China's endgame?

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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #45 on: December 24, 2020, 06:14:51 PM »
I would think that any sane nation would realize that genocide is wrong [...]

In a world where the nature of human rights is a contested question, there is no "I would think..." There is only "tell us what you mean, China, and make it a good story because we already have lots of our own ideas."

Anything that China believes creates obligations for everyone else in exactly the same way it does for individual people - not at all.

That's to say, unless there is some reason to suppose the entity "China" has transcended its origin as a product of human beings, and we are therefore more obliged to it than we would be to some people with opinions.

It is farcical propaganda to assert that China is merely trying to create good things in a world that need not take notice. And out of date too. Tao guan yang hui is so 2010 and expired under Xi.

As for China being the injured party, with that much economic power under their belt, claiming injury is ludicrous play acting. It's national psychodrama for profit for as long as you do not state what can make you whole, and even then it will remain lies and propaganda unless you come clean and state that lack of restitution makes you enemies. Put up or shut up, basically.
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #46 on: December 24, 2020, 07:23:53 PM »
Might be the downside of great power status: you have to also stop being the whiny punk power or be perceived as setting up for war
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #47 on: December 24, 2020, 07:40:28 PM »
kinda brings us full circle too: whiny punk power inflicts economic damage, is now great?
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #48 on: December 28, 2020, 05:38:26 PM »
Hows this if you don't agree with "I don't think"

After losing the war having a few weeks to reflect on why the whole "Master Race" thing was wrong and a poor excuse for genocide, the vast majority of Germans realized that their nation (and many of their own people) had done wrong things to Germans citizens as well as to the citizens of many other countries.    Instead, the Germans did acknowledge and apologized all of their actions, outlawed denial of the Holocaust, and make sure to educate their children about all the evils of the Nazi regime to help make sure there were no repeats.

What the Germans never did was make up pathetic excuses about how unprovoked warfare and mass murder of civilians was perfectly OK in some placed because some of the countries they did this to didn't have the right kinds of governments that met the "Calech Standard" of what makes slaughter of civilians a crime.

On the flip size, Japan refuses to fully acknowledge numerous crimes in numerous countries, some of which have very firm adherence to post war human rights standards.  Japan refuses to teach facts of what happened to its children, thereby increasing the chance that such actions could take place again.

By your claims, if 25 years from now, Japan does a repeat and includes both China and Australia among its victims, Australia would deserve no acknowledgment, no apology, and expect no efforts by Japan to warn future generations that biological warfare experiments in occupied Sydney, enslaving Australian women to serve as comfort women for Japanese troops, and "the rape of Melbourne" were even slightly bad.  Instead, you would be agreeing to the worst parts never being acknowledged and the unprovoked invasion to be taught as a fully justified action of the very honorable Japanese military.  And all of this is because for some reason you can only vaguely define, China and its people don't deserve to be treated as well as the worst country that Hitler invaded and you would prefer to throw your own nation under the bus than give China any chance of having a single abuse by Japan be acknowledged.

Or would Japan owe Australia better treatment than it gave to EVERY country it invaded in WWII?  If so why?

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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #49 on: December 28, 2020, 07:29:44 PM »
One thing puzzling me here is the British Empire didn't lose the opium wars. What's with the examples of Japan and Germany? They both lost their wars. So, China's emergence now as an international operator and standards setter is like having won the long war? USA, UK, Australia must just suck it up because they're the losers now?

China waited for a messed up WTO appellate body, a fraught presidential transition, and a world economy depressed by a pandemic before it struck Australia. Indeed that does read like the works of an opportunistic enemy rather than a partner or a friend. And perhaps now even a triumphant enemy too. I guess we'll have to apologise for what we've done wrong.


By the way, as a procedural item and as I'm sure you know, practice and principle aren't the same thing. This "Calech [sic] Standard" you've mentioned a few times, it isn't a standard - at best it's a report of historical practice - and it isn't mine - it belongs to us all.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 07:36:04 PM by Calach Pfeffer »
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #50 on: December 29, 2020, 04:59:30 PM »
I noticed you've conveniently side-stepped Japan's failure to acknowledge its actions vs Germany stepping up and going to great efforts to avoid a repeat.  Most of Europe trusts Germany.  Most of east Asia doesn't have the same level of trust in Japan.

It is easier to get an apology our of the loosing side, but not impossible.  The US is finally taking some concrete steps to deal with its abuse of Native Americans.  Better late that never.

To expect China to forgive and forget items that were never properly acknowledged is like expecting African Americans for forget all the murders of black "suspects" at the hands of police in 2020 (and before) until real reforms take place.  China is pragmatic and will continue doing business, but the repeated abuse it suffered at the hands of countries that claim moral superiority while continuing to abuse their own people and others is not something China will fail to consider.

Please explain the "historical practice" of refusing to acknowledge abuses of countries that don't meet your claimed standard of "historical practice."  Something tells me that your viewpoint would greatly shift if you were subjected to the "historical practices" (and even current practices) of the Australian police in dealing with Indigenous Australians.



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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #51 on: December 29, 2020, 07:12:08 PM »
I noticed you've conveniently side-stepped Japan's failure to acknowledge its actions vs Germany stepping up and going to great efforts to avoid a repeat.  Most of Europe trusts Germany.  Most of east Asia doesn't have the same level of trust in Japan.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't know what you're getting at with the comparison - something about how nations should act? But it sounds like bullshit in the same way China's century of humiliation sounds like bullshit: facts dressed up. Terrible things occurred, those terrible things are now understood to be motivating, the terrible doers must x y and z. It's bullshit because nations aren't people. They include people, but they don't relate to one another as people relate. They aren't the same kind of entity. And while people can take up the cause of a nation, a nation taking up the cause of a people is... necessarily and always suspect. If the grief and anger of a people exists, and is promoted, then that grief and anger is now something else. The moral status of that promotion is dependent on the moral status of the promoter, not those who suffered.

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To expect China to forgive and forget items that were never properly acknowledged is like expecting African Americans for forget all the murders of black "suspects" at the hands of police in 2020 (and before) until real reforms take place.

It's not. When African Americans are in possession of sufficiently global economic power, then it'll be like that.

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  China is pragmatic and will continue doing business, but the repeated abuse it suffered at the hands of countries that claim moral superiority while continuing to abuse their own people and others is not something China will fail to consider.

That's that same bullshit again, the wildly inappropriate pretence that the national is the personal. The battered wife has a good job now and a nice place to live, and the abusive ex-husband can't come hang around that much anymore.....

Oh... South China Sea.

Yeah. China lost those opium wars because it never was a decent ocean-going power. Gunboats made them lose. And the US can still sail its navy around the place. The century of humiliation continues. The wife married another deadbeat.

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Please explain the "historical practice" of refusing to acknowledge abuses of countries that don't meet your claimed standard of "historical practice."  Something tells me that your viewpoint would greatly shift if you were subjected to the "historical practices" (and even current practices) of the Australian police in dealing with Indigenous Australians.

Something that occurred in history. Probably less ambiguously titled if named "historical occurrences". You've been attributing moral positions to me while I've been attempting impersonal description. Now if I'd said something like "It was right and proper that X used to do Y", then I'd be in a pickle.
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #52 on: December 30, 2020, 06:39:05 PM »
I've pointed out that 2 countries that lost one war took totally different approaches to their misdeeds and ended up with very different relationships with their neighbors.  No blathering about moral status somehow being independent will change the simple fact that Germany's efforts to make sure its actions were never repeated led to trust and Japan's efforts to whitewash and glorify what it did remains a source of distrust and friction between Japan and many of its neighbors.


Your response was to claim China was somehow unworthy and undeserving of getting the same treatment from Japan than Germany gave to European countries.  That sounds like xenophobic BS to me.

Your attempt to compare claims of ownership of a few disputed sandbars to what Japan undisputedly did to large numbers of humans is sad.

Yes, China lost the opium wars.  The reason doesn't matter.  The lack of even a polite acknowledgement contributes to Chinese distrust of western powers, which is simple and logical.  If you think calling China pragmatic for dealing with countries that performed acts that violate their own self-proclaimed moral superiority is BS, would you prefer China instead decide to not deal with untrustworthy countries?  Your claim of confusing personal vs national is also BS.  Nations are run by people and those people remember abuse of their nations just as easily as they remember personal abuse.  You certainly have no trouble remembering all your complaints about China.

You seem to think that China is somehow not entitled to point out hypocrisy of other nations that frequently criticize China.   The Soviets weren't like the west either.  They just never held back on criticizing obvious hypocrisy when the US or one of its allies did something blatantly against western claims of being unshakable bastions of freedom, democracy, and human rights.  Now that China has finally fired back in the "Slap Other Countries via Twitter War" and pointed out very bad things done by Australia and the US, you've gone for a gold medal in mental gymnastics to try to somehow prove that China's government somehow isn't permitted to make such comments and that any such comments should be ignored without regards to the facts of the issue.  In the end, all of your BS arguments boil down to nothing more logical than "Not like us!"

Your personal opinion of the China and its government won't magically render facts pointed out by the government void no matter how many bizarre reasons you come up with.  If China decides to point out that on December 16, 2020, the US was one of only 2 countries in the world to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution  for Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, that the UK, the EU countries, Canada, and Australia were among the 51 countries that abstained, and that 130 countries (including China) voted in favor, those votes are just as much inarguable facts as they would be if Scott Morrison held a press conference on the subject.

How can you believe the US is a country that any nation should trust if its police regularly abuse and murder a disadvantaged minority?  International rules on human rights as well as the US Constitution (plus federal and state laws) make it very plain that this is wrong.  How can you complaint about any other country not having an exact copy of rights laws the US, UK, Australia, and more decide can be ignored at will?  How can you still claim that only your favored countries are allowed to point out facts about other countries?  Oh, that's right.  You'll just dredge up some new claim about why Calech-favored-nations have special privileges because of "historical practice" or some equally undefinable BS to try to justify your "Not like us!" views.



Ignoring Calech-World for the moment, I've been observing the hatred of China in other places.  Some of it is people who miss the cold war and desperately want a new one.  For many politicians, the demonizing of China (or the "I'm not really a racist, just substitute "CCP" for "China" and "Chinese people" in all the hateful things I've already said." subset of politicians) is a standard ploy.  Find something different (Not like us!), look for flaws (every country has some), treat all negative rumors as facts, and magnify it all into a giant threat to your very way of life.  This is an easy way to unite the voters into voting for whoever promises to protect them from the scariest stories.

Then there are the people who try to denigrate every accomplishment of China.  If China builds a bridge, the instant response of these types is either "It will collapse" or even "I hope it collapses and kills a lot of people."  Some just never noticed that if you want to buy low quality products at cut rate prices, China will still sell those to you just as fast as China will sell you better products at a higher price.  Many people had a similar attitude towards Japanese cars as cheap and easily broken in the 1970's, but even a relative of mine who participated in fighting the Japanese had to (VERY!) grudgingly admit that a 1980 Toyota was an extremely good car for the money, but not everyone caught onto Japanese car quality as fast as he did.

Those that have finally realized that although China is not the leader in a number of areas, but that it does lead in others and is catching up in many, have another worry.  The British Empire was the most powerful force on Earth, both economically and militarily for a long time.  Sitting on top for a long time usually leads to laziness.  If it didn't, we'd all be under the Roman Empire or else the Mongols would have taken the the whole world.  The US has been #1 since 1945 and has been unrivaled since the fall of the Soviet Union.  A perfect example of US laziness is summed up in one simple question "If the US can put a man on the Moon, why can't the US put a man on the Moon?"  Yes, it was a great accomplishment, but then the technology itself was thrown away.

Now, something different has arisen to rival.  Unlike highly expansionist empires, China doesn't build a vast military and try to encircle the world with colonies and military bases.  Although officially communist, China has shown economic expansion at a rate and duration never before seen and has been passing the US in more and more ways.  From the western perspective, denial was the first reaction, but now major investors take market positions based on Chinese economic numbers, not in spite of them.  For those who've moved past denial, the concept of the US actually falling to the second largest economy in the world is very hard to accept, but this is where laziness comes in.

The launch of Sputnik lead to a nationwide push in science and engineering that enabled the US to win the Moon Race as well as to have technological developments that led to more economic growth, thus enabling it to bankrupt the Soviets in the arms race.  The problem is that it's just so much easier to keep saying "But we went to the Moon over 50 years ago and we're still number 1" and finding ways to complain about China and to try to slow Chinese development than to step up and kick start science, technology, and the economy again.

In a way, it's sad.  Imagine where the US (and the world) technological level would be today if the US had never felt even modestly rivaled by the Soviet Union.  If the US was smart, instead of clamoring for war (or denying that some "Not Like Us!" system could really work), it could be actively pushing science, technology, and the economy in a determined (but peaceful) competition with China.  In the end, this would benefit the whole world.  Instead, America seems intent on letting a few crazy billionaires decide which areas the country will remain competitive in while the rest of the economy falls into stagnation.

Either way, the Chinese economic, scientific, and technological progress will continue no matter what many in the west wish would happen.  To get back to the original title of this thread, China's endgame is further progress no matter what any other country decides to do.

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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #53 on: January 07, 2021, 01:16:25 PM »
Dude, that was weird. It's all so much easier if you remember that "China" isn't old. At a stretch it has 72 years. The current constitution is younger than me. The rest is lies because culture and history aren't government. Let the novelists, playwrights, and poets eulogise the dead. If the political suits want to score points against current opponents, fine. But they aren;t the keepers of the nation's legacy.
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #54 on: January 07, 2021, 06:43:44 PM »
btw, the kind of unhinged allegation you get when the cultural, the political, and the historical are as conflated as they are in China, it probably behoves us all to yadda yadda yadda and so on.

It is interesting though, how poorly the Chinese system separates those. Might be something about the endgame in there.
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #55 on: January 07, 2021, 10:28:50 PM »
The current government was founded in 1949, but that doesn't erase history of what was done, some of it by people who are still alive to people who are still alive. 

I'll continue to stand by my opinion, backed by the clear examples laid out by Germany and Japan (which also made no moves to take German-style post-war actions to China's previous government in 1945-1949).

A number of countries in Europe got redone from 1945 to present.  Strangely, I don't see Germany (also under a totally new government after the war) trying to use Calach-thought to evade responsibility by saying anything as lame as "We won't acknowledge what we did to human beings who lived on that piece of land because the government over that land got replaced by a new one after what we did." or even "We don't agree with the government over than land and this lets us pretend we did nothing wrong there."  Instead, Germany still actively strives to educate its children with historical facts in an effort to make sure not to repeat its past actions without the slightest regard for who did or does govern the other locations it abused.


The results speak for themselves.  Germany is trusted and considered to be a leader by its neighbors.  Japan has distrust and repeatedly erupting disputes with a number of neighbors based on its attempts to hide from history.  I think this is a shining example of honesty truly being the best policy.

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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #56 on: January 09, 2021, 01:11:26 PM »
Those results speak for nothing. It isn't the world at large that grieves a made-up century of humiliation. What you're urging is for the wrong-doing nations to begin expiations until at some point China says okay that's enough we're square now. But has China given any sign of what will count as a good enough kowtow to their fraught historical narratives? Is there any clearly stated endgame?


That's why it's best to remember that "China" is young. Their international statecraft is barely more than a collection of national stories they tell themselves.
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #57 on: January 09, 2021, 10:11:24 PM »
Most modern apology/restitution narratives focus on groups or people that remain dispossessed. Black and brown, usually. And often situated within larger nations that built part of their modernity on the death and damage they did to those black and brown.

Most modern big war narratives focus on how the wars are over. World War 2 is getting old enough that documentaries featuring soldiers revisiting sites of significant conflict, crying a bit and shaking hands with former enemies don't happen any more.

Small war stuff goes on, of course.

So what's up with China getting rich, powerful, and not satisfied with what others have done for them today?


I wonder if those current narratives about past horrors aren't holdovers from an earlier stage of China's development that persist because they're genuinely emotive but China doesn't know how to update them.

Then again, China is remarkably adept at excising entire aspects of their own history. If they wanted massacres and wars to be forgotten, it could be made to happen. So the current narratives exist for a reason. But are they adapted to the actual conditions China finds itself in? Is the reason those narratives exist properly adapted to current conditions?


China still thinks of itself as surrounded by enemies.

And that's the "enemies" fault because they're not more accommodating of China's rightful place?


That doesn't sound good.
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Re: China's endgame?
« Reply #58 on: January 09, 2021, 10:37:27 PM »
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