Top China Diplomat Warns of Decoupling Risk (bloomberg.com) 63
China's top diplomat warned the US that decoupling would be "self defeating" as the country set out to implement a recent agreement made between their leaders. From a report: Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking on Friday at an event to mark the 45th anniversary of US-China diplomatic relations, cited a slew of initiatives that reflect improved ties including streamlined visas for US travelers, a counternarcotics working group to battle the flow of the synthetic fentanyl to the US, and the sending of pandas to the US by the end of the year. "Any decoupling attempt to stem the tide will only be counterproductive and self defeating," Wang said.
David Meale, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, joined Friday's event as charge d'affaires with Ambassador Nicholas Burns out of town. Tensions between China and the US started to ease after President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in November. The talks resulted in a resumption of high-level military-to-military ties, a promise to collaborate on the fentanyl problem and a commitment to boost interactions between people in the two countries.
David Meale, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, joined Friday's event as charge d'affaires with Ambassador Nicholas Burns out of town. Tensions between China and the US started to ease after President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met in November. The talks resulted in a resumption of high-level military-to-military ties, a promise to collaborate on the fentanyl problem and a commitment to boost interactions between people in the two countries.
Rightt.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because massively reducing the amount shipments from China and shifting toward more rigorous inspections for those items and people wont do way more the prevent Chinese narcotics from finding their way into the US market than any enforcement cooperation ever could.
Also we are totally doomed, I mean how can function as a society without zoo animals...
Its China and various well connected US political animals that have a decoupling risk. China's economy is probably screwed if it can't dump EV parts and electr
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Solipsism is a bitch, ain't it?
Re: Rightt.... (Score:2, Insightful)
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You sound like the person who thinks every accomplishment Joe Biden makes is "fake news." Doesn't matter if it's true because it's reflexive; your team didn't do it.
Did you read this?
The talks resulted in a resumption of high-level military-to-military ties
You know, like maybe WWIII doesn't break out because they can settle accidents and misunderstandings regarding Chinese Taipei with a phone call instead of parking battleships within 2 clicks of each other and shouting. It's important.
If you think that's "fake," that's on you to prove, but I think really you just hate Joe Biden
Re:Rightt.... (Score:4, Insightful)
And by misunderstandings you mean the Chinese air force's deliberate and unsafe interceptions [cnn.com] against U.S. aircraft in and around the South China Sea.
And by Taipei, you mean Taiwan.
As for battleships, they were decommissioned years ago. Only thing being parked are aircraft carriers, missile cruisers, and related support craft which are able to freely move in international waters anywhere they like, or visit any country which invites them to do so. Where they go and in what area is no one else's business.
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Taipei falling under PRC control is a far greater threat to our independence on the global stage than loss of relations with the PRC.
If PRC actually does attack the ROC, even with conventional warfare the correct action is a neuclear first strike.
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and to clarify - the United States need to make that ubundantly clear to PRC for everyone's safety.
Attack Taiwan == You start WWIII.
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Agreed, but abundantly is not spelled like you spelled it.
Ubundant is the way it's spelled now that we're finally in The Year Of Linux, you insensitive clod!
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> America is too scared of Putin's Russia
I think you're projecting.
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What accomplishments?
I mean, unless you are counting his policies to damage the US as accomplishments...?
You mean that communication that the previous administrations all had prior to t
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You had a good post until (Score:5, Informative)
You know, like maybe WWIII doesn't break out because they can settle accidents and misunderstandings regarding Chinese Taipei with a phone call instead of parking battleships within 2 clicks of each other and shouting. It's important.
You undermined a pretty good post with "Chinese Taipei". "Chinese Taipei" is the fictitious name that China makes the nation of Taiwan compete at in international sporting competitions so that Taiwan can actually participate and China won't lose its mind over "splitism". The country's name is Taiwan.
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The name is actually Republic of China. Taiwan is just a province within Republic of China.
Yes, but just a tiny problem - those rebellious communists are in temporary control of the other provinces while the legitimate government is stuck in just one. Seriously, for now, both parts think (mostly) it's one country. Although that is starting to change in Taiwan, and if they want to change, that should be supported. China proved with their behavior in Hong Kong that they are not to be trusted "one country, two systems" shenanigans.
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More importantly, Taiwan has never been a communist, single party (by law) totalitarian state, so it is not, nor has it ever been part of the part of the People's Republic of China.
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WTF? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org],
Martial law, declared on Taiwan in May 1949,[209] continued to be in effect until 1987,[209][210] and was used to suppress political opposition. During the White Terror, as the period is known, 140,000 people were imprisoned or executed for being perceived as anti-KMT or pro-Communist.[211] Many citizens were arrested, tortured, imprisoned or executed for their real or perceived link to the Chinese Communist Party. Since these people were mainly from the intellectual and social elite, an entire generation of political and social leaders was destroyed.
...
From the late 1970s to the 1990s, Taiwan underwent political and social reforms that transformed it into a democracy.[233][234] Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son, served as premier from 1972 and rose to the presidency in 1978. He sought to move more authority to "bensheng ren" (residents of Taiwan before Japan's surrender and their descendants).[235] Pro-democracy activists Tangwai emerged as the opposition. In 1979, the Kaohsiung Incident took place in Kaohsiung on Human Rights Day. Although the protest was rapidly crushed by the authorities, it is considered as the main event that united Taiwan's opposition.[236]
In 1984, Chiang Ching-kuo selected Lee Teng-hui as his vice-president. After the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was (illegally) founded as the first opposition party in Taiwan to counter the KMT in 1986, Chiang announced that he would allow the formation of new parties.[237] On 15 July 1987, Chiang lifted martial law on the main island of Taiwan.
So Taiwan was an authoritarian state as the ROC and Chiang Kai-shek was as brutal of a dictator as Mao, just closer to fascist then communist.
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Ok – I’ll agree that Taiwan was at one point controlled by what could be called totalitarian rule, if we can agree that Taiwan has never been ruled by communists. In which case we must conclude that Taiwan has never been part of communist China. Fair enough?
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True, it was ruled by the people who were so bad that communism seemed a good idea.
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Regarding pandas: they are highly symbolic. Do some research. There was propaganda in China that we were starving their pandas to piss off the Chinese hoi polloi. You and I? We don't really think that way. A lot of people do. Don't discard other personality types like they're idiotic. We have to live with them, and at the very least I consider the possibility that I'm the idiot here.
It is rare that you get both a symbolic gesture and meaningful policy changes like hotline contact between your Joint Chiefs (
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All we have to do to defeat China, is leave them out of the post-petroleum transition.
Except China has already passed peak oil. Have way more EVs than America. More solar in one year than America has ever. And also more wind power than the rest of the world combined. Plush a bunch of nukes that weren't 1000% over budget and decades late.
You may as well ban your buggy whips for China. That'll teach em just as much whose boss.
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Here's an idea China (Score:5, Insightful)
Start acting like the grown up world player you want to be rather than some oversized banana republic threatening your neighbours and committing miriad human rights violations.
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Start acting like the grown up world player you want to be rather than some oversized banana republic threatening your neighbours and committing miriad human rights violations.
Ok, but what about China?
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Outside of the implied slur, that's a real problem.
In a lot of ways China and the US have very different ideas of what "proper civilized behavior" consists of. If we can't trust them, then why make an agreement that can't be enforced? If they can't trust us, then why make an agreement that can't be enforced? Both sides are guilty of multiple violations of what the other considers the "civilized norms". (And, admittedly, both are also frequently guilty of what they, themselves, consider the civilized nor
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What was implied about it?
As for civilized norms - i think most people would agree that concentration camps for ethnic groups are morally obscene.
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Hold on while we encircle them with hostile military treaties and warships then get mad if they push back.
China kills me (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey we’ve been acting in bad faith the whole time you built up our economy but let’s talk pandas and trips to the great wall.
Whenever their government beaurocrats talks diplomacy it’s like watching a child try to piece together a justification to eat candy for lunch.
How about "bite me" instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
China is a frenemy. They want commerce with one hand but they are doing diddly about the flow of drugs and precursor chemicals and they are doing jack squat about the TikTok Heat button. Meanwhile, they're buying up land conveniently located near domestic military bases, taking over international waters in the seven-dash line, and stealing US IP. China plays Go while the US is getting stoned and playing tiddly-winks.
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The problem is that the only alternative is cold war, because they sure as hell won't stop stealing and if you include them in the globalist kumbaya of porous borders it's far too hard to stop them.
To revert to cold war now is dangerous. This combined with the fact that the globalists Davos crowd who still have immense political power, would rather China be allowed to steal without consequence than the west turning their backs on globalism ... what is left is praying that somewhere along the line of stealin
True but irrelevant to middle class... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we are cutting off our investor class from cheap labour options. Engagement with China for 50 years brought many lowers prices, larger markets, new products to improve our material wealth. But, that's the same period were most of us got no net improvement to our overall lives worth mentioning: it all went to the top. Cheaper prices on appliances and clothing had to be spent on housing and medicine instead.
The real price of "Roger and Me" globalization was that the middle class lost any reason to care about the "benefits of trade".
Re:True but irrelevant to middle class... (Score:5, Insightful)
Globalization and national level specialization absolutely did deliver lifestyle improvements to just about everyone. We don't have to pretend otherwise; to recognize that
1) most of the gains ended up at the top,
2) the current dividends are all going to the top,
3) it came a huge social costs, and moral bankruptcy.
Finally it does not prevent us from 4) recognizing its time to change course now.
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Glad to have kicked off this thread. By coincidence, we resolved the failing-appliance issue by eliminating the very idea of >$1000 kitchen "Range"; purchased what a range does modularly, so that no one failure can ruin dinner. Or the bank account:
http://brander.ca/range/ [brander.ca]
My mother-in-law is about to turn 92, but does downstairs to power-cycle the dryer (pulling the huge plug hard for arthritis) because it won't reset after a run, some chip fault. The mechanicals are fine the last 5 years of that, it's
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Granted, it takes time for businesses to rearrange their infrastructure to accommodate a major geographical transition. These things don't happen overnight.
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Apart from India and China, no other _single_ country has that, no.
But frankly, no business that I'm aware of necessarily needs hundreds of millions of such personnel all in the same country. Containerized freight is a thing now, and that gives us globalization and easy part outsourcing. You can locate one facility in one country, another facility in another, no problem. In fact, this is the same phenomenon that allowed so much manufacturing to be located in China in the first place.
Suppose you're
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As a result, our middle class is better off now, more than ever! It's been a total win/win. The Chinese need us for our leadership in academics, research, and data chops just as much as we need them for making affordable goods. Well, at least that was the plan. Somehow it got bog
China can't be trusted (Score:5, Insightful)
China can't be trusted as long as their current government is in power. Every country on Earth knows this. Vote the politicians out that ignore this simple fact because they have other/hidden agendas they wish to foster. As someone stated above China needs to start acting like a grown up world player to be taken seriously. Right now dealing with China is akin to sticking your arm into a basket of vipers .. you're going to get bit and will probably die or sent to a reeducation camp. The world needs to step up and stamp out those communist/totalitarian/dictatorship governments.
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Look at the history of how the US honors treaties. China is no "good guy", but neither are we. Think of it as two mafia chiefs trying to divide a territory. (But the "acceptable behavior" beliefs between the US govt. and the Chinese govt. are a bit more at variance.)
And, to be fair, a bit of China's "acceptable behavior" beliefs derives from prior experience with European powers. (More Britain than the US, but we probably look about the same to them.)
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Take the money Taiwan (Score:1)
Reeks of (Score:3)
No intention? (Score:3)
“We have no intention to displace or lord over anyone, still less to seek hegemony,” Wang Yi said.
And yet China clearly does want to 'lord over' Taiwan and the South China Sea. The belt-and-road initiative is obviously intended to create a dependent hegemony. Statements that are obviously in contradiction to the facts erode what little is left of Chinese credibility.