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All my adult life, China has given me cheap material goods. Whatever they do in their country is their own problem. They’ve never interfered in my politics or s
by spaceman_2020 2mo ago
All my adult life, China has given me cheap material goods. Whatever they do in their country is their own problem. They’ve never interfered in my politics or started any wars
- vlovich123 2mo ago> They’ve never interfered in my politics or started any wars But they have. I dont know what specific country you are referring to but China has interfered with US elections as well as Canada, Taiwan, and Australia in addition to many many others. They’ve annexed Tibet (1950), fought India (1962) and Vietnam (1979) among others and more recently in 2020 a deadly skirmish with India. They’ve generally shifted their focus to cyber military actions but you’d have to be pretty naive they won’t start to exercise military control over Taiwan when/if they get a chance.
- gadders 2mo ago[flagged]
- Parae 2mo agoSame as killing Palestinian and Yemeni kids if some westerner need a transplant, I guess ?
- 21asdffdsa12 2mo agoThey have colonies and generally aspire to become basically the old british empire as a longterm strategy? At least thats what they push with that "century of humiliation" comeback strategy internally..
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- cpursley 2mo agoNo new wars in 47 years is a pretty good run vs other major powers.
- 21asdffdsa12 2mo agoLets ask xinjang?
- well_ackshually 2mo agoRepression of their own citizens is another subject. It is of course highly problematic and should be condemned as much as possible, but in the same way that if the US decided to repress mormons violently, it remains internal affairs and not an imperialistic threat to the countries around them.
- dudefeliciano 2mo ago> it remains internal affairs and not an imperialistic threat That's pre 1945 style thinking, which is coming back with a vengeance.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- Foobar8568 2mo agoLet's ask black people, minorities and foreigns with the wrong skin color in the US? What about women too ? Especially in red states.
- cpursley 2mo agoI imagine they are better off and more developed than any of the Muslim regions the US has bombed the ever living crap of continuously over the past 50 years...
- jmyeet 2mo agoSo I don't support the re-education camps that happened in Xinjiang. Exactly what happened here is still a bit of an unknown because unfortunately there's a ton of misinformation. Whatever did happen, you can go see yourself. It's not a closed region. There are a ton of Youtube videos of people going. But I hate this talking point for one primary reason: almost nobody who brings it up actually cares about the Uyghurs. It's just a talkijng point. How do I know this? Because of Palestine. If Benjamin Netanyahu turned around tomorrow and treated Palestinians as Uyghurs were and are treated and developed the region like China does today then he would win the Nobel Peace Prize and Palestinians would be unquestionably better off. It wouldn't be sufficient mind you. Israel's crimes in Palestine are America's crimes because Israel could not exist without the economic and military support of the US, political cover in the UN and international community and the political will of Us domestically. It would collapse tomorrow if the US withdraw support. So I don't want to hear a thing from China hawks and skeptics about Xinjiang unless they're louder what Israel is doing to the region.
- don_esteban 2mo agoNow compare that to what the USA did in the same time frame. Pay special attention to people killed (either directly, or indirectly) outside of their own borders. Who should you be worried about?
- isoprophlex 2mo agoBoth of them.
- vector_spaces 2mo agoFor a concrete example, consider e.g. Operation Condor which displaced my own family > Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor; Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a campaign of political repression by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America, involving intelligence operations, coups, and assassinations of left-wing sympathizers in South America. Operation Condor formally existed from 1975 to 1983. Condor was formally created in November 1975, when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's spy chief, Manuel Contreras, invited 50 intelligence officers from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to the Army War Academy in Santiago, Chile. The operation was backed by the United States, which financed the covert operations. France is alleged to have collaborated but has denied involvement. The operation ended with the fall of the Argentine junta in 1983. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
- vlovich123 2mo agoWhataboutism isn’t a useful game. The claim was that they don’t interfere with politics of external countries. They do. The claim is they don’t engage in warfare when they do, just exclusively in the digital domain for now. Believing it’ll stay there is naive. Playing the moral superiority game is uninteresting in either direction. Games of power inherently are devoid of morality.
- darkwater 2mo agoOk, let's follow your rules then. If we remove morality, we are left with what? Pure numbers? If you want to be technically correct China foreign interventions are > 0, indeed. But the scale of US actions is, I would dare to say, at least one magnitude bigger. An empire should be judged for how they treat their own citizens, their allies and their enemies. And if we do that, maybe China and the US are not so different.
- potamic 2mo agoIf you're making a case of this vs what the US has interfered with, it simply does not stack up. Of course it's naive to think they won't start interfering like the US once they gain the leverage, but to a neutral party it likely doesn't matter which of these two ends up as the superpower on the global stage.
- pell 2mo agoOne, as bad as it is, has its biggest critics live and speak out freely. The other silences, imprisons or kills them.
- spaceman_2020 2mo agoThe Indian wars were border skirmishes at most. Literally 2,000 soldiers dead on both sides combined by official count. Very few civilian casualties. The 2020 skirmish was way smaller with single digit casualties. Again, almost no civilian casualties because it's a largely empty region in the first place You really can't compare this to the kind of wars America has started. Casualties - both civilian and military - stood in the hundreds of thousands
- microtonal 2mo agoAnd then we haven't included Bibi-enabling, allowing a genocide to take place and then suggesting it is a real estate opportunity.
- spaceman_2020 2mo agoI mean most of Chinese "wars" have been border issues. Most of these border issues themselves stem from badly drawn borders post colonial withdrawal. These are understandable, if not justifiable - countries tug at each other to figure out where their territories start/end. A hostile neighbor at your borders is a legitimate national threat America's wars have been in countries so far away that they could've never posed any threat whatsoever to America as a nation. Really not the same thing
- vlovich123 2mo ago> America's wars have been in countries so far away that they could've never posed any threat whatsoever to America as a nation That’s fallacious reasoning that ignores how easy travel is and how cheap an attack can cause massive damage. 9/11 was massive attack from countries far away. We regularly see commercial drones being used in warfare causing huge damage and casualties. There was the 2012 terrorist attack on our CIA facilities in Benghazi. Terrorism entrenched abroad impacts our security. Is the response we take incorrect and makes it worse / are there things we do to provoke this? Some things yes, other things are like having Israel as an ally which is a culturally, socially and economically aligned power in the region even though it’s hated in the region. Also don’t forget the US is a major maritime power. China is trying to be, Russia is not. Maritime powers force project more broadly because a) is the nature of being a maritime power b) you have to protect shipping to make sure trade routes are uninmpeded. B is particularly important as it also helps explain the wars (eg the Iran war is about the strait and trade and who collects money, not really about nuclear capabilities).
- teiferer 2mo ago> China has interfered with US elections Wow, that newest of Trump's distraction talking points made it surprisingly quickly to the uncontended (?) and commonly accepted facts in HN conversations.
- vlovich123 2mo agoYou’re misinformed. The Biden administration in 2020 declassified that Beijing has prepared to latch influence campaigns in 2020 but backed off. December 2023 a report was released that they had changed track and engaged in influence operations during the 2022 midterms. Biden’s administration also warned about influence operations in the 2024 election cycle. The Biden DOJ unsealed multiple indictments against Chinese intelligence officers, state-backed hackers (such as APT41), and illegal Ministry of State Security agents acting inside the U.S. You’re very misinformed if you think Trump’s latest blathering are completely wrong. I generally don’t pay attention to him so I don’t know exactly how he lied or exaggerated but I’m sure he did. It doesn’t negate the real and active influence operations China is engaged in
- div 2mo agoYou’re very misinformed if you think democrats and republicans arent playing the “election influence fiddle” in exactly the same way; legitimising the elections they won, casting doubt on those they lost, all while achieving the main goal of making sure the population doesnt forget who their so called enemies are.
- teiferer 2mo agoLots of assumptions about what I think. I pointed out that Trump put the topic on the agenda a few days ago and now it comes up in HN comments. No more, no less. Whether it has merit is a different question. Point is that the reach of him setting topics goes far which is hard to deny.
- redsocksfan45 2mo ago[dead]
- PunchyHamster 2mo agoAt this point with how volatile US is I'd rather have China control Taiwan than US. And this comment isn't about putting any good light on China. Lately US acts like they want to compensate for Russia fucking up less things around the world
- yekanchi 2mo agoin contrast this is USA's main job is to Interfere in any country it can in favor of its own goals. not related to what the people of that state really want. north Americans must stay silent about interfering in other states internal issues.
- severino 2mo ago> China has interfered with US elections Wow. I bet we'll soon be reading on HN that Biden stole the elections back in 2020.
- Ancapistani 2mo agoNo one who believed it definitely was has changed their mind, they've just at most gotten quiet about it. No one who believed it definitely was not has changed their mind, they've just at most gotten quiet about it. No one who believed it could have been but that the claim has not been proven have changed our minds, we've just decided that there's no way to know what actually happened.
- RobotToaster 2mo agoTibet was part of China since the Quing dynasty in the 17th century, it briefly declared independence during the chaos of the Chinese civil wars, but it was never recognised. Vietnam is usually recognised as a low point in Chinese history. There's been an ongoing border dispute between China and India for over 100 years, thanks to some questionable line drawing by the British. Also, referring to the parent comment, of these only the border skirmish with India was within my lifetime.
- rithdmc 2mo agoDid anything else happen in Vietnam in the 70s?
- novoreorx 2mo agoI'm surprised to see that this hasn't received enough downvotes to be grayed out. It seems those who can downvote on HN mostly believe this BS
- ksk23 2mo agoThat is nothing compared to the us
- jmyeet 2mo ago"But Tibet!!!" has to be the most intellectually lazy pro-American imperialism argument, particularly when you consider the US history of regime change [1]. Heck, this unwinnable war we're fighting in Iran has a direct through line to not one but two such incidents, specifically the coup in 1953 and US involvement in the Islamic Revolution in 1979 (ie making sure the fundamentalists won instead of the communists). And weirdly a significant number of these puppets end up turning into enemies and far worse problems (eg Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden). Tibet specifically is funny because one of the things China did was end slavery in Tibet [2]. A large percentage of the population were "serfs" but that was a generous translation because these "serfs" could be traded. You know, like property. Like slaves. And Vietnam? They had a small border dispute. What did the US do to Vietnam? And Cambodia? And Laos? But the funniest claim of all here is election interference. The foreign interference in US elections conversation begins and ends with Israel with an honorable mention to Russia for running some Facebook ads. Just last night we had a debate in the Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan, a race that AIPAC proxies (eg UDP) have spent upwards of $60 million. On a primary. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_serfdom_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet_serfdom_controversy
- dgroshev 2mo agoDid the US annex Vietnam or Iran? There's a qualitative difference between interference and outright annexation, with borders redrawn and cultures violently assimilated.
- rikima_ 2mo agoWhat people don't know is that China's "war" against Vietnam in 1979 was actually a pledge of allegiance to the United States, a way of demonstrating its stance. This event was followed by the longest honeymoon period in Sino-US relations, which eventually lead to China's rise.
- stiltzkin 2mo ago[dead]
- altmanaltman 2mo agoI mean them selling the cheap material goods is politics, and they use that a lot to threaten other countries. They constantly bully neighbors and assert claims on foreign terriroty. They might not be the comic book villians people are making them out to be but your take is just ignorant
- spaceman_2020 2mo agoSuch horrible villains, threatening the world with cheap stuff!
- altmanaltman 2mo agoNice straw man. The point is not "cheap stuff" but using economic leverage and territorial pressure on others because of the "cheap stuff." And yes, all China does is produce cheap stuff for the world, nothing else at all lol.
- t0bia_s 2mo agoDo you remember covid and where it come from?
- spaceman_2020 2mo agoA disease can come from anywhere Unless you're trying to imply that China engineered the whole thing - extraordinary claim that will require extraordinary evidence
- dudefeliciano 2mo agoThey did downplay the effects of covid and spread misinformation about it as well as silence the researches and journalists who were first trying to ring the alarm bells
- watwut 2mo agoAre you talking about Trump and conservatives here?
- dudefeliciano 2mo agoNope[1]. I am getting tired of people looking up to China just because the governments of Europe and US are completely fucked. China is no better. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation_by_Chi...
- oneshtein 2mo agoMy country did the same thing to me. :-/
- dormento 2mo agoMy very western country as well.
- t0bia_s 2mo ago
- b3lvedere 2mo agoOh i bet they have not directly interfered with your politics, but they do interfer a lots in various things. More than any other country on this planet? I don't know. China is big. Really really big.
- blackhaz 2mo agoBut they're happily selling drone parts to Russians dropping bombs on civilians (or "whatever").
- xquce 2mo agoYes and the USA trained and gave weapons to the Taliban and many other terror organizations. "China sold none weapons to another country" really pales in comparison.
- preisschild 2mo agoThis is wrong. The US did not give weapons to the Taliban (voluntarily). If you mean Operation Cyclone their receiver was not the Taliban but the mujahadeen, which, yes, consisted of Taliban, but also of enemies of the taliban (northern alliance)
- jeltz 2mo agoThe Northern Alliance contain some people who are probably even worse than the Taliban so while you are technically right I am not sure it matters.
- forafistfulof 2mo ago[flagged]
- witrak 2mo agoRussian bot detected?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- boondongle 2mo agoWhat are you expecting when you're physically in another country attempting to annex it? The only reason I suspect Iranian proxies are not doing the same in the US is right now the US is just Trump in Iran with 2/3rds of the country not supporting him. The day a bunch of civilians bite it partying in Miami, that calculation changes. The US is "guilty" of materially supporting Ukraine in a bid to defend itself. The US isn't mad at Russia or China for doing the same for Iran as this is all... fairly normal in geo politics.
- KronisLV 2mo ago> Whatever they do in their country is their own problem. Idk to me it feels like human compassion and ethics dictates that you at least have to care a bit even about the things in other countries. Otherwise all sorts of horrible domestic policies would be justifiable.
- miroljub 2mo agoStar Fleet first directive has been proven right many times.
- preisschild 2mo ago> They’ve never interfered in my politics or started any wars They actively back russia and deliver them weapons and support them with their attempted Genocide in Ukraine. They also actively threaten Taiwan. Not to mention them claiming almost the entire South China Sea even though this being against international law and threatening smaller nations into submitting to them
- PatronBernard 2mo agoFor you personally no, but there's plenty of scandals of politicians being influenced by the Chinese, case in point in my own country: https://www.ft.com/content/601df41f-8393-46ad-9f74-fe64f8ea1a3f?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/601df41f-8393-46ad-9f74-fe64f8ea1... Don't be naive or I might even think you're working for the Chinese :-)
- cechmaster 2mo agoThey have their own genocide in western china
- Cookingboy 2mo agoAccording to the U.S. State Department, they literally do not: https://law.stanford.edu/press/state-department-lawyers-concluded-insufficient-evidence-to-prove-genocide-in-china/ https://law.stanford.edu/press/state-department-lawyers-conc... That whole thing was a very successful propaganda campaign, making people believing China has been mass murdering Uyghurs.
- oceansweep 2mo agoThe article says otherwise. It opens with it isn’t genocide but is crimes against humanity. The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
- theplumber 2mo agoThat's a very selfish way to think of it. Whatever they do in their country does not stay in their country because China is becoming a superpower so you should expect it (as it's normal) to interfere and affect policy abroad. For example Lithuania has been punished for letting Taiwan opening an embassy (in Lithuania). So China cares what other countries do in their country. Without EU support Lithuania could have faced very harsh consequences. That's just an example. Another example is the "secret police" stations undeclared overseas police stations operated by China in various countries (i.e. U.S for example). China gave you cheap material goods because that was its business but you have to keep in mind it's an authoritarian, communist regime. It carries an extra risk on top of the potential economic coercion if you give it too power. At least you know that U.S is only after the money and does not want to turn your country in a communist "utopia". That being said this does not mean we should ban Chinese AI models because China didn't cross any red lines(yet) compared with Russia for example.
- dooom 2mo ago"U.S is only after the money and does not want to turn your country in a communist "utopia"" Not mutually exclusive, just take a look at Venezuela.
- theplumber 2mo agoThat looks like to support my point. The US is just for the money. It’s not like they brought them communism or whatever Venezuela has there. They simply said they don’t care about “spreading” democracy anymore as long as the regime plays ball. I think they did that anyway in the past but at least it was not the “official” policy.
- sailfast 2mo agoWhat country do you live in? Nevermind it doesn’t matter because literally every country has had their politics interfered with.
- Sohcahtoa82 2mo agoI wish I could be this blissfully naive. China is becoming an intellectual powerhouse in addition to a manufacturing powerhouse and runs huge spyware and propaganda campaigns. Read up about T95, MBOX, TVBOX, or other Android TV Boxes advertised as generic TV streaming devices advertised as "unlocked" or capable of accessing free content. They're loaded with spyware/malware, typically BADBOX. Some of them will record audio and record your network traffic and send it to China. I'm also convinced that the anti-education thread winding its way through US culture is being amplified by China. They likely didn't start it, as it's been growing for decades, but China will happily keep it going.
- john-h-k 2mo agoI personally think it’s bad when countries commit genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
- Paradigma11 2mo agoLol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_warrior_diplomacy