Frightening?
We Americans have more to fear from economic and technological dominance than we do from military invasion.
As a budding superpower ready to unseat the US from it's throan. All China has to do is wait for progress and time to run it's coarse and emerge the victor. If anything, the US is the tigger happy country as we watch the inevitable, looking for any excuse to use to stop them.
Remember, why the hell does China give two shits about war if China can surpass the US simply through economic progress. They don't care, in fact they want to avoid war.
why does they have to be a winner and loser. everyone can thrive? except the United States is being buoyed by two main elements.
1) the ability of the internet to extract value overseas while untaxed in the client country 2) The H1B visa which funnels the best talent from struggling countries 3) strong institutions and financial and education centers and 4) military industrial complex that thrives on basically manufacturing conflicts with other countries
#4 is what is scary. not the dominance of any other country itself
So that I can afford cheap shit from poorer countries, if they stay poor they contribute less to climate change, less competition for finite rare resources
> why does they have to be a winner and loser. everyone can thrive? except the United States is being buoyed by two main elements.
Why can’t there be a winner and a loser and both the winner and the loser cooperate and thrive with loser having the humility to admit he’s a loser? Isn’t this the same peaceful consequence? Just say China is better and admit inferiority for the everlasting peace. Why can’t you do it?
Because competition and cooperation are intrinsic parts of natural selection and therefore evolutionary biology and therefore human nature. Don’t pretend to be above your own nature.
Or do pretend. We can all act according to our ideals and deny our basest instincts, but don’t expect the mob to act the same way in aggregate.
I don’t think anyone disputes that China can out-manufacture us. Does that make them “better”, they the winner and the West the loser? Obviously not; things don’t end, history continues and things can go in different directions in the future. Not to mention that there are other dimensions that matter besides manufacturing prowess, namely quality of life, individual freedom, etc.
In the dimension of quality of life, technological prowess and economic GDP, China is likely going to match the US in western cities. Think about it. Manufacturing lies at the heart of everything. Do you think there's some universe where the US is good at designing things and then submits the design to China to manufacture and then suddenly China remains in the dark on how to design things?
Don't be deluded on the whole individual freedom or quality of life thing. 99% of Americans don't even exercise the right to protest. China doesn't let you protest and this fact doesn't really affect anyones life.
China does have kangaroo courts and this fact does actually affect some relatives of mine
When your natural resources shrinking, you need to expand if your entire economy depending on that sources.
China will soon be more aggressive as any other empires.
>China will soon be more aggressive as any other empires.
in its entire history it has never invaded outside its traditional borders, and it achieved all this without invading or enslaving people. It will continue this way in future too :)
> Slavery in China has taken various forms throughout history. Slavery was nominally abolished in 1910,[1][2][3] although the practice continued until at least 1949.[4] The Chinese term for slave (nuli) can also be roughly translated into 'debtor', 'dependent', or 'subject'. Despite a few attempts to ban it, slavery existed continuously throughout pre-modern China, sometimes serving a key role in politics, economics, and historical events.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_of_the_Pe...
In its entire history it has never invaded outside its traditional borders
Vietnam, 1979.
Support for North Korea's invasion of South Korea 1950-1953.
Invasion of Indian-held areas in 1962 based on extremely dubious claims.
Not an invasion, but its support for the genocidal Khmer Rouge in the 1970s (who ended up invading Vietnam with Chinese arms) was quite significant.
Its current menacing of the Phillipines.
Claims about "traditional borders" are almost invariably nonsense.
> Support for North Korea's invasion of South Korea 1950-1953.
China did not support North Korea's invasion. North Korea did not seek China's support initially and only asked for Stalin's permission. China would not have entered the Korea war at all if MacArthur did not disobey Truman and marched all the way to the Chinese border. He also publicly stated that he planned to bomb China. It was one of the reasons for which he was fired. All this was well documented in the US's own literature.
China did not support North Korea's invasion.
I don't see how to read China's dispatch of 1.5M combat troops, taking on some 110,000 battle deaths (thus saving the invasion from imminent collapse) other than as "support" for the invasion.
By the time China entered the war, the invasion was already over. China entered the war for two reasons: 1) to make sure China was not invaded as MacArthur intended 2) to keep North Korea alive as a buffer, not to help invade South Korea. There was nothing to gain for China if the North unified Korea. Their relationship wasn't that good in the first place.
By the time China entered the war, the invasion was already over.
I don't see any substance the point you're trying to make here. One could try to say, "China was only trying to preserve North Korea's borders prior to the invasion". But once it pushed further south, into South Korea proper -- it was joining the invasion. There's nothing to debate here.
1) to make sure China was not invaded as MacArthur intended
And this just makes no sense at all.
MacArthur never intended to invade China, and didn't even start making noises about bombing China until after the it joined the war effort.
> it has never invaded outside its traditional borders
Your notion of "traditional borders" is where this becomes nonsense. With a little bit of revisionist history you can justify all sorts of invasions, such as the 1959 invasion of Tibet, or the desire to retake Taiwan. In reality, China is an empire, with several of its regions very unhappy to part of it (Tibet, Xinjiang, and probably more if you could only ask its people).
Only empire which exists right now is the western empire lead by US, its days are numbered, then when the propaganda curtain falls, it will be a shock. I had people of Xinjiang as my class mates, they laugh at your propaganda.
I am not taking your word for it at all, but if they "laugh" at this, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them:
You know what?
Most of you don't even know a single Uigur in your whole life, everything you learnt about Xinjiang/Uigur is from western media(ofc, wikipedia, The "Free" Encyclopedia, and from some random "Xinjiang experts" who funded by some Hawkish think tanks which backed by the US gov.
But I do know many westerners like you in HN, Twitter, etc. And, since I have the more reliable information and experience, just like the one you replied, I know you more than you know Xinjiang/Uigurs, so, my oponion about you is way more reliable than your oponions about Xinjiang/Uigurs. I can easily judge you are ignorant due to credulousness and misinformation.
Now, do you understand why there's "laugh"? They/We are not laughing at "this", we are laughing at people like you.
TBH, I do enjoy browsing China-related comments in HN, it's like watching a comedy, you guys may never get this, untill you take a flight to China/Xinjiang, if you did, you'd find the funny part
How your knowing westerns from HN and Twitter makes your opinion more reliable than westerners that know about you from wiki?
Let’s pray renewables become standard before any empire becomes thirsty for this.