What would Trump be without an enemy? I think that's the question we need to answer here. Can he thrive in a world in peace? I have difficulty imagining what he would do.
I would go even further: most countries in the world right now don't need an enemy. There is just a few of them that are defined by persistent war.
China also switched to wolf warrior diplomacy for close to a decade now.
Ok, fine. Let's think of that hypothetical: The US wins.
Then what? How would Trump thrive in that world? What's his next angle? Every single country in the world is thinking that same question.
The answer is, "He'd pick another".
IIRC there's a quote from Hitler about how he could have picked another minority than the Jews to rail against.
Chinese govn't has been using Linux based OS exclusively with WPS Office[1] (co-founded by Xiaomi's Leijun in the 90s)
Private sector use Win+Office though. But tech companies all choose Web based office like Feishu. docx/xlsx/pptx were just for compatibility only and interop with customers. Windows was like a Browser launcher anyway.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-apr-09-fi-micro...
In China, WPS has a longer history than Office. The first release of WPS, as a Chinese word processing software, was released in 1989. It wasn't until 1996 when Microsoft reached a format-sharing agreement with Kingsoft that Office entered the Chinese market. After Microsoft tolerated piracy, Office's usage surpassed WPS.
You cannot succeed or do any sort of business in China unless you have the blessings of the Party.
Whether your are an unimportant shop owner or Jack Fucking Ma.
When the time comes to close completely the borders, the Party will not look at the stock market or the house prices. They will do what they think is the best, for itself.
These are not new things, they happened in the previous generation in Eastern Europe.
They claim that the market plays the "decisive role" in setting prices.
> You cannot succeed or do any sort of business in China unless you have the blessings of the Party. Whether your are an unimportant shop owner or Jack Fucking Ma.
This is an exaggeration. They don't care what an unimportant shop owner does. They do care what the leader of a massive tech / financial firm does, and they really don't like it if he does things they think are dangerous for the stability of the financial system while publicly criticizing the financial regulators.
Correct, China actually exists.
By locality I mean having an expert or a whole company on a very niche thing effectively as your neighbor. Main reason why it is so hard for Apple to leave China.
Further, look into their support of Russia in their war of conquest against Ukraine, the treatment of their neighbors like the Philippines and look into what their fishing fleet is up to worldwide.
I do
> they are the only power that can arguably undermine it
Stares at current administration
> tiktok
Meta. Myanmar. Report: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
> fueling division
Again stares at current administration
> funding antidemocratic parties like Germany's AfD
Elon. Vance. Report: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/us/politics/vance-far-rig...
> support of Russia in their war of conquest against Ukraine
Agree. Looks over at Palestine.
> the treatment of their neighbors like the Philippines
Venezuela. Today.
If anything, foreign adversaries like China or Russia welcome / help to power parties like the current administration so democracies self destruct.
This has everything to do with maintaining economic and military superiority. That's the reason why people consider China a "adversary" not morality. If you don't understand this you won't understand why such a huge percentage of the world's population is wary of the USA just like they are wary of China.
The US is far from perfect, but - so far, TBD where we go from here - has had IMHO a net positive influence on keeping democracy around (specifically, I'm thinking of Germany after WW2, Western Europe during the Cold War, Japan and with detours South Korea).
Perhaps you'll point out that the US did this out of pure self-interest and these countries are just vassal states to the US. However, a useful comparison in this context is comparing Western Germany (US) to Eastern Germany (Russia), South Korea (US) to North Korea (China) or, say, Poland (US/EU) to Belarus (Russia) to assess which sphere of influence (and its implications on national self-determination) is preferable.
Going back to democracy, in my view is not the "default state" of human society (the default is probably mob rule like we have in Russia).
> That's the reason why people consider China a "adversary" not morality.
I personally view Russia and China as adversaries because they are a serious threat to democracy worldwide (that I think we agree on?), which I believe is the very thing we're discussing.
So in summary, there are very good reasons to be critical of China (CCP) independent of the current US administrations actions and historical baggage of the US.
But all your examples are vs Russia. I will be happy if Russia is dismantled. Both the Soviet Union and Russia has been terrible for its people. China has been absolutely fantastic for its people. They went from absolute poverty to challenging the greatest empire the world has ever seen in just a few decades. I doubt the Chinese people hate their regime.
> to assess which sphere of influence (and its implications on national self-determination) is preferable
Iran, Guatemala, Brazil, etc. All had democratic govt's overthrown by the US.
> I personally view Russia and China as adversaries because they are a serious threat to democracy worldwide (that I think we agree on?), which I believe is the very thing we're discussing.
I personally view Russia, USA and China as serious threats to democracy. Because all three have toppled democratic countries for its benefit. And no I don't think they do it because they hate democracy. They do it because it helps their superiority. The victims just happened to be democratic sometimes.
> So in summary, there are very good reasons to be critical of China (CCP) independent of the current US administrations actions and historical baggage of the US.
And there are very good reasons to be critical of the USA independent of the current Chinese administrations actions and historical baggage of China.
My whole point is that administrations do things for economic and military superiority. Things like morality are just used by administrations to justify actions to their populace. I am sure you _personally_ dislike China for purely moral reasons. Most people are good who think in terms of morality. That is exactly why framing a rival as "evil" works so well. It's about power. If the world works on the basis of justice then the EU should have sanctioned the US for the Iraq debacle and now Palestine.
Can you maybe take a few minutes and write down all the good+bad things the US has done since say WW2 vs China? You'll understand why a neutral third party is wary of both.
Oh I can understand this, yet my conclusion stands that China (CCP) is and remains a threat to democracy woldwide (which is my original point).
You are not disputing this, correct? (if anything, you're drawing an equivalence to the US, which I disagree with, but doesn't refute the conclusion on the original point)?
Was Russia merely challenging American superiority?
This is just bad comedy!
That said I think the big one is that China did not keep their word to the UK regarding Hong Kong. So that moves them to 'suspect' as far as trust goes with Western nations.
I think their secret police stations imbedded/hidden in western nations and their supposed use for secret forced repatriation of people really soured a lot of people/nations on trusting China's behavior.
They are doing a lot of saber rattling regarding Taiwan. Lots of flights as well as naval movements that have raised concerns.
People really don't like what they believe has been happening in Xinjiang.
And once one makes a promise, it is immaterial whether there was an "obligation or reason" to do so.
Really, all you are saying is China should be free to imprison, torture, and kill dissidents without any criticism, because another country was mean to them once upon a time.
Overall, terribly written useless AI slop.
- China can nationalize anything on their territory, including banks, buildings, land. Bank debt is not a real problem. Money aren't real. Imports/exports flows are very much in their favor whatever the currency.
- None of the things listed as China needs from US are really needed for their survival. What a nation needs to survive is locally produced goods (incl. food) and energy, and AFAIK, they have both in abundance.
The list can be simplified to:
1) continued access to tech advancements, without which they'll keep on improving on their own with less speed, but let's be honest, we mostly hate this new tech invading our lives. The 7nm they have is good enough for everything, incl. AI.
2) Access to US and allies markets. Seriously?? What US allies? EU, Africa and S.America will happily trade with them without the US.
3) Art. They can just pirate that one. In fact, once decoupling gets to a certain point, they can just ignore copyright completely. No copyright matches communism perfectly, if they ever think of going back to it.
- On the other hand, the things US needs from China will really crash the standard of living, not just the economy, until US replaces all the factories lost in China, and there are a lot of factories to replace. I don't even think US can easily replace the factories themselves without China.
I'm actually a bit scared of Russia resources and industrial design/research + China manufacturing. Just 2 things need to happen and the rest of the world is fcked for the next 100 years: Russia to get real leader(s) interested in their country, not personal profit/status, and China to address their reputation (see Poorly Made In China).
We can freeze them out of our financial systems. All they’ll have left is all the manufacturing, engineering and R&D talent. The numbers don’t lie, and we have total control over the number.
They are limited to the actual physical world, while we have them by the balls on office suites, IP, and Hollywood movies.
>The math is unforgiving: $5-10 trillion in hidden property losses against $5 trillion in bank equity. That’s not a solvency problem—it’s a physics problem.
No, that is not physics, it's finance pretty obviously. The government could deal with it in all sorts of way - lend the banks more money, nationalize them, print money and so on.
People have been saying that sort of thing for decades but China remains uncollapsed with more engineers than pretty much anywhere else, more production, more high speed rail, more new housing even if they overshot a bit and so on. The accounting can always be re-jigged if the physical stuff like trains and factories are working.
Is this some Trumpist unreality propaganda? Hello solar panels, just for a start.
garments yes, a lot, but not all by any means.
textiles (weaving, etc), less so.
itake•3mo ago
Also the ChatGPT writing style in this piece is really annoying to read.
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> Author’s Note: What follows is entirely my own opinion
is it? ChatGPT wrote most of it...
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> they import 30% of soybeans from us
I thought they stopped importing soybeans from the USA?
> Some legacy manufacturing
Where does the author think iPhones, automotive parts, computer / IT equipment, medical devices, machinery tools, are made?
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If the author is here, can they talk about Trump's TACO strategy? Its one thing to say Trump is just doing a chaos monkey, but if he always pulls back on his promises, then Trump is being consistent, not unreliable.
bee_rider•3mo ago
But usually ChatGPT is stylistically quite good, just missing deeper meaning, right? With this text it was stylistically quite poor (it spends more time reveling in how “everybody’s missing” something, than telling us what that thing is!), and I have no idea if it has deeper meaning because the style was too grating.