I stopped taking Melvyn serious when he said "The Chinese today are not seeking to destroy Americans’ way of life, as the Soviets were said to be doing in the 1940s. Indeed, the Chinese accept fundamental aspects of our capitalist marketplace, and they have similar interests in halting climate change, fighting terrorists, and combatting pandemics."
They do not accept the fundamental aspects of the capitalist marketplace - which are liberty and the right for the individual to choose - and rule of law to protect the individual and uphold contract law. China (CCP) believes in making money and isolating power - rule of law is a tool submitted not to Justice or Freedom, but to the Party - or Xi Jinping thought.. The pragmatist era of Deng Xiaoping has ended; The era of consolidation has begun. Jack Ma distributing his ownership and "retiring" is hardly pragmatic nor capitalistic, its more akin to proper socialist consolidation of power within the current Stalinist thought leader.
They do not care about climate change, nor the environment. They are opening coal plants across the country. They want to stave off the economic slowdown and will let the world burn if they have to.
They do not fight terrorists, they isolate power, reeducate, exterminate, harvest and dis-empower/imprison those outside the ideological safe zone of the current leadership. There is no real anti-terrorism effort, it is a gimmick to rid the world of ideologically and ethnically estranged peoples.
Combating pandemics seems lazy point - what country doesn't at least attempt to shield itself form pandemics? Hardly something to try and unify around..
You should take heart from the phenomenon that facts usually lie somewhere in the middle. The chances are that the oldtimer, with a great reputation behind him and a lot of credibility, might have good basis for what he writes. And your vision of the Middle Kingdom as Modor ruled by Sauron is perhaps on the off chance sligtly worse than reality.
Once one starts assuming one's opponent to be evil for evil's sake, deaf to reason, and not motivated by anything but the enslavement of human kind, one leaves the realm of international relations/strategem and enters the realm of mobilisation for Total War, of survival and, in Chinese, of 'you die I live'. Is it really where we are? Are we simply finding it so hard to accept that chicom has achieved something it shouldnt have that we must prove it has done so by being evil/devious/decietful? Isnt that a little too convenient? Anyway, i dont get this rose tinted nostalgia about pre-Xi era China all of a sudden. As I recall, it was reportedly a gravely polluted, gravely corrupted, highly faked, trustless, unhappy communist slave society that was our ideological enemy (albeit on last legs).
Isnt China/Chicom far more guilty of being different/nerdy/weird/defensive/socially-inept/nouveau riche than being evil/genocidal/anti-earth/anti-human?
One thing the oldtimer said stood out for me, not in so many words but effectively, "please do not let bad analogy lead policy". To that i would add, please do not let feel-good self-rigtheous narratives lead analysis. And if i go on further with this rant, i d be committing that very sin! ;)
I stopped taking Melvyn serious when he said "The Chinese today are not seeking to destroy Americans’ way of life, as the Soviets were said to be doing in the 1940s. Indeed, the Chinese accept fundamental aspects of our capitalist marketplace, and they have similar interests in halting climate change, fighting terrorists, and combatting pandemics."
They do not accept the fundamental aspects of the capitalist marketplace - which are liberty and the right for the individual to choose - and rule of law to protect the individual and uphold contract law. China (CCP) believes in making money and isolating power - rule of law is a tool submitted not to Justice or Freedom, but to the Party - or Xi Jinping thought.. The pragmatist era of Deng Xiaoping has ended; The era of consolidation has begun. Jack Ma distributing his ownership and "retiring" is hardly pragmatic nor capitalistic, its more akin to proper socialist consolidation of power within the current Stalinist thought leader.
They do not care about climate change, nor the environment. They are opening coal plants across the country. They want to stave off the economic slowdown and will let the world burn if they have to.
They do not fight terrorists, they isolate power, reeducate, exterminate, harvest and dis-empower/imprison those outside the ideological safe zone of the current leadership. There is no real anti-terrorism effort, it is a gimmick to rid the world of ideologically and ethnically estranged peoples.
Combating pandemics seems lazy point - what country doesn't at least attempt to shield itself form pandemics? Hardly something to try and unify around..
You should take heart from the phenomenon that facts usually lie somewhere in the middle. The chances are that the oldtimer, with a great reputation behind him and a lot of credibility, might have good basis for what he writes. And your vision of the Middle Kingdom as Modor ruled by Sauron is perhaps on the off chance sligtly worse than reality.
Once one starts assuming one's opponent to be evil for evil's sake, deaf to reason, and not motivated by anything but the enslavement of human kind, one leaves the realm of international relations/strategem and enters the realm of mobilisation for Total War, of survival and, in Chinese, of 'you die I live'. Is it really where we are? Are we simply finding it so hard to accept that chicom has achieved something it shouldnt have that we must prove it has done so by being evil/devious/decietful? Isnt that a little too convenient? Anyway, i dont get this rose tinted nostalgia about pre-Xi era China all of a sudden. As I recall, it was reportedly a gravely polluted, gravely corrupted, highly faked, trustless, unhappy communist slave society that was our ideological enemy (albeit on last legs).
Isnt China/Chicom far more guilty of being different/nerdy/weird/defensive/socially-inept/nouveau riche than being evil/genocidal/anti-earth/anti-human?
One thing the oldtimer said stood out for me, not in so many words but effectively, "please do not let bad analogy lead policy". To that i would add, please do not let feel-good self-rigtheous narratives lead analysis. And if i go on further with this rant, i d be committing that very sin! ;)