there's not enough pro-American propaganda available on Fox or MSNBC. Only difference is you have to choose D flavored propaganda or the R flavored version. 

If you ever attempted to get past Google or even worse - Wikipedia, and went directly to any non-conformist sites on the internet, you could find a whole different world!  It used to be a lot easier to find a variety of sources 15 or 20 years ago, but now the internet is almost completely controlled by oligarchs who send out their minions to push and promote fake agendas, and just like the crap you find in the cereal aisle of your local supermarket, it's all the same garbage presented in a multitude of colors and flavors to confuse and mislead the consumer. 

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And somehow you blame all this on Americans rather than the violent, uncompromising winner-take-all nature of ME politics and religion?

I never said "ALL!"  But my main point is that regardless of all the claims and BS we got after 9-11 about "Islamism" and the importance of promoting democracy and human rights, the US Government has been squarely on the side of the worst of the worst Islamofascists and just plain amoral dictators.

US Provides Military Aid To More Than 70 Percent Of World’s Dictatorships

About three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships currently receive military assistance from the United States. This is a strange record for a nation that consistently justifies its sweeping foreign interventions as aimed at “promoting democracy” and “thwarting evil dictatorships.”

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And by the way, this topic is about China. I would think if you disliked the US for human rights abuses you'd dislike China much more if you were being even remotely unbiased. The worst US actions are in the distant past. China's are ahead of us as it expands its influence and power in the world.

Only problem I got with China is that they are building up to become world power status they feel was denied to them 200 years ago by the encroaching British and American empires. 

But, for the moment, China offers an oppositional force to what would otherwise be even worse US hegemony that no one would be able to push back.

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20 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

This is by design...Canada is not part of the club, but still depends on the Big Dog's nukes.  China and the DPRK also has Canada reconsidering its decision not to join ballistic missile defense.

 

 

Reagan's "madness" is very much appreciated in Eastern Europe.  U.S. defense spending is at historical lows as a percentage of GDP.    And unlike China's concerns over India and U.S. allies in the region, the U.S. is not faced with a credible military threat from Canada or Mexico, which can't even defend themselves.

Ah yes, Eastern Europe!  Where the fight against communism led to the support of the re-emergence of fascist parties and fascist governments that have hollowed out economies today after foreign buyers bought up all the former state industries and enterprises.  

Are there any Eastern European nations today from the Baltics down to Bulgaria and Macedonia, where the only people left are old pensioners after 30 years of young people fleeing to at least find work in England and the EU countries?

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