If the growing US-China rivalry leads to ‘the worst war ever’, what should AU do

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It's weird though, these lists of demands. The wise people in Beijing can't possibly suppose anyone will try to attend to them. So where do they come from? Why do these sets of demands exist? I assume as an action, it's held up as some kind of mirror to western pronouncements and requirements placed on China. And they expect no one to do anything. So Beijing can respond in kind and do nothing about whatever gets megaphoned at them. They intend for these "relationships" to fail? Or what, they're starting the protestant church of China?

I think China's going to win a lot of ground that we don't know they're winning. It'll be something about new regional norms that sees China in charge of more than expected or able to dictate an uncomfortably large number of terms for... something.

But I think we're in for a fair amount of "why are you punching yourself" kinds of interactions. "See, you're using your own hand and punching yourself, why are you punching yourself."



I wonder... modern, civilized confidence in the new world order, what used to be the Pax Americana, with "democracy" and "law" (as defined in American/western terms) as highest ideal goals... I wonder if that's near enough done that we won't be so shocked when it's no longer the norm? I mean because China is pulling some seriously neo-Protestant shit here.

Does it go that way though? China pulls a Reformation and we get a world with two versions of "democracy" and a hundred different "globalizations"?
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The western countries make demands on China all the time.  Why should anyone be even slightly surprised if China laid out requirements to quickly improve relationships?
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"The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

- Sun Tzu, the SNL Years
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"Holistic Prediction and Postdiction

Attention to the field would appear to have clear advantages for explanation of events, inasmuch as it allows for avoidance of the fundamental attribution error. But attention to a broad range of factors might mean that any event can be readily explained—perhaps too readily explained. If a host of factors is attended to, and if naive metaphysics and tacit epistemology support the view that multiple, interactive factors are usually operative in a given outcome, then any outcome may seem to be understandable, even inevitable, after the fact. And indeed, I. Choi, Dalai, and KimPrieto (2000) have shown that Koreans regard a larger number of factors as potentially relevant to explaining a given event. They gave European American, Asian American, and Korean participants a detective story and listed a large number of facts. Participants were asked to indicate which of the facts were irrelevant to solving the mystery. Koreans reported believing that far fewer facts were irrelevant than did European Americans. Asian Americans were intermediate between the other two groups.


Hindsight bias. An advantage of the more simplistic, rulebased stance of the Westerner may be that surprise is a frequent event. Post hoc explanations may be relatively difficult to generate, and epistemic curiosity may be piqued. The curiosity, in turn, may provoke a search for new, possibly superior models to explain events. In contrast, if Eastern theories about the world are less focused, and a wide range of factors are presumed to be potentially relevant to any given outcome, it may be harder to recognize that a particular outcome could not have been predicted. Hindsight bias (Fischhoff, 1975), or the tendency to assume that one knew all along that a given outcome was likely, might therefore be greater for Easterners." (p.299)

Nisbett, Richard & Peng, Keyin & Choi, Incheol & Norenzayan, Ara. (2001). Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic Versus Analytic Cognition. Psychological review. 108. 291-310. 10.1037/0033-295X.108.2.291.


There are no accidents.
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So China needs coking coal for steel-making for infrastructure projects as economic stimulus in response to covid + "covid-zero" ("Covid, but no calories!"), and China needs thermal coal (or electricity pricing reform) for a warmer 2022 than 2021, but none of this so much that the not-sanctions can lift without some form of concession, nor even so much that risky military encounters aren't still fun. So, four protips and a new ambassador to Oz. the new ambassador is a sheep warrior, nice, kind, conciliatory, meeting people without being hostile, etc, reportedly, but the protips remain weirdly so far out of step with actual international relationship talk that yadda yadda I don't know.


I suppose the thinking they want to encourage is "let's find other markets and leave the sea to China." Let's know our place in the world. A lackey to a real (declining) power in the US who should rethink some bullshit let's not talk about Japan and India.

Thanks China. Luv u2.
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You know, Australia is a constitutional monarchy. Does Beijing have any hot take on kings and queens? I wonder why we don't hear any tips on that. Maybe it's included in the not being controlled by third parties tip.

The other thing is "adversaries". Who started the enemies and adversaries talk? For that matter, who started the cold war mentality talk?
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With that in mind...


The long game - China’s grand strategy to displace American order

AUGUST 2, 2021
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order” by former Brookings Fellow Rush Doshi.

This introductory chapter summarizes the book’s argument. It explains that U.S.-China competition is over regional and global order, outlines what Chinese-led order might look like, explores why grand strategy matters and how to study it, and discusses competing views of whether China has a grand strategy. It argues that China has sought to displace America from regional and global order through three sequential “strategies of displacement” pursued at the military, political, and economic levels. The first of these strategies sought to blunt American order regionally, the second sought to build Chinese order regionally, and the third — a strategy of expansion — now seeks to do both globally. The introduction explains that shifts in China’s strategy are profoundly shaped by key events that change its perception of American power....



gggggggggg


Xi is leading China’s aggressive new strategy, but he didn’t invent it

Is it Xi Jinping or is it China? Is the aggressive, illiberal and triumphalist direction that China has taken over the past decade a result of one man, “the chairman of everything,” the Chinese Communist Party general secretary? Or does Xi’s bumptiousness reflect something larger, perhaps more frightening and permanent: the united will of the 80 million-member Chinese Communist Party?

The answer to this question is not merely academic. It’s crucial as the United States seeks to fashion a policy to deal with China. And it forms the subtext of the most important book on China in years: Rush Doshi’s “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.”

Doshi’s central argument is that Xi is not new and different. And that the woeful direction he’s taking China constitutes far less a fundamental change than a logical expansion on his predecessors’ policies. Xi may be an accelerant on China’s nasty turn, but, Doshi argues, China is following a trajectory that has long been in place....


« Last Edit: July 17, 2022, 02:03:26 PM by Calach Pfeffer »
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Since your queen remembers what war is like, she's not on the sidelines trying to promote one.  If she were, I'm sure China would be happy to remind her that her country's imperial excesses ended very badly.  Since she doesn't try to personally set standards for all countries outside what's left of the British Empire, China has no quarrels with her.  As it stands, one by one, the remaining members of the commonwealth are demoting her from their postage, currency, and head of state status.


There is no grand strategy to replace the US order.  It's a simple matter of enough countries realizing that keeping their populations as serfs to provide cheap resources to the self-appointed creators and arbiters of the "world order" and "international community."  Perhaps this graphic will make it plainer how things are changing now that the US is finding it harder and harder to "save" other countries by bombings and instigating coups.

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Gainsaying isn't discussion.

I personally find it relieving to have Chinese actions make sense. And having to like "China" before Chinese actions do make sense isn't an example of having Chinese actions make sense. I'd prefer to have some way to respect their histrionics that doesn't involve joining them.

The idea for instance that China presently has and for a long time has had a grand strategy, that's respectable. If the miserable fudgepackers have all this time merely been bellyaching about history leaving them behind and blaming the west for it...... nope.




Ironic side note: happened to click on a wikipedia page. Turns out Japan made 21 demands, and that's what started the Century of Humiliation.

What a jolly prankster this new China has become.
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Focusing everything about how the global political climate is changing on China is massive oversimplification.  China didn't force most of SE Asia to skip joining US sanctions and boycotts against Russia.  Even India bailed on that.  Of course, you could make up some vaste conspiracy about China secretly applying pressure in Asia, but that won't explain Mexico failing to fall in line with US suggestions about joining.

If you want Chinese actions to make sense, reread that list instead of just the western commentaries.  China wants a world where no one country (not even China) can bomb countries half way around the world to support its defense contractors and wants to be able to buy and sell without every deal being turned into a lame spy novel by the US government and those who obey the US.

China wants a world where foreign aid improves the economies of receiving countries, and thereby makes them into better trading partners.  Chinese foreign aid doesn't require governments to adjust their internal functions to please China.  If a country turns down a Chinese offer on a project, China's response isn't to sanction or take negative actions.  Instead, it bids on the next project.  China also charges far less interest because it's in this for long term mutual benefit (note the part about better trading partners).  A quick check of economic grown rates in African countries pre and post BRI clearly shows that the majority of BRI recipients have economically benefited more from Chinese assistance than from far longer assistance from the west.

History tried to leave China behind.  China decided to catch up.  Once it made enough progress, it saw opportunities to help other countries out of eternal poverty and took them.

The side effect is that poor countries are no longer primarily dependent on the US, EU, and close associates when famine comes knocking.  They no longer have to meet "standards" imposed from outside in order to grow their economies and improve the lives of their people.  They don't have to agree to host foreign bases for little or no money to get better aid packages.  They don't have to worry about getting sucked into a war started on behalf of someone else and then get left dealing with the mess when the country pulling the strings decides to turn its attention elsewhere.

Even Mexico has told the US it's not going to support the US in its international intrigues.  Mexico has enough problems and is smart enough to not be used by the US to cause more problems.  Imagine how much better life could be for Australians if the primary purpose of the military was defending the country instead of preparing to be used as cannon fodder by America and the UK.

Next, strap in tight and imagine country after country telling the US "You are free to boycott any country you like.  We are free to boycott any country we like.  You are no longer free to demand that we support your unilateral sanctions and boycotts against countries around the world."

Does this mean that a "bad" country could do anything it likes?  No.  The UN was created so that the International Community (ALL nations) could take steps.  Individual countries can always slap their own restrictions.

What it would be is the end to piracy under the guise of unilateral sanctions.  No more US Navy hijackings of ships that carry goods to or from countries the US doesn't like.  It would also mean the end of US theft of assets of other countries.  The people of Afghanistan are on the edge of starvation, but after 20 years of bombing them, the US also stole billions of dollars on the way out.

Ending the US Imposed version of the world order and giving even a modest amount of that power over to the UN could finally move the world towards the peaceful path the UN was created to bring.
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Yesterday, a legally armed US citizen shot and killed a heavily armed mall shooter who had already killed three shoppers. Just because American people kill American people doesn't mean Chinese people have to kill Chinese people. But American people do kill American people. Ideally therefore China should develop this characteristic. The US is after all the moral standard, and Chinese actions should be developed in that light.
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China wants a world where foreign aid improves the economies of receiving countries, and thereby makes them into better trading partners.

Like Sri Lanka?



You know, the rosy picture is rosy.
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'If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy': Beijing's fresh threat to Australia

By Jonathan Kearsley, Eryk Bagshaw and Anthony Galloway
November 18, 2020 — 6.10pm

Beijing has issued an extraordinary attack on the Australian government, accusing it of "poisoning bilateral relations" in a deliberately leaked document that threatens to escalate tensions between the two countries.

The government document goes further than any public statements made by the Chinese Communist Party, accusing the Morrison government of attempting "to torpedo" Victoria's Belt and Road deal, and blaming Canberra for "unfriendly or antagonistic" reports on China by independent Australian media....



Was that the first "enemy" talk time?
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What's this? Chinese investment in Australia is down and anyway Australia has been closing up shop?

https://home.kpmg/au/en/home/insights/2022/04/demystifying-chinese-investment-in-australia-april-2022.html#:~:text=In%20the%202021%20calendar%20year,billion%20to%20AUD%200.8%20billion.

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/economic-diplomacy-under-doona-australian-investors-dump-china

https://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/investment-statistics/statistics-on-where-australia-invests


But what? Chinese investment in Australia was always a fraction of Australian investment in China? Is that actually true? That can't be true. Is it?


If it is, I guess that's part of the, uh, "grievance". Way too much buying of commodities without being able to own the means of production.

You know what, sure, here's the golden goose, you can have it.
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