[HN Gopher] U.S. and China wage war beneath the waves over inter...
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U.S. and China wage war beneath the waves over internet cables
Author : gmays
Score : 245 points
Date : 2023-04-07 14:06 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| outworlder wrote:
| All this connectivity and yet the country is hampered by the
| incredibly slow Great Firewall. The filtering is bad enough as it
| is, but even locations that are supposed to be accessible are
| hampered by high latency, packet loss and bandwidths that
| sometimes get to dial-up speeds.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is an amusing take:
|
| > "But the U.S. government, concerned about the potential for
| Chinese spying on these sensitive communications cables, ran a
| successful campaign to flip the contract to SubCom through
| incentives and pressure on consortium members."
|
| The U.S. government is equally concerned about losing the ability
| to spy on cables itself, although the above statement is not
| false either. Both parties want to collect, filter and mine all
| the traffic on the global Internet trunks, that's obvious enough.
| There's always the submarine spy option I suppose:
|
| > "(2014, pdf) In 2005 it was reported that the submarine USS
| Jimmy Carter was being used to transport technicians to the
| bottom of the ocean to tapfiber--optic cables. This would
| indicate that the NSA continued the practice of mid-ocean cable
| taps until at least as recently as nine years ago..."
|
| That's a risky operation, however, compared to:
|
| > "...the easiest and most reliable way is to have the consent of
| the transit company and split the wires. Given the apparent
| relationship the NSA has with telecommunications companies and
| its history of tapping AT&T's cables, it seems likely that it has
| gained companies' consent and access to landing stations or
| otherwise to install splitters."
|
| https://surveille.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2015/04...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| We take for granted the fact that we even have a globally
| connected world. The US spearheaded this with free trade and
| security guarantees during the Cold War.
| pacija wrote:
| aes-256-gcm
|
| Good luck ;)
| avidiax wrote:
| Metadata is still very useful.
| waffleiron wrote:
| > through incentives and pressure on consortium members.
|
| No doubt this would be "bribes and threats" if it were done by
| a geopolitical opponent.
| H8crilA wrote:
| God only knows how many of them are wired for explosion (for
| example acoustically triggered), or can be wired on a short
| notice by the Russians:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_research_vessel_Yantar
|
| Because sure as hell the Russian klepto-bureaucracy has lost
| track at this point.
| monocasa wrote:
| Or, fiber lines probably get messed with via subs like
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Belgorod_(...
| rather than surface ships.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| Compare the narrative of this Reuters article, that the
| construction of the SeaMeWe-6 submarine cable is a proxy war and
| cold war between US and China, with the narrative in the Wired
| article _Mother Earth Mother Board_ (1996) [0] by Sci-Fi writer
| Neal Stephenson, that the construction of the FLAG submarine
| cable was the beginning of the new Internet age, which would
| eliminate national boundaries, end monopolies, bring diversity
| and create a multi-polar world order...
|
| One has to say that the era has really changed, and the utopian
| dream by digital libertarians is coming to an end. It's hard to
| imagine that 1996 was almost 30 years ago by now.
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
| [deleted]
| headsupftw wrote:
| When you can't compete, call them commie spies.
| omegaworks wrote:
| >the U.S. government believed HMN Tech could insert remote
| surveillance equipment inside the cable, the official said
| without providing evidence
|
| The US government is absolutely installing remote surveillance
| equipment inside these cables.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > U.S. tech behemoths Google LLC, Meta Platforms Inc and
| Amazon.com Inc were major investors in at least one, or in Meta's
| case both, of those cables, according to public announcements
| made about the projects. The delays and rerouting of the cables
| cost each of those companies tens of millions of dollars in lost
| revenue and additional costs, four sources who worked on the
| projects said.
|
| I wonder if the U.S. government would somehow compensate those
| American companies for disrupting their business plans. A bit
| surprised to see Meta here but totally understand the need for
| ever more cables for Amazon and Google.
| d3vmax wrote:
| It does mention in the article that the threat of sanctions
| makes the more expensive SubCom offer, cheaper in the long run.
| No compensation required.
| toast0 wrote:
| > A bit surprised to see Meta here
|
| I worked at WhatsApp until 2019. Without details, Meta has a
| large global userbase, serves lots of video, and stores a large
| amount of user data in several datacenters (sometimes with
| replication across oceans). Being a partner in undersea cables
| is a good way to get committed international bandwidth at
| relatively low prices. Meta has lots of cash, and there's a
| clear ROI, so it's an easy decision.
|
| Take a look at peering DB, Meta is at many (most?) major
| peering points, because it improves their product, and having
| dedicated backhaul from peering points to the datacenters makes
| the service from the peering points better too.
| kccqzy wrote:
| An (possibly) apocryphal story at Google is that when Gmail
| first launched, they figured that email delivery isn't
| latency-sensitive, so they purposefully set up compute-
| intensive jobs (like spam analysis) to be cross continent.
| When it's night time in the U.S. people aren't doing a lot of
| web searches, so U.S. servers are relatively idle and the
| entire world's email delivery processing happens in the U.S.;
| when the U.S. wakes up all those email processing gets done
| in Europe.
|
| My takeaway is that for large companies cost of international
| bandwidth isn't such a big factor, at least relative to
| compute.
| [deleted]
| andrewflnr wrote:
| How worried are we really about surveillance on undersea cables,
| by China or otherwise? Almost everything over those fibers is
| already encrypted. Are we worried about metadata? Assuming the
| hostile power in question already has a bunch of TLS private keys
| to work with?
| fishsticks89 wrote:
| An idea is that nations are storing the encrypted packets now
| to decrypt them once they have access to a number of
| sufficiently fast quantum computers (store/harvest now decrypt
| later). This assumes the data will still be useful in the
| future.
| itake wrote:
| If there is a war, whoever owns the cables could control what
| traffic flows through them. DNS queries are plain text.
| misssocrates wrote:
| Are we already in a war? Instead of guns, it's being fought with
| bytes and financial instruments?
| genmud wrote:
| Yes, but the US didn't realize it was in a war for like 30
| years and is just now starting to recognize the reality of the
| situation.
| flerchin wrote:
| Competition? Yes. War? No. There's no violence, invasion,
| bombings, etc.
| eunos wrote:
| A recommended reading that explain the situation
|
| https://www.patreon.com/posts/unlocked-why-to-44491009
| jonbaer wrote:
| "Chinese scientists have developed a high-speed quantum key
| distribution (QKD) system to generate secret keys at a rate
| exceeding 110 Mb/s over a 10 km standard optical fiber, setting a
| new world record in the field."
| ftxbro wrote:
| reuters would never clickbait or rattle sabre
|
| also reuters: US AND CHINA WAGE WAR ... beneath the waves over
| internet cables
| imwillofficial wrote:
| The US fails to see that the more they hold other down for their
| own benefit, the less others will tolerate it, and the more other
| countries will push for self sovereignty.
|
| When that happens, the whole dollar based global financial system
| will collapse like a house of cards.
|
| The US is over playing their hand, and the results will be
| disaster.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >When that happens, the whole dollar based global financial
| system will collapse like a house of cards.
|
| The common rebuttal to this is what will replace it? Whenever
| Chinese open up capital controls for their currency people rush
| to get their money out and into USD/Euro so much so that they
| have to shut it down again. They also manipulate it like crazy.
| The currency with the highest trust is the one that stays on
| top and it appears that the USD is the least worst option for
| the foreseeable future.
| jags wrote:
| Heard it in a video somewhere that it won't be a one big blow
| that takes down USD, instead, it will be thousand-little-
| cuts. USD won't be replaced by a single currency instead
| countries pissed off by US will start using their local
| currency as and when possible. E.g. India buying oil from
| Russia in dubai dirhams/rubles. China and Russia doing their
| trades in yuan amd ruble. Here are few more examples:
| https://www.google.com/amp/story/s/www.wionews.com/web-
| stori...
|
| I personally feel that USD dollar circulation will go down a
| lot in not so far away future and the domino effect will be
| significant on US political and economical dominance.
| max51 wrote:
| A massive amount of US dollars is held purely because
| countries and companies are forced to use it for many types
| of transactions (eg. trading oil). It's not by choice, they
| have a gun to head. The US has proven over and over again
| that they will kill state leaders and invade entire countries
| in order to preserve that economic power.
|
| When the US loses that power and other countries start using
| whatever currency they prefer, the USD you are holding in
| your account will lose a lot of value. It doesn't matter what
| other countries prefer to use (euro, yen, rubles, CAD,
| bitcoins, etc.), anything other than the USD will fuck up the
| US economy really badly. I personally wouldn't trust current
| US politicians (both sides) to deal with this successfully.
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| Book recommendations on this topic? International internet
| infrastructure in general, not China/US relations.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Not a book, but a great interactive map where you can click on
| any submarine cable:
|
| https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| Incredible. Thank you.
| hammock wrote:
| "Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet" by Andrew Blum
| - This book takes readers on a tour of the physical
| infrastructure that underpins the internet, including the
| network of undersea cables that connect countries around the
| world.
|
| "The Undersea Network" by Nicole Starosielski - This book
| explores the history and politics of undersea cables, including
| the way that they have been used to connect and control
| different parts of the world.
|
| "The Global War for Internet Governance" by Laura DeNardis -
| This book examines the complex political and legal issues
| surrounding the governance of the internet, including the role
| of different countries and organizations in managing the global
| network.
|
| "Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War" by Fred
| Kaplan - While this book is focused more broadly on the history
| of cyber war, it includes some fascinating details about the
| role that undersea cables have played in international
| conflicts and espionage.
|
| "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google" by
| Nicholas Carr - This book explores the history of technological
| infrastructure, including the development of the telegraph,
| telephone, and internet, and how these innovations have
| transformed the way we live and work.
| ctoth wrote:
| This set off my ChatGPT Detector. To help me calibrate, was
| it right?
|
| Edit: I think it was the multiple "this book"
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Mine too. The consistent and concise formatting is part of
| it, but the lack of any actual expressed opinion about the
| books is the big trigger I think.
|
| Weirdly at one point I would have thought being neutral and
| easily digestible would be positive qualities in a comment.
| How the world changes..
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I feel like there was a Neal Stephenson book that touched on
| this too but can't remember which off the top of my head...
| Cryptonomicon? I mention it because I found no matter how
| many international relations, management books, etc. I go
| through, I almost always learn more from scifi.
| SllX wrote:
| Cryptonomicon did touch on it as part of the plot but
| predating that was his article for Wired, "Mother Earth
| Mother Board"[1][2].
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ (Warning, it's
| a Wired link)
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Remarks This book
| also has a copy of the Wired arrticle and is probably the
| superior way to read it. Wikipedia link so you can choose
| your own bookstore.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Wasn't cryptonomicon about Alan Turing inventing bitcoin?
| It's been a while since I last read that book
| SllX wrote:
| Neal Stephenson doesn't tend to stick to just one story
| in his storytelling, so also yes.
|
| EDIT: to be a little bit less glib about it,
| Cryptonomicon has multiple POV characters including
| characters that hang around Alan Turing.
| hammock wrote:
| Neal Stephenson explored international internet
| infrastructure in other works as well:
|
| Reamde (2011) involves the hijacking of an undersea
| fiber-optic cable and the resulting disruption of
| internet connectivity in various parts of the world.
|
| Interface (1994) involves a corrupt presidential
| candidate who seeks to control the internet through the
| manipulation of network infrastructure
| [deleted]
| sklargh wrote:
| "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine
| Espionage" - Sherry Sontag & Christopher Drew - Indirect, but
| the title is the summary. I recommend familiarizing yourself
| with Operation Ivy Bells.
|
| Ivy Bells is arguably the Cold War's signature _known_
| clandestine undersea cable tapping operation. Contextualizes
| lengths nations will go to for physical access. It is far
| easier to own a cable than use a nuclear powered sub to
| sneakily deploy a tap.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I love the bit about the "Made In USA" badge on a
| clandestine piece of gear.
| Herval_freire wrote:
| You can also ask chatGPT for some good recs. I say this here
| because it looks like this was already done.
| pneumatic1 wrote:
| Yea I was hoping to get recommendations with a 'human who
| reads Hacker News' filter.
| fassssst wrote:
| One of my favorite reads ever:
|
| https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
| adamfeldman wrote:
| A classic long-read article - "Mother Earth Mother Board" by
| Neal Stephenson -
|
| "The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous
| meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the
| longest wire on Earth."
|
| https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
| probablynish wrote:
| I thought the title was worded poorly (shouldn't it be "US and
| China wage war over internet cables beneath the waves"?) so I
| clicked through - that missing hyphen really does make a
| difference. "US and Chine wage war beneath the waves - over
| internet cables"
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230407141450/https://www.reuter...
|
| https://archive.ph/SsHVp
| synergy20 wrote:
| [flagged]
| bushbaba wrote:
| Us has a public school crises. Left is fighting an ideological
| war at expense of stem. Right is fighting a religious war at
| expense of liberal arts.
|
| My only hope is Supreme Court allows parents to take their
| education dollars and use it to subsidize private school
| tuition.
| synergy20 wrote:
| the post is flagged and buried in no time, which is again
| expected, we as a nation is so screwed up and hopeless.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Because the post started off inflammatory and stupid.
| Schools barely mention trans people, but if they did it
| would take one lesson. And if half a percent or one percent
| of people are trans that seems like it's worth the time.
| Also not being distracted by dysphoria should _help_ with
| learning effectively.
|
| There's a lot of talking points that don't come at the
| expense of real education at all. If you want to discuss
| real problems let's look at school district funding and
| curriculums that are overly focused on standardized test
| results. You don't need to make fun of non-binary people as
| if that's some kind of wasteful hobby rather than just an
| attribute.
| angelbreakfree wrote:
| With all due respect, altho it may seem that it was to you,
| I do not thing it was very relevant.
| genmud wrote:
| That actually can make things significantly worse. Most
| school districts are chronically underfunded to begin with
| and many of the federal dollars are the difference between a
| 30:1 teacher ratio and 60:1 ratio.
|
| In many school districts where voucher programs have been
| implemented, they are facing _HARD_ financial burdens, since
| they had 10 /20/30 year plans based on a certain amount of
| income from taxes. I am generalizing, but the people who
| could afford or want to send their kids to non-public schools
| already have been doing so for years. As more money pours out
| of public school districts, the more cost cutting has to take
| place to have a budget that works, which means the quality of
| education goes down, which accelerates anyone who was on the
| fence to remove their kids from public schools.
|
| The problem with private schools is they are effectively
| subsidized by all the work from public schools, yet don't
| contribute in the same way. Think about coursework that is
| developed with state / local funds, testing standards that
| are built in these schools and decades of experience
| administering these programs.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Just a simple question.
|
| When they say that these cables are susceptible to "espionage"
| what does that actually mean?
|
| How does one do espionage on an undersea fiberoptic cable?
|
| I can imagine not wanting to hand over management of the optical
| transport link to a Chinese company-- because they could then do
| anything they want with the signals once the cables enter their
| own facility.
|
| But an undersea cable? What kind of James-Bond-type operation
| would that require? Is it even possible? Wouldn't the extended
| outage from such an operation raise flags and be obvious?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Fiber optic tapping. It ain't easy, but can be done without
| breaking the connection. Doing it underwater ... That would be
| James bond stuff.
|
| "...the USS Jimmy Carter, a nuclear submarine, was modified to
| allow tapping undersea communication cables."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping
| crispyambulance wrote:
| OK, but that would require a submarine or a very advanced
| ROV. And then, there's the matter of actually opening up the
| cable without interrupting the signal. These are not trivial
| housings. They're not like patch cables in a datacenter. (htt
| ps://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn/comments/3asakn/cross_sec...)
| .
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is done with some regularity. See the Jimmy Carter
| mentioned above.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Source for that? There is no way of knowing how regularly
| it's been performed.
| nostromo wrote:
| Obviously you don't tell people you've tapped their
| cables. You also don't tell people that you know they've
| tapped your cable.
|
| But we do know of one because it was a high-profile case
| of espionage. It's a super interesting story.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm aware that it has happened, my issue is claiming that
| it happens _regularly_. Operation Ivy Bells took place in
| the 70s. Was it a fiber cable? There are no other
| examples between then and now?
| late2part wrote:
| It's not common knowledge how often it happens. If you
| don't understand why I can't explain it to you.
| dweekly wrote:
| It is involved but possible to do without outages. Needs nation
| state level capability but has been done in practice for
| decades.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th...
| RedCondor wrote:
| [flagged]
| augment001 wrote:
| > Anyone saying "China also wants an empire" or "Empire is
| inevitable" is categorically wrong, though, or at the very
| least has not at all engaged with the essay above.
|
| This is frankly, silly. The essay is just doublespeak.
|
| If you can't articulate clearly why it's not in China's
| interest to extend its influence throughout the world, it's
| because you don't have a coherent position.
|
| For what it's worth, I think most of the criticisms of the
| American system are valid, and the extent to which we are aware
| of them is because it's founded on _being open to criticism_.
|
| We're faced with humanity being deeply flawed and not having
| developed a utopian system of government anywhere, ever.
|
| A central question we are facing is - do we want a world in
| which governments can be criticized, or one in which such
| criticism is brutally repressed?
| Proven wrote:
| [dead]
| shredprez wrote:
| I haven't bumped into his work before, this was an interesting
| read. What do you like about it?
| RedCondor wrote:
| I think presenting the situation like "China and the U.S. are
| fighting beneath the waves" sweeps under the rug how the
| preceding state of affairs--unchallenged U.S. dominance--was
| utilized by the U.S. to cut off countries like Cuba from the
| internet or finance with impunity, and makes it seem like
| China's challenge to this system is a scary departure from
| "peaceful normalcy" rather than the slow and difficult return
| of justice.
|
| Just look at this map of undersea water cables to see how
| embargoes and sanctions designed to torture Cubans have led
| to silly and wasteful design decisions:
|
| https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/images/news/2015/10/r.
| ..
|
| (And yes, that single connected spot in Cuba is Guantanamo
| Bay.)
| beebeepka wrote:
| Cuba is still taking it for those missiles, after how many
| decades.
|
| The world is not just at all. There is no reciprocy and not
| all voices are being heard.
|
| Thanks for your input. That's all
|
| Edit: you got downvoted while I was typing this. The status
| quo defense force is working overtime these last few days
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Nobody cares about the missiles anymore, nor the
| embarrassment of our failed invasion of the island. I
| mean, hell, we're friendly with Vietnam these days.
|
| It's almost entirely due to one of the shitty aspects of
| how US elections work.
|
| Enough Floridian ex-Cubans and their descendants, who got
| their land and businesses seized, are against warming
| relations _at all_ , that moving that direction is seen
| as risky for Presidential hopefuls--which would hardly
| matter if we had a national popular vote for President,
| but instead, it's state-by-state and (mostly) winner-
| take-all at the state level, so that constituency's power
| is greatly multiplied by their mostly living in one
| "swing" state with a high elector count.
|
| Miami doesn't want us to stop stepping on Cuba's throat,
| so we keep doing it. Why do we listen to Miami? Because
| our elections are dumb and bad and we (and Cuba) were
| unlucky with where Cuban refugees/exiles settled.
| ta1243 wrote:
| That map shows ALBA-1 (which lands in two places in Cuba,
| neither Guantanamo, and connects to Jamacia and Venezuela),
| which opened in 2012. Since then another cable - ARIMO -
| opens this year and connects Cuba to Martinique [0]
|
| The two cables into Guantanamo -- GTMO-PR (opened 2019) and
| GTMO-1 (2016), after that map opened.
|
| [0] https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-
| us/arima...
| celu wrote:
| "The slow and difficult return of justice" and the current
| regime ruling China are not two things most people would
| ever put together
| nradov wrote:
| Cuba is welcome to lay their own undersea cables. No one is
| stopping them. They can hook up to their allies in
| Venezuela or whatever.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Anyone saying "China also wants an empire" or "Empire is
| inevitable" is categorically wrong
|
| Ridiculously naive. China wants an empire to match or surpass
| the US.
|
| I don't necessarily blame them for that in and of itself -- I'd
| blame them more for being non-democratic -- but it's comical to
| act like China doesn't want an empire as it goes about building
| outposts in the South China Sea.
|
| > The United States operates an imperial arrangement within its
| continental territory, followed by a second imperial core in
| the form of the Five Eyes alliance, followed by a system of
| vassal states in the guise of allies such as the military
| domination systems of Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East
|
| This is also incredibly silly.
|
| Sure, categorizing military bases all over the world as
| imperial is reasonable, but looking at it as "military
| domination" over all those countries is simplified tankie
| reasoning.
|
| If it was just a matter of militarily dominating those
| countries, the US wouldn't frequently push for allied countries
| to strengthen their own independent militaries, as it has.
|
| And what does "imperial arrangement" over the continental US
| even mean? Sure, manifest destiny was empire building, but at
| this point it's largely a singular nation with a federal
| system.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _If it was just a matter of militarily dominating those
| countries, the US wouldn 't frequently push for allied
| countries to strengthen their own independent militaries, as
| it has._
|
| Oh yes, the US has military bases in 80 countries around the
| world in the interests of the "host" countries, and not for
| strategic military reasons. As soon as the hosts catch up on
| military spending, the US will leave, no doubt!
|
| Imagine believing this for one second.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I never said that. Obviously it's for the US' own
| interests, but it's _also_ mostly based on alliances and
| shared interests, rather than "domination", which is why
| they want their allies to also have strong militaries.
|
| For example, the reason the Philippines is now allowing the
| US to establish semi-permanent bases on its territory is
| obviously because it's more worried about China in the
| South China Sea. The US military is simply the lesser of
| the two evils from the Filipino perspective. (And of course
| it helps that so many Filipinos have positive feelings
| towards the US)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It's probably more realistic to believe that neither
| countries really want to be world hegemon, or at least to
| bear all the responsibilities such an arrangement implies.
|
| The hardliners may fantasize about the benefits of world
| hegemony, and conveniently ignore the downsides, but in
| reality there's much less enthusiasm in pursuing such a goal
| than often boasted about.
|
| For example, when the Cold War was already over in 1991, even
| Bush Sr. gave a big speech in Ukraine to emphasize that they
| really shouldn't rush to break up the Soviet Union.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > It's probably more realistic to believe that neither
| countries really want to be world hegemon, or at least to
| bear all the responsibilities such an arrangement implies.
|
| As an American I'd say the US has very mixed feelings about
| this, but isn't 100% opposed.
|
| You're right that the US doesn't exactly want to be world
| police, not most Americans anyway. That said, there's
| definitely a certain sentiment of, "if not us, then who?"
| and seeing acting as world police to be the lesser evil.
|
| Like in principle, Americans want to be somewhat more
| isolationist (especially militarily), particularly since
| the Iraq war was such a disaster, but then something like
| the Syrian civil war happens and many Americans feel an
| obligation to help out the 'right' side.
|
| The whole "shining beacon on a hill" thing is ingrained
| into the American mindset. Even people on the left within
| American politics who are self-critical of US history just
| have the stance of, "well, the US hasn't really behaved
| like that in the past, but it _should_ ".
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This take fails to fairly address the ulterior motive of the
| Belt and Road initiative, or the level of repression the
| average Chinese citizen faces (the Great Firewall is a great
| example. Don't forget tiananmen square or hong kong)
|
| Sure, it's an alternative to the US' imperialism, but make no
| mistake that the Chinese government has the capacity to be just
| as evil.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _the Great Firewall is a great example._
|
| The Great Firewall vs the US Government telling social media
| companies what to censor.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| The US government is rather limited there in how much it
| can actually tell companies to censor, due to the first
| amendment. The government can whine about a lot of things,
| but actually legally forcing action? That's much more
| limited.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not versus. China has the great firewall _and_ gets social
| media to censor a thousand times as much.
| Herval_freire wrote:
| This is definitely a realistic take . Many people don't agree
| with you and prefer to see china as the enemy though.
|
| I would say that the view point is a little biased as it
| doesn't mention all three possibilities.
|
| 1. US world empire
|
| 2. Equal international relations between china and the US
|
| 3. Chinese world empire
|
| 3 Is the thing not mentioned in your passage. Like the US,
| china itself is not some morally idealistic state, when given
| an opportunity for dominance they will take it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think it is really accurate to think of these as
| "options", which implies the possibility of choice between
| them. There is and always has been one possibility:
|
| A global balance determined by real world economic and
| military power. This is the way it always has been and always
| will be. I dont think this is a cynical take, but simple
| realism. Counties take what they can get and dont ceed more
| power than they have to.
| Herval_freire wrote:
| The scenario you declare here is basically option 2. Some
| sort of cold war stalemate between two super powers.
|
| The US doesn't want this. China wants more then a
| stalemate.
|
| You are right, none of these are options by choice, they
| are only possible outcomes.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I agree, but think I am making an even broader point. Im
| not just desccribing a cold war stalemate, but the
| fundamental power relation between nation states going
| back 5,000+ years.
| Herval_freire wrote:
| History is littered with empires. Nothing is ever stable.
| Both situations of multitudes of nation states and a
| single monolithic empire don't have staying power.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| yep, but they behave the same way. They try to grow,
| profit, and compete until they fail and disapear.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| This is propagandist rationalization. It basically says "China
| should be allowed to do what it wants to resist 'Western
| Imperialism.'"
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| hammock wrote:
| By the same token, China has it's own complex empire of
| influence. It's been said that Africa is China's second
| continent. China further projects great influence across Asia,
| Latin America, and even the West as well, in many ways
| including economic and political
| pphysch wrote:
| International trade and investment are not remotely
| comparable to the system of global military and monetary
| dominance led by Washington. China is a huge and influential
| civilization-state, but it is not (yet) an empire.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Important to remember this is often on _behalf_ of willing
| member states, re: NATO, the military pacts that span
| through Southeast Asia (there are many).
|
| The US official policy (and they do follow this) is that
| nations reserve the right to ask us to leave, too, and yet,
| few do.
|
| We don't always get it right, but I don't think the Chinese
| are interested in global peace keeping even on the surface.
| Its much more "winner take all". I think that does speak to
| a real difference.
| pphysch wrote:
| I don't even know to respond to the assertion that China
| is more irresponsibility militaristic than USA. _Based on
| which facts_?
| no_wizard wrote:
| its not that simple either.
|
| I readily acknowledge our misadventures. We're a complex
| nation, same as any other, with real costs and
| unfortunately many ruined lives at home and abroad.
|
| I'm not pleading ignorance, there are aspects of
| "American Exceptionalism" that are problematic and
| indefensible. I never (as many Americans) supported
| invading Afghanistan or Iraq. The CIA should have never
| messed around in many countries, (including but not
| limited to Iran, Cuba and Argentina)
|
| I also want to recognize that I can freely talk about
| this publicly, openly, and take to the streets with
| protests against such things, without fear the government
| will lock me up in a labor camp or "disappear" people
| (re: Jack Ma).
|
| Its foolish to think that just because we've made
| mistakes that we don't have real advantages on the world
| stage that may still be far preferable to some
| alternatives, for starters.
|
| Nuance is required here, no? Its important to evaluate
| all aspects of what you're dealing with.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Its foolish to think that just because we've made
| mistakes that we don't have real advantages on the world
| stage that may still be fair preferable to some
| alternatives, for starters.
|
| Please embellish. What does USA do that offsets its
| constant warmongering and economic coercion, and how can
| you possibly know that outside of blind faith?
| no_wizard wrote:
| This wasn't what I said, not even in spirit, so if you
| have a specific redress I'm open to it, but so far you're
| throwing empty statements the wall
| hammock wrote:
| China's massive military spending and rapid modernization
| of its armed forces has made it a formidable military power
| in the world. The country's nuclear arsenal, advanced
| missile technology, and expanding naval capabilities have
| given it a significant military advantage in the Asia-
| Pacific region and beyond.
|
| Additionally, China has been expanding its presence and
| influence through strategic investments and development
| initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, which aims
| to create a network of infrastructure and trade routes
| across Asia, Africa, and Europe. This expansionist strategy
| has allowed China to increase its economic and political
| influence globally, and some experts argue that it reflects
| an imperialist mindset
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Yes, but they do not have military bases sprinkled all
| over the world like the US does.
| hammock wrote:
| They have police stations all over the world instead.
| Different strategy
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-
| police-s...
| pphysch wrote:
| Until China installs hundreds of military bases along the
| Belt and Road to match Washington's global military
| empire, those "experts" are engaged in motivated and
| wishful thinking.
|
| I think they are at base #2, so don't get your hopes up.
| hammock wrote:
| Military power is not just about the number of bases. The
| simplest example is cyber warfare, where China has
| invested heavily and is arguably the world's most
| formidable power in that area
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Scale isn't the same as capability though, and cyber
| talent isn't exactly hard to find, just ask the Israelis
| (or maybe HN readers can do a bit of navel gazing). It's
| not fair to compare script kiddie levels tools like
| ransomware and cryptominer bots in the same breath as the
| toys from NSO group and Stuxnet. If we are counting cyber
| warfare capability by quantity of malware released, I
| would expect Africa to become a cyber "power" too in the
| next decade or so, because they have a large somewhat
| educated population and no good opportunities.
|
| I don't think most HN software engineering folks realize
| how easy it is to train script kiddies. Most of the big
| "cybersecurity" consultancies (yes even the big IPOed
| ones) are primarily staffed by people who basically went
| through a bootcamp and gained a few certifications.
| Corporate "security" especially is more about checklists
| and compliance. You are not getting any real talent like
| the ICs' blogs that get posted here on HN. The typical
| staff at cybersecurity companies won't be able to subvert
| broken branch predictors and post networking stacks
| exploits on twitter. Those sort of low level application
| security engineers are a lot rarer and more expensive.
| Many of the "cybersecurity" companies provide script
| kiddies and consultants without a STEM background. Forget
| about fizzbuzz, they are closer to McKinsey than
| Accenture.
| pphysch wrote:
| Arguably, based on what? Flimsy attributions based on
| Chinese strings embedded in payloads?
|
| When has China, as a state actor, done anything as
| remotely as egregious as STUXNET?
| hammock wrote:
| Many reports that China has surveillance embedded in cell
| tower equipment across the US and in container cranes in
| every major port. Who knows if they have been behind past
| cyber attacks on our oil infrastructure and electric
| grid. We don't hear about it because it's classified/ not
| diplomatically wise to share that info all the time
| pphysch wrote:
| [flagged]
| SoylentYellow wrote:
| I'm amazed anyone still buys China's "weather balloon"
| lie. A weather balloon that large and expensive is a
| major project. It would have a project leader, project
| webpage, articles and conference papers, sharing of data,
| government permits for operation, and all kinds of other
| artifacts that China could trivially point out proving it
| was a weather balloon. Instead, China has consistently
| refused to even give a single name or company associated
| with it. It is the most secretive "weather balloon" I
| have ever seen.
| pphysch wrote:
| Buddy, the USAF also shot down weather "spy balloons"
| from a hobbyist club in the Midwest. You are _vastly_
| overestimating the seriousness of this affair.
| SoylentYellow wrote:
| The US OPM breach.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Have they actually been to war or tested? The last time
| they were close to actual war was the border skirmish in
| the late 70s with Vietnam when they were fighting for
| influence over Laos (or was that Cambodia?). It's been
| almost half a century without any real action. The wooden
| stick and stones border disputes with India do not count.
| What are their actual capabilities?
| milesskorpen wrote:
| China sure acts in an imperialist manner in Tibet, parts of
| Kashmir, Xinjiang, perhaps Inner Mongolia and the SCS + has
| obvious designs on Taiwan. I think you could characterize
| their activities in Sri Lanka has imperialist overtones
| too.
| eramoose wrote:
| It's interesting that your argument for China's
| imperialism includes China governing three of their own
| provinces ("America sure acts in an imperialist manner in
| Alaska, Hawaii...") and the debunked Sri Lankan debt-trap
| story.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02
| /ch...
| milesskorpen wrote:
| The parent comment I'm responding to explicitly makes
| this point: "The United States operates an imperial
| arrangement within its continental territory"
| pphysch wrote:
| Sinophobes spin every action of Beijing as
| "imperialistic" or "genocidal" or whatever the next
| buzzword is.
|
| That doesn't make it true, it just drains those words of
| useful meaning.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Genocide denial isn't a great look, chief.
|
| China is guilty of Uyghur genocide. They just depend on
| people engaging in wishful thinking or spaghetti logic to
| explain how reeducation camps and mass sterilization of a
| populace doesn't count.
| pphysch wrote:
| [flagged]
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Lowering birthrates
|
| This is a nice way of covering up enforced sterilization
| and contraception, which is absolutely genocide. Like,
| it's literally getting rid of a people, by making them
| physically incapable of reproducing:
| https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-
| news-we...
|
| > The state regularly subjects minority women to
| pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices,
| sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands,
| the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs
| and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising
| sharply in Xinjiang.
|
| If it was just a matter of making IUD's or other
| contraceptives available, obviously that would be fine.
| But what's happening is forcing them across the Uyghurs,
| and that's genocide.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Said by who? Americans, people under the american hegemony
| described in that comment?
|
| A large network isn't imperialism. China's international
| projects certainly have some empire-like qualities; they
| probably do have imperial aspirations not too different in
| scope from the US's.
|
| That may provide a framework to help you decide which empire
| you'd like to live under, if you get to influence the choice.
| But it's not particularly helpful in understanding the
| dynamic described in the quote imo, or a refutation of its
| premise that US-vs-china is not the most effective way to
| understand these systems.
|
| Anyway though while we're on the subject, it's worth noting
| that in africa particularly, states & institutions are often
| choosing entanglement with china _as an alternative to_
| engaging with the US in similar ways. Would certainly be
| worthwhile to get some african opinions on china and US vis-
| a-vis empire.
| hammock wrote:
| The Belt and Road Initiative is China exerting power over
| weaker nations in Asia, Africa, and Europe. China's
| strategic investments in infrastructure and resources in
| these regions have allowed it to gain much control over
| their economies and political systems.
|
| Additionally, China's military presence in the South China
| Sea and its territorial claims over disputed islands
| demonstrate imperialist aspirations
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| cool now do the US
| hydrok9 wrote:
| To prove that they are both empires?
| Herval_freire wrote:
| Yes. It's still the underdog though. But china is trying to
| build something to rival the US.
| causi wrote:
| [flagged]
| itsoktocry wrote:
| [flagged]
| causi wrote:
| My comments are typically pro-American when the topic is
| international relations and highly critical of the US
| government when the topic is domestic policy. That is not
| the only content of my entire comment history as is the
| case with the referred-to account. Glancing over my comment
| history, less than ten percent of them are even
| peripherally related to politics.
| 27fingies wrote:
| > One must also point out every single one of this account's
| comments is either Chinese or Russian apologism.
|
| Why must one do that? Is it wrong to question the typical
| narratives we get out of Western-aligned sources?
|
| > China is already busily building a quasi-empire by
| persuading poor nations to enter debt slavery over
| infrastructure projects.
|
| Citation needed. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/ar
| chive/2021/02/ch...
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Why must one do that?
|
| Because they're overwhelmingly less reliable.
|
| Just look at how often Russian sources brag about
| destroying Western equipment sent to Ukraine before it's
| even been sent yet. Or the dogged insistence that Russia
| has no intention invading Ukraine and this is all silly
| Western propaganda mere days or weeks before yeah, they
| invaded Ukraine and acted like all those previous
| proclamations never even happened.
| 27fingies wrote:
| Reporting on Ukraine is pure wartime propaganda. Western
| and Russian sources both do it. Look at how often Western
| sources cite the Ukrainian ministry of defense and no one
| else in their reporting. You see western sources claiming
| russia is losing or that there's a six figure death toll
| on the Russian side and then documents get leaked and
| whoopsie it's actualy less than 20,000. It's hard to
| blame anyone for not knowing what the hell is really
| going on because it's intentionally obfuscated from
| basically everyone except the militaries involved.
|
| However this type of thing happens at a larger scale than
| just the Ukraine war. I mean look at the "uigher files"
| that contain like actors from hong kong and shit lol. If
| you think just Russia and China exaggerate in their news
| you're not looking hard enough at our news.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Both sides do propaganda, it's just that Russia's is way
| more unbelievable, like how they've destroyed more than
| 100% of HIMARS sent so far, or how the Moskva died to an
| "accident" instead of a missile.
|
| There's a reason "whoops dropped a cigarette" has become
| a running joke any time there's an explosion deep within
| Russian lines.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Having a free and independent press is extremely
| important and if a country doesn't have that I'm
| automatically skeptical of their claims. China and Russia
| only have state-backed reporting.
| no_wizard wrote:
| This definitely doesn't address that the Chinese government is
| centrally only interested in furthering their own interests,
| often without care or regard to its expense, and nothing can
| hold them accountable.
|
| With the US and US hegemony, you _can_ actually hold someone
| accountable. Bad actors _can_ be protested, outed, and dealt
| with peacefully.
|
| What I am _not_ saying is the US acts with best interests of
| others in mind all the time - this isn 't true either, and I'm
| not taking an extreme here on this, US has plenty of issues on
| the world stage (and as an American, at home too) - but
| centrally, we can be held accountable (and often are, esp. if
| you can get the US public opinion on your side).
|
| You have zero recourse with China, if they decide to muscle
| into something, or support a horribly oppressive dictatorship
| to extract your national resources, there is zero - and I mean
| zero - way to appeal to any authority for intervention.
|
| Yes, I'm perfectly aware we propped up dictatorships and
| overthrew governments, but I'm also aware of the fact that
| there were _massive protests in the streets_ upon revelations
| of many doings that ultimately lead to them being undone or the
| US backing off, you _have_ something of recourse there, you
| _can_ deal with the US government in some discernible way you
| just _can 't_ with the CCP & Chinese government actors.
|
| This has to be accounted for in the conversation when talking
| about international relations, especially when talking about
| "new hegemony" as it were.
|
| I also question the assertion that the "world" has some massive
| distaste for the US. Unless world means China.
|
| When Europe needs military assistance, who shows up?
|
| When Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand need
| assistance, who's right there, hands open?
|
| Which nation has taken a very public and consistent stance
| against Russian military intervention in the Ukraine and
| committed billions of dollars in assistance without blinking?
|
| I'll give you a hint: its not China
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > US has plenty of issues on the world stage (and as an
| American, at home too) - but centrally, we can be held
| accountable (and often are, esp. if you can get the US public
| opinion on your side).
|
| Were George W. Bush and Tony Blair held accountable for lying
| about WMD and launching an illegal war of aggression against
| Iraq? Was anyone in the Bush administration held accountable
| for ordering torture of detainees, and was anyone at the CIA
| held responsible not only for engaging in torture, but then
| destroying evidence? There are more than just "issues" with
| the US on the world stage, and virtually no one is ever held
| accountable for them.
|
| > You have zero recourse with China ... there is zero - and I
| mean zero - way to appeal to any authority for intervention.
|
| This isn't true. Public pressure actually plays a large role
| in how the Chinese government acts. You do not have the same
| recourse to the legal system, but the government cannot
| simply ignore what people by and large think. It is
| incredibly sensitive about maintaining popular support.
| afterburner wrote:
| > Were George W. Bush and Tony Blair held accountable for
| lying about WMD and launching an illegal war of aggression
| against Iraq?
|
| Yes, they (and their political parties) lost power in
| elections a few years later. Try that in China.
| l3mure wrote:
| The notion that losing an election is "accountability"
| for mass murder and the deliberate demolition of an
| entire state is genuinely deranged. Accountability would
| be Bush, Cheney, Bremer, Tenet, et al getting the
| Mussolini treatment in the middle of Baghdad, anything
| less is a farce.
| Phlarp wrote:
| George Bush was reelected for a second term and didn't
| leave office until he was unable to run for it again.
|
| He was reelected because of his role in foreign
| interventions not in spite of them.
| afterburner wrote:
| The Republican party was run out of the Presidency,
| Senate, and House in 2008.
|
| Xi looks like he'll be dictator for life. And the people
| didn't elect him.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Yes, they were. Not immediately, but in many ways that may
| feel foreign to non US citizens, it happens at the polls,
| in the electorate, the way the government handles itself
| going forward, new policies and ideas etc.
|
| Obama was elected in no small part due to outsized
| opposition to policies of the previous administration.
|
| Practicing democracy isn't always fast nor is it perfect,
| but it _does_ work. The question of what to do once we
| realized we needed to reverse course is up for debate, but
| yes, things changed, people lost their positions, power,
| and there are reforms and accountability - the CIA is
| subject to more congressional oversight, for example. They
| 're banned from using blacksites and the CIA is no longer
| allowed to hold foreign nationals for extended periods
| without representation.
|
| There's this weird thing about how the US waged two wars
| too, in regards to the rules of engagement. There were 100%
| bad actors, and many (unfortunately not all) were held by
| military and civilian court for war crimes, re: blackwater
| contractors, the case of _Pvt 1st Class Andrew Holmes_ etc.
|
| The US military has official rules of engagement for
| treating people humanely - which are in fact expected to be
| followed - and people were held accountable for not doing
| so.
|
| Not perfect mind you - but yeah, there were huge changes as
| these revelations came to light.
|
| International relations can be bizarre, and again, I'm no
| apologist, we shouldn't have even invaded in the first
| place, but do you think the Russian soliders in the Ukraine
| will be held internally accountable for war crimes?
|
| Do you think the Chinese would?
|
| Do you think they are held accountable in _any_ way for
| other types of crimes, like foreign bribery, corruption,
| supporting human rights abuses?
|
| Can you even freely appeal to the Chinese population?
| [deleted]
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > Yes, they were.
|
| No one went to prison. Bush served out two terms (the
| first one unelected, but that's an entirely different
| question). The US occupied Iraq for 9 years. If this is
| the "accountability" you're touting, it's frankly
| pathetic.
|
| > Practicing democracy isn't always fast nor is it
| perfect, but it does work.
|
| That's a major understatement, in the case of the US. The
| US killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, in an
| illegal war of aggression, justified to the public on the
| basis of outright lies, with the complicity of much of
| the established media.
|
| > the CIA is subject to more congressional oversight, for
| example
|
| The CIA, on orders from the Bush administration, carried
| out a global torture program, in which it kidnapped
| people off the street, including in Europe, and smuggled
| them off to black sites for torture. The Obama
| administration decided not to prosecute anyone. In
| Obama's words, "We tortured some folks," but we have to
| leave the past behind us. When there was eventually a
| Senate investigation, the CIA spied on the Senators
| involved. When that came to light, the CIA apologized,
| but no one in a position of responsibility faced any
| serious consequences. The same goes for when the CIA
| destroyed evidence of torture - no consequences.
|
| > They're banned from using blacksites and the CIA is no
| longer allowed to hold foreign nationals for extended
| periods without representation
|
| That's very reassuring. I'm sure the CIA has mended its
| ways and is now staffed and led by boyscouts. They
| wouldn't do anything like, say, plan to assassinate or
| kidnap Julian Assange out of an embassy in London.
| Phlarp wrote:
| >That's very reassuring. I'm sure the CIA has mended its
| ways and is now staffed and led by boyscouts. They
| wouldn't do anything like, say, plan to assassinate or
| kidnap Julian Assange out of an embassy in London.
|
| The current CIA director got promoted BECAUSE of their
| role in the torture program, not in spite of it.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I'm not sure you're really presenting a good faith
| discussion of issues and the complex nuances that
| underpin them.
|
| What, exactly, makes China a better partner than the US
| then? What makes them a global thought leader in any
| respect? Is it stealing technological secrets from
| supposed allies? The fact you can't hold the Chinese
| government accountable in any way what so ever (please
| demonstrate a single instance where a foreign entity
| could do so)
|
| And this just by passes the lack of understanding you may
| have for our democratic process and reforms in practice,
| judging from how you may think noone was held accountable
| for what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan (this just
| isn't true, heads _rolled_. No, not everyone served a
| tribunal or trial, but that isn 't the only form of
| justice, and yes, people _did_ go to prison)
|
| I'll also throw you this: I'd love to see Bush serve jail
| time for those two wars. I'd also love to se Jinping
| serves time for the genocide of the Uyghurs.
|
| I'd also love to know if you can go to the middle of
| Beijing and shout from the rooftops that he should be
| tried for the genocide of the Uyghurs and see how it goes
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > you may think noone was held accountable for what
| happened in Iraq and Afghanistan (this just isn't true,
| heads rolled.
|
| I'm sorry, but I prefer to discuss reality. Maybe heads
| rolled in an alternate universe, but not in the one I
| live in.
|
| > the genocide of the Uyghurs.
|
| There is no "genocide of the Uyghurs." This would be the
| first "genocide" in history in which nobody died. Using
| that word in this case is offensive. Genocide is an
| important word, and shouldn't be thrown around for cheap
| rhetorical points.
|
| I don't have a rosy view of the Chinese government
| either, but I object to this whitewashing of the US
| government, which has behaved especially egregiously on
| the world stage over the last 20+ years.
| no_wizard wrote:
| You intentionally misrepresented my quote by leaving the
| latter part out, w/r/t it may look different to people
| not used to our democratic process and how our government
| works, which already makes me think you aren't engaging
| me in good faith here.
|
| As per genocide, well, multiple countries call it
| genocide, including France[0], Belgium[1], the UK[2],
| Canada[3] and many others.
|
| [0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-
| parliament-passe...
|
| [1]: https://www.aninews.in/news/world/europe/belgian-
| parliament-...
|
| [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037
|
| [3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56163220
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > You intentionally misrepresented my quote by leaving
| the latter part out
|
| The rest of your quote doesn't substantially change the
| meaning. This is what I left out: "No, not everyone
| served a tribunal or trial, but that isn't the only form
| of justice, and yes, people did go to prison." Nobody of
| any importance went to prison. The highest levels of the
| Bush administration ordered torture, and publicly
| justified it. None of them went to prison. The CIA
| officers who tortured people? No prosecutions. The only
| people I'm aware of who went to prison were a few
| sadistic privates in the Abu Ghraib prison who took
| pictures that got leaked.
|
| > it may look different to people not used to our
| democratic process and how our government works
|
| People who don't think Bush _et al._ were held
| accountable for the Iraq War and for ordering a global
| kidnapping /torture program just don't understand the
| democratic process? Intriguing.
|
| > As per genocide, well, multiple countries call it
| genocide, including France[0], Belgium[1], the UK[2],
| Canada[3] and many others.
|
| Again, this is a "genocide" with a death toll of zero,
| even according to the people who are calling it a
| "genocide." This must be the first genocide in history in
| which no one died. I've rarely seen a propaganda campaign
| as transparent as this - even the disinformation campaign
| about Iraqi WMD had more plausibility.
| hangonhn wrote:
| > What, exactly, makes China a better partner than the US
| then? What makes them a global thought leader in any
| respect?
|
| How about thinking of the global south, especially
| Africa, as something more than a basket case and a
| billion mouths to feed and actually investing in them.
|
| > Is it stealing technological secrets from supposed
| allies?
|
| Yeah that's pretty crappy but so is spying on our
| supposed allies and pretty much the rest of the world,
| even our own companies. In fact, it is built into our
| laws -- FISA Section 702 can compel US companies to help
| us do that and I believe this doesn't even require a
| warrant.
|
| > The fact you can't hold the Chinese government
| accountable in any way what so ever (please demonstrate a
| single instance where a foreign entity could do so)
|
| In what way has that happen to the US?
|
| > I'll also throw you this: I'd love to see Bush serve
| jail time for those two wars. I'd also love to se Jinping
| serves time for the genocide of the Uyghurs.
|
| Neither of those things have happened yet you seem to
| hold the US as being a better global partner. Rather than
| engage in this debate over who's the better leader for
| the world, let me present a model that avoids that: a
| multi-polar world where there is no one dominant power.
| Since neither China nor the US seems to be someone the
| world can fully trust, why not have a multi-polar world?
| With EU, US, China, India, African Union, etc. as centers
| of great power. Why should the world be dominated by one
| power? A multi-polar world is one that's much more likely
| to hold people or even countries accountable. A world
| dominated by one power means that one power will have to
| answer to no one but itself.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I'd argue we shouldn't have polars at all. FWIW, that
| wasn't the "ask" of this conversation either.
|
| If we are shifting gears - I'd like no polars, rather a
| more neutral, flat world, with open ideas and borders,
| where human rights are respected and laws are fair and
| courts provide actual redress to citizens and non
| citizens alike.
|
| I also realize this is...fantasy, but thats my preferred
| world, if thats the question.
|
| Now I'd like to see a more good faith attempt at the
| conversation at hand. US has many critical flaws, and I
| readily acknowledge them, I also point out why the US
| political structure still makes it realistically
| amendable to being a net good force in the world (and I
| don't - at all - suggest it should be the only one).
|
| Where is the equal and equivalent conversation coming
| from on the other side here? I'm not seeing it.
|
| Lets try to have a good faith discussion about this, and
| one that doesn't _just_ focus on the US issues (which I
| 've been open and forcoming with). China has them too,
| yet we're suppose to ignore that?
| hangonhn wrote:
| > Where is the equal and equivalent conversation coming
| from on the other side here? I'm not seeing it.
|
| Since 2014, China has implemented a more independent
| judiciary at the local level. Zhang Taisu at Yale Law
| School recently wrote a paper on this:
| https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xis-law-and-order-
| strat...
|
| Is it the same as the rule of law as we know it? No. But
| that sort of conversation is happening.
|
| You and I may be simply talking past each other despite
| largely having the same goals/vision for this world. My
| point is the debate over if the US or China is better
| becomes irrelevant if the world isn't dominated by one or
| two countries. In a world that's closer to your
| "fantasy", we don't need to hope for countries to be
| better actor because the other countries are collectively
| strong enough to compel better behavior. In a world like
| that, a system based on rules can truly emerge instead of
| the de facto might makes right.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| There was and continues to be no justice for the 500k+
| Iraqis killed.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > Yes, I'm perfectly aware we propped up dictatorships and
| overthrew governments, but I'm also aware of the fact that
| there were massive protests in the streets.
|
| While I generally agree with you, but there's a false choice
| presented here. I don't think the massive protests did
| anything in regards to foreign policy. And for most Latin
| American countries that the US has traditionally been doing
| whatever it wants to - there's not even an avenue for them to
| recourse. "and often are, esp. if you can get the US public
| opinion on your side" is an impossible ask that basically
| equates to no recourse in most situations.
|
| So for those countries that do not fall inside the protection
| and alliance of the United States, China presents a true
| recourse, it's also true for the reverse.
| no_wizard wrote:
| There's been alot of changes to US foreign policy because
| of public pressure. I think the Cuba embargo being softened
| under President Obama (as well as his official state visit)
| was a huge step in the right direction and can be traced to
| public pressure on normalizing relations with Cuba.
|
| The trade agreements across Latin America lifted millions
| out of poverty (though results have been lopsided at home)
|
| Billions in foreign aid[0][1] to Latin America since the
| 90s
|
| Billions in Foreign Aid to Africa since the 90s
|
| Numerous laws passed that criminalize foreign corruption
| practices (you can indeed hold corporations responsible for
| corruption, though not a perfect process)
|
| Trade Treaties (which we have a history of honoring)
|
| [0]: I am speaking of non military aid specifically, I'm
| excluding military aid in these numbers
|
| [1]: Crucially, in most instances, this aid isn't given to
| governments directly that have proven human rights abuses,
| but instead directed to NGOs and non profits (see
| https://harvardpolitics.com/debunking-myths-foreign-aid/)
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > There's been alot of changes to US foreign policy
| because of public pressure. I think the Cuba embargo
| being softened under President Obama (as well as his
| official state visit) was a huge step in the right
| direction and can be traced to public pressure on
| normalizing relations with Cuba.
|
| How'd that work out since he left office?
| no_wizard wrote:
| Expansion: https://www.state.gov/biden-administration-
| expands-support-t...
|
| More normalized relations, even under Trump
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Seems remarkably fragile:
| https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-cuba-
| relations#chapter-t...
| reducesuffering wrote:
| US Cuba relations simply comes down to a small segment of
| US society called Cuban-Americans in Florida. Florida is
| a massive swing state providing a huge amount of
| electoral votes. As it currently stands, Republicans
| _need_ a majority in Florida to have a chance at winning
| the Presidency. Cuban-Americans are the most opposed to
| normalizing relations. This is why Trump and Republicans
| push against normalizing relations, so they can get the
| Cuban-American block and win Florida. Democrats have to
| walk a fine line. Even when normalizing relations is the
| right thing, doing the opposite is what wins you the US
| presidential election.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >When Europe needs military assistance, who shows up?
|
| The last time Europe actually needed military assistance was
| WWII, and China arguably played a larger role in that than
| the USA.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Really? How many bullets did China produce for the European
| theater? Artillery shells? Warships and planes? How much
| food and oil did they ship?
|
| More Chinese people died. By any other measure the United
| States won the war via the Lend/Lease program.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| How about this for a counterfactual: if not for China,
| the Japanese would have seized India, and from there
| raise hell in Iran (oil supplies!) and put serious
| pressure on the Suez Canal.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Mao's entire army was outfitted with American weapons &
| vehicles in WWII which they then used to run Chiang Kai-
| shek out of the country to what is now Taiwan. We were
| initially going to arm Chiang Kai-shek but he was
| refusing to use the arms against the Japanese, believing
| he would need them for the civil war that would follow.
|
| Interesting snippet of history.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| America then sent us the bill, the UK didn't finish
| paying it until this century.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| and ?
| esafak wrote:
| China was involved in the Pacific theater, not Europe. What
| are you referring to?
| afterburner wrote:
| China had nothing to do with the European theatre. US
| military and economic assistance was critical to pushing
| back Nazi Germany forces into unconditional surrender.
| Meanwhile China had no part in it whatsoever. Critical
| versus zero, seems pretty clear, how did you make this
| massive mistake?
|
| Even in the Pacific theatre, the US Navy was absolutely
| critical to collapsing Japan's empire.
| [deleted]
| wangii wrote:
| how did the world hold US accountable in the last 40 years,
| indulge me, please?
| 27fingies wrote:
| [flagged]
| no_wizard wrote:
| > Europe is a vassal. If the US didn't show up that would
| be a problem for the US.
|
| The definition of a vassal and how European countries act
| and engage do not match. This is both factually false and
| even subjectively false. European countries are not vassal
| states of the US. No country is, in fact.
|
| >It's a good thing we held one random trader from Credit
| Suisse accountable for 2008.
|
| This makes no sense. The US is not singularly responsible
| for the mortgage crisis that swept the world. No one
| country is.
|
| Not even sure how to address the rest, since there is no
| real attempt to engage the issues at hand, nor provide
| counter points to how it would be _better_ with China
| helming global issues
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Which nation has taken a very public and consistent stance
| against Russian military intervention in the Ukraine and
| committed billions of dollars in assistance without blinking?
| I 'll give you a hint: its not China_
|
| You say this as if the Ukraine invasion is the ethical bar,
| meanwhile the US has been invading countries for 50 years.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Russia and China too, in fact.
|
| And Ukraine is still an ethical bar, a big one, as to when
| push comes to shove, China isn't a great partner. I don't
| think the Ukrainians are going to look fondly on how China
| has acted here. Remind me again why China _supports_
| Russian aggression in the Ukraine?
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Remind me again why China supports Russian aggression
| in the Ukraine?
|
| China is bordering Russia. If you think that somehow
| doesn't change the type of relationship both parties are
| forced to have you don't understand geopolitics.
|
| The United States has extremely weak neighbors and huge
| oceans separating us from threats. Obviously our
| situation is very different.
| augment001 wrote:
| > China is bordering Russia. If you think that somehow
| doesn't change the type of relationship both parties are
| forced to have you don't understand geopolitics.
|
| Can you explain what you are thinking? One implication is
| that China is supporting Russia because they are afraid
| of a Russian military actin, but is that what you mean?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Basically it means you should be friendly to your
| neighbors.
|
| To use a crude analogy - if you're in a apartment complex
| you would probably be nicer to your neighbor than if they
| lived in another building, and not literally next to you,
| right?
|
| Russia, China and India are the three neighbors living in
| a triplex. Meanwhile the United States is in a mansion
| surrounded by a moat a mile away.
| augment001 wrote:
| Honestly, that's not an explanation.
|
| If one of your neighbors was beating up and stealing from
| another of your neighbors, are your really saying you'd
| cosy up to them? By this logic you'd expect Finland to be
| Russia's best friend.
|
| I am critical of the Chinese system of government, but
| I'd never think of them as cowards.
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| Is China cozying up to Russia? By what metric, and for
| reference, using the same metric, how much is the United
| States, and other countries "cozying" up?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Xi expressed China's unconditional support for Russia,
| and then Xi's foreign minister later came back and said
| that the unconditional support was actually conditional.
| So they are actually playing the whole conflict from both
| sides, which is much more of a traditional Chinese
| position.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Kind of like how (some) Republicans support Russia
| indirectly by criticizing the Ukraine war expenses from
| the USA's behalf, yet continuing to vote for the arms
| deals.
| augment001 wrote:
| Not really, unless you think the foreign minister is the
| one in power.
| augment001 wrote:
| I guess you haven't been watching the news.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Please inform me, then. By what metrics is China cozying
| up with Russia, and what are the same numbers for USA and
| co?
| augment001 wrote:
| It's not my job to inform you. If you don't think China
| is supporting Russia's position then you need to do some
| reading.
|
| Also, I guess you can't explain why Finland isn't
| Russia's best friend despite bordering Russia.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Don't make claims you can't back up, lol.
| augment001 wrote:
| You first. This whole 'metrics' question is a
| distraction.
|
| If you can explain why your argument doesn't apply to
| Finland, I'll point you to a news report showing China's
| support for Russia.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Yet those "weak" neighbors feel just fine criticizing the
| US and entering disputes[0][1], to which we don't respond
| by just invading them, clearly.
|
| China can defend itself just fine, is the general
| assertion they make, so what are they worried about
| exactly? If Finland can speak out against Russia, why
| can't China?
|
| [0]: https://apnews.com/article/science-technology-
| business-mexic...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_
| States_s...
| endisneigh wrote:
| https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t2023
| 022...
| no_wizard wrote:
| This bypasses my central point, which is they're clearly
| continuing to support Russia and not act in any way to
| diminish their ability to stop being an aggressor,
| despite this press release, the reality is clear: they
| don't care about the Ukraine or applying pressure to
| Russia to resolve this
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Remind me again why China supports Russian aggression
| in the Ukraine?
|
| Prolonging the war harms Russia (so long as Russia
| doesn't win). It increases tensions between NATO and
| OPEC. It's a drag on economic productivity for most of
| the countries engaging. If resulting shortages hurt the
| developing world, that's another anti-NATO talking point
| for China in its relations with those states, and
| weakened economies or state-stability might open up new
| opportunities for China. Meanwhile, China gets cheap fuel
| and can generally do as they like with Russian relations,
| since, what're the Russians gonna do, push them away?
|
| Meanwhile, what would they gain from flipping hard
| against Russia?
|
| China's whole deal, to paint with a broad brush, is
| avoiding entanglements and prodding things the way that
| suits them... from the sidelines. Their foreign policy
| doesn't really follow some kind of moral narrative like
| we like to (try to) apply to ours in the West, to the
| point that the narrative they _do_ have is about how they
| _won 't_ screw with foreign countries for reasons of
| morals or ideology--though neither their narrative nor
| ours fully fits the facts of their or our behavior. We
| play our cards, they play theirs. Our favored move right
| now is to help Russia wreck its military and economy
| while embarrassing itself. China's favored move is
| swooping into the resulting trade vacuum to their own
| benefit, and keeping this mess going as long as possible,
| because it's hurting everyone involved while helping them
| and improving their overall diplomatic/strategic
| position.
| jpgvm wrote:
| China doesn't support aggression in Ukraine and have made
| that much clear.
|
| They also don't support poking a fucking insane leader of
| a nation with nukes that shares a massive land border
| with them and which they are heavily reliant on for
| natural resources.
|
| Those positions aren't at odds with each other. Wanting
| peace but also not wanting to sour relationship with
| perhaps your most important neighbour aren't unreasonable
| things to want at the same time.
|
| China was a great partner to Ukraine and invested a shit
| ton of money there, they are probably very upset that
| Russia has decided to go in there and fuck up the
| infrastructure they built.
|
| I just don't understand what people expect from China
| here?
|
| Turn around and say, "Hey Russia, I know you provide like
| 1/3rd of our energy and commodities imports but I would
| like you to go fuck yourself until you abandon your
| invasion of a small country that we like but isn't
| critical to our economy. kthxbye".
|
| Yeah. That is entirely unrealistic and everyone should
| know that.
|
| The US provides weapons to Ukraine because it's
| convenient. They send them surplus old crap and it hurts
| the Russians. Good for Ukraine, good for the US and costs
| them essentially nothing in the grand scheme of things,
| in fact it's probably the cheapest $/russian_damage they
| can currently purchase. They get to fight a war (their
| favourite pasttime) with none of the negative domestic
| consequences. Win win!
|
| On the other hand there is nothing China can do here on
| either side that isn't negative expected value for them.
|
| Them backing Russia would fuck them over with Europe
| which is actually a really good trading partner. Most
| people agree it's all negatives here so I don't think I
| need to elaborate.
|
| Them going against Russia would just obliterate the
| relationship they have spent decades fixing and probably
| buy them absolutely nothing with anyone else.
|
| The US isn't going to turn around and be like "Hey! China
| doesn't like Russia anymore, now they are our best
| friend!". That shit ain't happening. The US will continue
| to contain and suppress China because that is their
| prerogative and has nothing to do with their alliance
| with Russia. US can't allow a world were there is a power
| that rivals theirs, it violates every current US doctrine
| of "world order".
|
| TLDR: China doesn't have anything to gain by directly
| rebuffing Russia and plenty to gain by staying relatively
| neutral in the matter.
| augment001 wrote:
| > China doesn't support aggression in Ukraine and have
| made that much clear.
|
| Would you mind explaining where they have made it clear?
|
| All I've seen are statements blaming it on the US for
| being open to new NATO members.
| no_wizard wrote:
| So, in essence, as I correctly asserted, China is just
| looking out for itself, and isn't the ally you want when
| the heat gets turned up and you need economic and/or
| military support, at a _minimum_.
|
| Why is this better?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Somewhat agree, but I would argue that this is a one sided
| counter-narrative, in reaction to another one-sided narrative.
| Most of the complexity is figuring out which parts of each are
| true, and what happens when you add them together. To pick a
| specific example:
|
| >The "U.S.-China decoupling" that has been the focus of public
| discussion in recent years would be better understood as an
| effort on the part of the U.S. to expel China from the "world
| imperial system."
|
| The US would love nothing more than to have China as part of
| the "world imperial system". China and the US simply can not
| come to agreeable terms on the relative power balance.
| Conversely, China would love nothing more than to lead the
| globally dominant imperial system, but at least for now, this
| is not a realistic possibility. Both nations behave rationally
| and predictably within the a real politick framework, as most
| counties do. They try to exert as much power as they possibly
| can for their own benefit, and their sucess or failure is
| largely determined by a combination of real world conditions,
| their capability to execute, and chance.
| [deleted]
| roenxi wrote:
| As a counterpoint; the reason we have a US-dominated world
| empire is _every single competitor_ went mad and destroyed
| themselves. The Europeans reduced their empires to rubble, the
| Russians starved millions of their own people then imploded.
| The Chinese killed their own economy. India had a handicap from
| the British colonisation, but then decided that wasn't enough
| and also tried socialism. The Africans can't organise their way
| out of a paper bag.
|
| By process of elimination, the world order was dominated by the
| US.
|
| The US does have a world empire, but its core feature is they
| consistently haven't exhausted themselves on silly wars or
| socialist internal policies. If any other power tried policies
| that promoted their own prosperity they'd have an easy time of
| it. China dipped their toe into saving and accumulating wealth
| and look how they've gone. If they could just stick to sane
| policies for 50 years in a row we'd probably have room for a
| few great powers in the world.
| RedCondor wrote:
| I don't think this is correct at all.
|
| You throw in unsourced atrocity propaganda ("starved millions
| of their own people then imploded") which is like the U.S.
| abusing someone then asking them "why they keep punching
| themselves."
|
| It's worth reading American imperial architects like
| Washington's "Wise Man" George Kennan in 1948:
|
| >We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its
| population. This disparity is particularly great as between
| ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we
| cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real
| task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of
| relationships which will permit us to maintain this position
| of disparity without positive detriment to our national
| security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all
| sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have
| to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national
| objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford
| today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
|
| https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v01p2/.
| ..
|
| Or the "Mallory Memo":
|
| >499. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
| for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant
| Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom)
| [Washington, April 6, 1960]
|
| SUBJECT: The Decline and Fall of Castro
|
| Salient considerations respecting the life of the present
| Government of Cuba are:
|
| The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I
| have seen is 50 percent). There is no effective political
| opposition. Fidel Castro and other members of the Cuban
| Government espouse or condone communist influence. Communist
| influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at
| an amazingly fast rate. Militant opposition to Castro from
| without Cuba would only serve his and the communist cause.
| The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is
| through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic
| dissatisfaction and hardship. If the above are accepted or
| cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every
| possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the
| economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should
| be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a
| line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as
| possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and
| supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to
| bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.
|
| https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06.
| ..
|
| It's not correct to pretend others just made errors or "had
| wrong systems" rather than that the U.S. sabotaged any rivals
| with infinite violence.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Nation-states have an anarchistic relationship with one
| another. For any system to be successful it has to
| recognize there are other nation-states with competing
| interests. So I find this argument unconvincing. If it
| wasn't the US, it would be someone else.
| greedo wrote:
| Kennan's comment is strongly linked to the outcome of WW2.
| The US was the beneficiary of the war in sheer economic
| terms. Europe was either destroyed or bankrupt. China was
| devastated by it's war that predated WW2 with Japan, and
| then faced a civil war. The USSR was devastated as well,
| and had put almost all its resources into its military.
|
| It's important to recognize the roots of the US's dominance
| post war.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > You throw in unsourced atrocity propaganda ("starved
| millions of their own people then imploded")
|
| Here's a source: https://holodomor.ca/resource/holodomor-
| basic-facts/
|
| > The term Holodomor (death by hunger, in Ukrainian) refers
| to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33 as a
| result of Soviet policies. The Holodomor can be seen as the
| culmination of an assault by the Communist Party and Soviet
| state on the Ukrainian peasantry, who resisted Soviet
| policies. This assault occurred in the context of a
| campaign of intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian
| intellectuals, writers, artists, religious leaders, and
| political cadres, who were seen as a threat to Soviet
| ideological and state-building aspirations.
|
| Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
|
| > The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Golodomor, romanized:
| Holodomor, IPA: [holodo'mor];[7] derived from moriti
| golodom, moryty holodom, 'to kill by
| starvation'),[a][8][9][10] also known as the Terror-
| Famine[11][12][13] or the Great Famine,[14] was a human-
| made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed
| millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider
| Soviet famine of 1932-1933 which affected the major grain-
| producing areas of the Soviet Union.[15]
|
| > While scholars universally agree that the cause of the
| famine was human-made, whether the Holodomor constitutes a
| genocide remains in dispute.[16] Some historians conclude
| that the famine was planned and exacerbated by Joseph
| Stalin in order to eliminate a Ukrainian independence
| movement.[b][17] Others suggest that the famine arose
| because of rapid Soviet industrialisation and
| collectivization of agriculture.[18][19][20]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _You throw in unsourced atrocity propaganda ( "starved
| millions of their own people then imploded") which is like
| the U.S. abusing someone then asking them "why they keep
| punching themselves."_
|
| Told myself I wouldn't get baited by this thread but I
| guess Holodomor denial is my weak spot. The Holodomor isn't
| "atrocity propaganda". It was a factual event in history
| perpetrated purposefully by malicious actors.
| Animatronio wrote:
| I think you'll like this wiki entry: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/International_Commission_of_In...
| greedo wrote:
| Both the USSR and China did a wonderful job with killing
| their own citizens during WW2 and afterwards. Holodomor,
| The Great Leap Forward, and even worse the Four Pests
| campaign (I'm a bird lover).
|
| The idea that the PRC is some benevolent country striving
| to break free of the Evil Capitalist Dogs is out of
| bounds with facts.
| jl6 wrote:
| > is _every single competitor_ went mad and destroyed
| themselves
|
| Alternatively, every single competitor matured and dismantled
| themselves.
|
| (In pursuit of smaller but more sustainable societies).
| dralley wrote:
| Europeans didn't give up their empires because they
| matured, they gave them up because they lost the capacity
| to hold them themselves and the US was not keen to help
| them do so.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| > The Africans can't organise their way out of a paper bag
|
| Ah yes, because Africa was not deliberately destabilized
| since basically forever and still is
| roenxi wrote:
| If China was still using Maoist policies we'd be talking
| about how they were put in an impossible position by
| Japanese, Russian, Indian, US and British aggression.
| Instead, they have allowed businessmen to flourish and
| everyone is grudgingly accepting that they are a new great
| power. Surrounded by wealthy neighbours who came out of
| WWII in terrible shape and just kept working hard, saving
| and accumulating capital.
|
| Compare and contrast to Zimbabwe. Inflation at ~80%! Still
| printing money and refusing to let the economy stabilise.
| It'd be funny except the policy decisions have consequences
| for real people. They have had some handicaps. But their
| biggest problem is a refusal to abandon failed local
| policies.
|
| I'm sure there are some success stories in Africa that will
| eventually show them all the way. But the success and
| failure have been primarily a result of their own choices
| for a while now. Just because foreigners are trying to
| destabilise a country doesn't mean they can't adopt growth-
| based policies. If Asia can do it, Africa can.
|
| And even with that the Chinese are quite authoritarian. If
| they would liberalise a bit more they'd probably speed past
| the US too. There are a lot of low policy bars to clear
| before blaming problems on foreigners.
| [deleted]
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > When the U.S. and Soviet superpowers were trying to build two
| different types of world empires, the Non-Aligned Movement
| (NAM) that emerged in countries like India and China intended
| to create a more fair and rational international order. Today's
| U.S.-China rivalry represents a struggle over these two world
| visions and the shared destiny of humanity.
|
| Nitpick, but China's Maoist Communism was more like the fourth
| of four major axes of that arrangement, than it was part of the
| non-aligned/3rd-world movement. At times pals with the Soviets,
| at times not, but practically never pals with the US--like, at
| times they fought alongside the Soviets against US forces,
| hardly non-aligned, but also definitely not part of the Soviet
| bloc. They had their own alignment, rather, separate from
| worlds one through three.
| RedCondor wrote:
| Hmmm, I think it's an arguable point perhaps, but the history
| of the NAM is not ambiguous:
|
| >But it soon after became the name to refer to the
| participants of the Conference of Heads of State or
| Government of Non-Aligned Countries first held in 1961. The
| term "non-alignment" was established in 1953 at the United
| Nations. Nehru used the phrase in a 1954 speech in Colombo,
| Sri Lanka. In this speech, Zhou Enlai and Nehru described the
| Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to be used as a guide
| for Sino-Indian relations called Panchsheel (five
| restraints); these principles would later serve as the basis
| of the Non-Aligned Movement.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement
| yamtaddle wrote:
| China was involved in meetings _before_ the movement was
| formally declared, both because they were seen as important
| to others organizing the beginnings of the movement (they
| were seen as a kind of pivot-state by _everyone_ --their
| strategic and negotiating strength was tied up with a kind
| of potential energy, should they throw their weight behind
| any other player) and (probably) because China was angling
| to steer the movement as their own bloc, but they weren't
| part of the actual founding conference in the quoted
| paragraph, and only obtained observer status in the group
| in '92.
| RedCondor wrote:
| If I'm honest, this comes off like an attempt to write
| off their inarguable and central role in the creation of
| the NAM in order to push a theory that they're some scary
| fourth thing.
|
| I don't agree with it but I also don't think I have more
| to say about it.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > some scary fourth thing
|
| Scary? Yeah, I think we've stepped into territory where
| we're not even talking about the same thing.
| pphysch wrote:
| What a strangely inaccurate nitpick. China and the USSR were
| _mortal enemies_ in the 70s, and the threat of Soviet
| invasion drove China and USA closer together and led to Nixon
| 's visit. Your comment implies that China was closer to the
| USSR than USA, which is flagrantly false for a significant
| part of the century.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Last I checked, "China was its own thing" is pretty bog-
| standard for cold war analysis.
| misterprime wrote:
| I love this sort of reporting. It's enlightening to learn about
| the infrastructure that makes our way of life possible. I love
| learning how these projects are funded and who's funding them,
| who is implementing the projects, how they are implemented, what
| some of the concerns are, and the related political drama
| surrounding these projects.
|
| I feel similarly about oil, energy, and food production and
| delivery.
|
| So much goes on without most people even giving it a second
| thought.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You may enjoy: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
| eternalban wrote:
| That one article justifies the entire exitence of Wired for
| me, personally. I still remember reading it with pleasure in
| '96.
| axus wrote:
| I bought "Some Remarks" by Neal Stephenson just to give this
| story to someone.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Next time you eat a fast food item, think about how many people
| were involved or one step away from making that burger or sub.
|
| Meat, bun, spices, ketchup, mustard, pickles, lettuce, cheese,
| bacon...
|
| Every one of those has hundreds ro thousands of people
| involved. Researched, seeds, planted, grown, harvested,
| collected, processed, quality controlled, containerized,
| packaged, distributed, opened, preparedz put on your bun,
| served.
|
| All those steps have at least one person involved, plus
| management, plus sales, plus quality, plus food scientist
| research, plus people's tastes research. Plus the manufacturing
| of the tractors, packaging systems, quality control equipment,
| processing equipment... hundreds more people.
|
| We eat like kings of old with hundreds of people working to
| feed us one meal, and we don't think anything of it.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| This is a book excerpt that I originally found from an HN
| post ages ago. It's a fun read
|
| https://www.howtoflyahorse.com/what-coke-contains/
|
| Basically covers (not too deeply) how a 12-pack of Coke cans
| in your local grocer involved work on every continent except
| Antarctica. The book itself was pretty good too, but this was
| probably the best chapter.
| 6502nerdface wrote:
| Your comment reminds me of Leonard Read's classic essay, "I,
| pencil" [1] about the many thousands of hands that make a
| simple pencil, all guided by local decisions and price
| signals, without a single mastermind.
|
| [1] https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Thanks for linking this! I read the introduction and
| skimmed the text. The details of manufacturing such a
| simple object are fascinating, of course. I certainly agree
| that they demonstrate one of the reasons why centralized
| planning doesn't work.
|
| Going from "central planning doesn't work" to "therefore we
| have proven that unregulated capitalism leads to utopia"
| is...odd.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| That's exactly what I was thinking, except I thought Milton
| Friedman was the source. Did not realize it pre-existed
| him.
| prox wrote:
| Me too. I would love to see a Google earth map where we see all
| data on this.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| Me too! To add to that, whenever I see good visuals of global
| energy markets, and traders in a room full of screens, I get
| excited in a way I use to get excited seeing a terminal being
| used before I knew anything about coding.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I still randomly will encounter people who asked what I do
| and then happened to see terminal on the screen and are like
| oh wow you're a really technical person. One time it was a
| stewardess and a court reporter who saw me tailing logs on an
| application I was debugging. And they're like how can you
| even tell what's going on when all I was doing was looking
| for the obvious patterns of java stack traces.
|
| Another was a guy sitting at a bar next to me who turned out
| to be a NFL sports reporter. And same deal I opened up the
| terminal and he's like oh shit your real smart. As I'm
| literally just listing a directory and then doing a git
| status.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There is a scene in Orwells Homage to Catalonia that
| reminds me about this:
|
| A young italian peasant militia man, stands with open
| mouth, astonished off his genious officers, who were
| reading a simple map. So, this is an old trope.
|
| Education is important it seems and while I don't think
| that everyone needs to get along with a terminal, everyone
| should at least understand what it is. For most people
| computers are essentially dark magic. And I think this us
| not doing good to society that has become so dependant on
| Computers.
| biohax2015 wrote:
| Nah, let them keep thinking typing 'ls' is black magic.
| Keeps our salaries high :P
| nebula8804 wrote:
| jokes on you, a new generation of people are coming up
| having known nothing but smartphones. I work with one as
| a developer. She only uses her macbook because she has
| to. Very little insight of how the underlying OS and
| fundamental computing stacks works and yet she writes
| good fast code.
|
| The companies are all colluding to lock down computing
| more and more and who do you think will push back against
| this? Not them thats for sure. If you never let the
| greater population understand the freedom they have now,
| they wont fight back when it comes time to try and take
| it away. Its probably too late anyway.
|
| Pretty soon you'll be writing code in a locked down
| appliance with no freedom (or AI takes your job).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| For me, it was sitting in the back of a lecture hall, with
| a law prof, showing how AOL instant messenger danced across
| on the school's wifi unencrypted. I miss those days of easy
| ethereal magic.
| bombcar wrote:
| What's even more fun is when you have actual _experts_
| doing things with the very computer you 're fixing; using
| tools and datasets way beyond my comprehension, get amazed
| by opening a terminal or CMD and fixing something.
| grogenaut wrote:
| One of my proudest moments in masters was they had the
| masters students demo each week to the undergrads. So I'm
| in a big auditorium on a pc with a projector behind me.
| This was in 2000, computer still had a floppy drive. They
| wiped the computer every week, Windows NT.
|
| I popped in the floppy did D: and typed `ls`... and
| error, and the whole class laughed at me. Having been
| switching a lot lately I typed, I believe, `echo dir >
| C:\Windows\ls.bat` and (or whatever the right pipe
| command is, it's been a while), and typed `ls` again.
| Then double birded the whole class. And started launching
| the demo.
|
| There were audible gasps esp from the professor who was
| like, hold up, what did you just do. So I spent 3 minutes
| explaining it to the class, then we did our demo.
|
| I was at the time quite proud of them all being
| flabberghasted while I also flipped off over 75 students,
| actually still am.
| tornadron wrote:
| Some of this was covered in the book Connectography by Parag
| Khanna https://www.paragkhanna.com/book/connectography-mapping-
| the-...
|
| I found the book maybe a bit overly optimistic/idealistic about
| how he thought infrastructure dependencies would impact the
| world, but a lot of the information was fascinating
| nonetheless.
|
| Nice Maps of different layers of infrastructure on the globe:
| https://atlas.developmentseed.org
| drchickensalad wrote:
| You might enjoy the 99% invisible podcast
| ck2 wrote:
| Imagine an alternate universe where the US built up Mexico and
| 99% of everything was made there instead of China
|
| The only thing holding back China from more aggressive takeovers
| like Russia is doing the the US is such a massive consumer.
|
| But China also could destroy the US without launching a single
| missile, all they have to do is turn off exports for a month and
| we'd be killing each other over the last item in stock anywhere
| that is now 100 times the price because of no availability.
|
| Just imagine everything out of stock or 100 times the price, we
| only have a glimmer of that these days.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The flip side is a China with millions out of work and their
| own prosperity dashed.
|
| The hope was that nations would be very reluctant to sacrifice
| that prosperity for war. Russia invading Ukraine has
| demonstrated that to be wrong.
| max51 wrote:
| The US is less than 7% of the world's population, they can
| manage to survive without us. It's wouldn't be easy for them,
| but it won't cause the same level of disaster in China as
| what you would see in the US.
|
| A big irony in this situation is that scaling manufacturing
| in the US super fast to fight that ban would require
| importing a lot of tools/materials/machines/etc that either
| come directly from china or have parts made in china.
| splitstud wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| nigerian1981 wrote:
| As the largest holder of US foreign debt China could call in
| that debt.
| zrail wrote:
| I'm sure it's been explored before, but that's not how it
| works. If China started dumping their Treasuries lead to
| significant domestic inflation, which they definitely don't
| want.
|
| Also, minor point, Japan holds more Treasuries than China.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/040115/reaso.
| ..
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _China could call in that debt_
|
| And we could sanction the PBoC and freeze the accounts into
| which we repay the debt they hold. The China-owns-our-debt
| line ignores the realities of sovereign debt.
| balls187 wrote:
| Japan owns more US debt than China does. [1]
|
| 1. https://www.thebalancemoney.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-
| de...
| timerol wrote:
| That's not how US debt works. It pays back on a schedule.
| China could stop buying new US debt, and will continue to
| receive payments on US debt it owns, but China can't call up
| the US and demand full repayment immediately.
| bequanna wrote:
| That isn't how debt works.
|
| They could sell the debt that they currently hold, sure. The
| response would likely be a short term rise in interest rates
| followed by the Fed simply intervening and purchasing
| Treasurys.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| They can't because this isn't make-believe world where
| there's some sort of world police enforcing nonsense.
|
| If someone tries to destroy your country you just say no.
| "Sorry china, we aren't paying lmao"
|
| And then they can't do shit. Then you embargo them for being
| aggressive and destroy their country.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Not how debt of virtually any kind works except from the
| mafia. Very few debts can be arbitrarily called.
| balls187 wrote:
| > all they have to do is turn off exports for a month and we'd
| be killing each other over the last item in stock anywhere that
| is now 100 times the price because of no availability.
|
| What do you think happens when you turn off exports to the #1
| consumer economy in the world?
|
| Do you think that economy disappears, or takes it's money
| elsewhere?
|
| The US maintains very close ties with the EU. And while EU
| citizens would relish in even cheaper goods from China, EU
| would prefer stronger and preferential economic terms with the
| US, where businesses face far less meddling from governments
| than they do in China.
| ajross wrote:
| Mexico was _vastly_ wealthier than China through the 70 's and
| 80's[1], this wouldn't have worked. Western notions tend to
| partition the world into "rich" and "poor" countries, but in
| fact there's a lot of variety even there. Mexico has been
| growing alongside the US economy for centuries and is only
| "poor" in comparison. And people tend to _wildly_ misunderstand
| the depth of poverty seen in post-war China (and thus how
| radical a change the last two generations have been there,
| which explains a lot of "why do the Chinese people tolerate
| the CCP?").
|
| [1] The chart I found here shows that the PRC only passed
| Mexico in the last handful of years, actually:
| https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/mexico/china?sc...
| wyldberry wrote:
| This is a bit hyperbolic. History is full of examples of
| countries and economies adapting. If China stopped producing,
| supply chains would move, people would make do.
|
| The power of the USD was used to sanction Iran and Russia into
| serious economic harm, but people will find ways to make it
| work.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| This is starting to happen now. We are shifting manufacturing
| to onshore and nearshore. I believe Mexico will pick up a lot
| of where China left off in the future.
|
| Personally, I disagree we would kill each other for goods but
| I'm an optimist like that.
| bombcar wrote:
| Starting? Maquiladoras have existed since 1964 and got a huge
| boost post-NAFTA.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquiladora
|
| You can see the ones just over the border from San Diego from
| space: https://goo.gl/maps/WJQB5AFA47KCcW8b8
|
| Lots of factories are moving to Mexico (and even back to the
| USA) because they're so automated that the employees aren't a
| major cost; the biggest cost now is shipping - which hits the
| cheap bulky good the most. Check where trash cans at Walmart
| are made, for example.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Mexico is much smaller population wise and won't be able to
| pick up major part. Not talking about tuned manufacturing
| processes, facilities, toolings etc.
| mdasen wrote:
| This seems unlikely. Only 18% of our imports come from China.
| In fact, 14% of our imports come from Mexico and 14% from
| Canada. Given that China has 11.1x the population of Mexico and
| 39x the population of Canada, we don't actually get that much
| from China.
|
| It would certainly hurt. I remember the early days of the
| pandemic when I had to wait 45 days for my new laptop. However,
| I don't need a laptop to survive. I need food and shelter.
|
| > all they have to do is turn off exports for a month and we'd
| be killing each other over the last item in stock anywhere that
| is now 100 times the price because of no availability
|
| What items would we be fighting over? iPhones? Because I need
| to eat at least one iPhone a week as part of a balanced diet?
| We love our phones and other consumer goods and we've certainly
| seen how interconnected our supply chains are, but the idea
| that we'd fall into murderous anarchy seems incredibly
| unlikely.
|
| Let's look at what we import from China: computers ($151B),
| apparel ($56B), electrical equipment ($36B), misc.
| manufacturing ($35B), furniture ($18B), machinery ($20B),
| fabricated metals ($18B), and plastics ($16B). We're actually
| an exporter in both the food and agriculture categories to
| China. Yes, some of those are economically important fields,
| but the idea that I'd be stabbing you over a sweater or laptop
| within a month is nuts. "I don't care who I have to kill to get
| my JCrew!"
|
| Yea, China is an important trading partner and it would
| certainly hurt if China shut off trade. I'm not arguing it
| wouldn't hurt. At the same time, China is 17-18% of our
| imports.
|
| And the thing is that it would hurt for China too. Right now,
| China is appeasing its citizens with an export-driven economy.
| Imagine the massive unemployment rates if China cut off exports
| to the US. People who are presently happy or at least neutral
| toward the regime might end up being really angry.
|
| Plus, the second China cuts off the US, it kinda has to go the
| (figurative) nuclear route and cut off the whole world. EU
| leaders aren't going to sit around saying "Wow, it sucks to be
| an American. I'm glad nothing like that can happen to us!" No,
| they're going to immediately start moving their economy away
| from reliance on China in preparation to cut off China. If it
| happens to America, it'll happen to Europe as well. Even if EU
| leaders were like, "nah, China would never do that to us," the
| US would apply a ton of pressure - and EU leaders aren't that
| stupid.
|
| It's pretty clear that cutting off exports to the US in that
| manner would bifurcate the world Cold War style. It seems clear
| that Aus/NZ/EU/UK/Japan/SK/Israel/Canda/Mexico would end up
| with the US. The US currently has free trade agreements with
| all of Central America, Colombia, and Peru so I'd guess they'd
| be with the US and cutting off China. Brazil and Argentina are
| major non-NATO allies. India would love the opportunity
| presented by most of the world cutting off China. Apple is
| already moving manufacturing to India and the Indian government
| wants the kind of economic growth that China has seen.
|
| It would certainly hurt if China cut off exports to the US.
| We're not prepared for it. However, it would leave China a lot
| worse off than us.
|
| > Imagine an alternate universe where the US built up Mexico
| and 99% of everything was made there instead of China
|
| I do agree US foreign policy toward Mexico hasn't always been
| great, but we actually have built up a lot of industry in
| Mexico. As I noted, we import nearly as much from Mexico as we
| do from China despite China having 11x the population.
|
| And China is going to be declining over the next 50 years.
| Their population is projected to decline from 1.4B to 700M-1B
| by 2100 (depending on what estimate you look at) and they're
| going to have a lot of old people compared to working-age
| people. Their workforce is already down 2.5% from its 2015
| peak. The US, on the other hand, will still be a growing nation
| thanks to immigration.
|
| I get that it seems like "everything comes from China", but
| that really isn't the truth. China is a very important trading
| partner. However, cutting off trade isn't going to bring
| anarchy to the US. It will make every country reliant on trade
| with China start working toward isolating China. China would
| need to start invading its neighbors to build up an isolated
| trading block against the juggernaut that would likely be the
| US, EU, India, Canada, Mexico, and so many other countries who
| would start treating China like the Soviet Union.
|
| "If you come at the king, you best not miss." This would
| certainly be a miss. It would hurt for sure. In the long run,
| China would face a world where they were no longer a welcome
| trading partner, where they'd lost their advantages as the rest
| of the world recreated what China once offered, and where
| they'd face huge domestic unrest from such a major economic
| upheaval.
|
| We're at one of the lowest points of American influence since
| World War II. That's not even a criticism of the state of
| politics in the US. It's simply a realistic view of the fact
| that Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc. don't need
| the US nearly as much as they did when US money was rebuilding
| Europe or when the US was the bulwark against the Soviet Union.
| If China cut off trade to the US, they'd catapult the US back
| into that position of de-facto leadership. Maybe the US would
| share that position a little with the EU this time around, but
| we would see a world where countries looked toward the US for
| their future leaving China really isolated. China doesn't want
| to hand leadership of the world back to the US. They want to
| make China look like a reasonable trading partner that
| countries should look toward so that they can hold some of the
| leadership.
| RedCondor wrote:
| I disagree with just about everything in this post, but I
| find one particular thing very interesting.
|
| >And China is going to be declining over the next 50 years.
| Their population is projected to decline from 1.4B to 700M-1B
| by 2100 (depending on what estimate you look at) and they're
| going to have a lot of old people compared to working-age
| people. Their workforce is already down 2.5% from its 2015
| peak. The US, on the other hand, will still be a growing
| nation thanks to immigration.
|
| Even if we assume these predictions are correct (They aren't.
| You don't cite sources, but they generally come from the same
| people who have predicted China's end for the past 40 years,
| such as Gordon Chang and Michael Pettis), China also has the
| option of allowing immigration.
|
| It's interesting that America has tried to transfigure its
| settler-colonial, genocidal and slaver history into a kind of
| Thanksgiving-esque "Nation of Immigrants" storytale, but it
| doesn't make it actually true, and it certainly doesn't mean
| that other countries cannot avail themselves of immigration
| as a demographic strategy (in case it's needed).
|
| I think the Christian narrative that America is "the chosen
| ones" clouds not just moral judgment but geostrategic
| judgment as well.
| flerchin wrote:
| Everything I've seen, including from the CCP, projects that
| Chinese population is already in decline, and will likely
| halve by the end of the century. Do you have projections
| that shows otherwise?
|
| Yes, immigration could change this in China, but it is not
| currently significant.
| bushbaba wrote:
| China would starve. They rely on the west for food. I think
| the west could outlast china in a standoff.
| [deleted]
| jmclnx wrote:
| >Eavesdropping is a worry too. Spy agencies can readily tap into
| cables landing on their territory
|
| Well if the US and other western countries got fully behind with
| End to End encryption without backdoors, eavesdropping would be
| no issue. Instead they are trying to force "backdoors" into
| encryption people already use.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| If you have access to the cable, you know who is connecting to
| whom. That's valuable information, and it can't be protected
| with end-to-end encryption.
| progbits wrote:
| How?
|
| The cable is point to point. (Well ok there is branching but
| let's ignore that) So you know those two endpoints are
| talking. Not about what.
|
| And this is trivial to bypass by always sending, regardless
| of whether there is data to send. Just fill the cable with
| dummy packets.
|
| Unless you compromise the keys used on either end you learn
| absolutely nothing by watching the cable.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| How does a packet get sent from one device to another
| unless everyone in between knows where it has to be sent?
| epgui wrote:
| I don't know what I'm talking about, but presumably the
| address on the envelope is not the final destination.
| hinkley wrote:
| That's true in TOR, but not true in IP packets.
|
| And then it took us three or four major iterations of
| HTTPS before we stopped revealing a bunch of metadata
| about the question you're asking the server.
|
| Also if you know what service I'm talking to, and you
| know anything about me, you can get some statistically
| relevant information from the traffic patterns. You might
| be able to tell if I'm using a chat application, or
| watching videos. And if I'm being surveilled by state
| actors, then the fact that I'm chatting might suggest
| what I'm getting up to.
| hanniabu wrote:
| They don't want e2e because they want to spy on US citizens too
| InCityDreams wrote:
| I thought they said they wouldn't do that sort of thing?
| [deleted]
| amrocha wrote:
| Eh, even if we use encryption it'll still be a problem in a
| couple decades thanks to quantum computers
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Let me see, shall I have a heart attack today? Or in a couple
| of decades?
|
| I'll get back to you (possibly).
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