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Bathtub Cheese posted:Why not answer the questions in the tweet. Well regarding "When have Americans cared about the Chinese people," from 1937-1945 numerous Americans worked to support China's war effort against Japan, ranging from financial loans and arms sales early on, to directly sending US Army Air Force pilots as mercenaries to fight against Japan in the run-up before the war, embargoing oil and scrap metal to Japan, and finally, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, openly fighting alongside Chinese forces against the Japanese occupiers. 
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Jul 4, 2021 03:50
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Bathtub Cheese posted:Why not answer the questions in the tweet. The answer is because people everywhere are loving idiots, OP. They were idiots three quarters of a century ago and they're idiots today. Both American people and Chinese people. And every other people. "Hey you say this thing is bad but you are also doing a thing which is bad" is just bullshit whataboutism.
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Jul 4, 2021 04:01
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Bathtub Cheese posted:If Americans care so much about China, why isn't there any organized American support for this supposed political transformation besides efforts that are inextricable from US's geopolitical motives and state apparatus? Why do both major US political parties demonize the political institutions supported by the vast majority of people in China, despite their lack of "democracy"? Why are Asians regularly harassed and assaulted in the US under the assumption that they are Chinese? What effort are Americans supposed to do to transform China by any means except for soft power and the strength of American export-culture and soft power through global trade and mass media? Containing China's Not So Peaceful Rise is a part of the process to give time for cultural forces to work its magic. How do you know that the vast majority of people in China support the institutions oppressing them? There's no free press; there's no elections; the government is comprised of autocrats who oppress their people, it is illegitimate by definition. The average person in China can't actually say whats on their mind without losing their livelihoods. Chinese people in the US are discriminated against because a lot of white working class Americans are racist and are always looking for an excuse and someone to blame for their circumstances and refuse to take responsibility or any action to actually help their own material conditions. Recently in particular Trump gave millions of people permission to be assholes and they decided to embrace it because they thought they would be free from consequence.
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Jul 4, 2021 04:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:Chinese people in the US are discriminated against because a lot of white working class Americans are racist Oh yeah there definitely aren't any white middle-upper class Americans who are the same way
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Jul 4, 2021 04:30
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Raenir Salazar posted:How do you know that the vast majority of people in China support the institutions oppressing them? There's no free press; there's no elections; the government is comprised of autocrats who oppress their people, it is illegitimate by definition. The average person in China can't actually say whats on their mind without losing their livelihoods. That's how you know they support it. If everyone who doesn't support the state is dragged off and locked up forever, then all those who aren't dragged off and locked up forever must therefore support it. That's logic, that is.
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Jul 4, 2021 04:39
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Yossarian-22 posted:Oh yeah there definitely aren't any white middle-upper class Americans who are the same way Those people typically aren't on the street assaulting people; unless they're an example of the former upper-middle class who are about to or already have lost their business and blame it on China.
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Jul 4, 2021 05:01
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On the topic of water supply I want to note that whenever I visit my in-laws in Shandong it sucks because their village doesn't have running water, you can't have a shower unless you go to the public bathhouse and you sure as poo poo can't find a proper flushing toilet. Despite the village being a kilometre away from a huge reservoir. Of course the reservoir is for the city, which is only five kilometres away but where you could leave all your taps running all day and nobody would care because water is dirt cheap for some reason. The really sad thing is the locals being grateful they got CCTV cameras installed at the village entrance as a sign of progress and development. They just seem to accept that they don't deserve running water, as opposed to the people who live in the city who do deserve it.
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Jul 4, 2021 05:05
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ThomasPaine posted:Big desalination plants are an option, surely? Franks Happy Place posted:And then you can watch this video that touches on why the WTP is such a dumb idea that doesn't actually fix anything:
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Jul 4, 2021 06:07
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How well do you remember the 1990s? Do you remember the duet of Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the late Lee Kuan Yew on Asian values? I'm sure you do. Anyway, this establishment take on guided democracy strikes a familiar note: quote:The story of Chinese politics is often more convincing when told through the narrative of cultural traditions. Revealing the deep cultural heritage behind China's political choices will help us better establish the "four matters of confidence," which is an attitude urgently needed to tell China’s political story well. This also confirms General Secretary Xi Jinping's statement that cultural confidence is "a more fundamental, broader, and deeper confidence.” I am not hot on my transliterated lingo, but to my knowledge 'substantive democracy' 即实质民主 is the traditionally Marxist phrase (implying that other democratic theories, in that bourgeois-committee way, are insubstantial; this being also how Soviet-period official positions on Soviet democracy were translated even up to the late Cold War) whilst the Hu Jintao-period 'consultative/deliberative democracy' 协商民主, sometimes qualified with 'socialist consultative democracy' as the preferred translation, is the official modern take (invoking deliberative-democracy theories popular in the West since the 1980s), albeit steadily being squeezed out by Xi's 'whole-process democracy' 全过程民主 ronya fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 07:12
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Well regarding "When have Americans cared about the Chinese people," from 1937-1945 numerous Americans worked to support China's war effort against Japan, ranging from financial loans and arms sales early on, to directly sending US Army Air Force pilots as mercenaries to fight against Japan in the run-up before the war, embargoing oil and scrap metal to Japan, and finally, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, openly fighting alongside Chinese forces against the Japanese occupiers. I'm told that the war against Japan, started by Japan, is actually more evidence that americans are unsaveably racist against asians OP. In fact it was wrong to embargo Japan.
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Jul 4, 2021 13:33
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Lol the Americans didn't give a poo poo about the sino Japanese war until it started to look like it might interfere with their own interests and didn't offer significant material support or engage in any real hostilities towards Japan till pearl harbour forced their hand in 1941, ten full years after the original invasion of manchuria and four since the nanjing massacre, probably the worst atrocity of ww2 behind the holocaust, was reported globally by Western eyewitnesses
ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 13:50
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Rabelais D posted:On the topic of water supply I want to note that whenever I visit my in-laws in Shandong it sucks because their village doesn't have running water, you can't have a shower unless you go to the public bathhouse and you sure as poo poo can't find a proper flushing toilet. have you ever asked why it might be that the locals think there’s been progress?
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Jul 4, 2021 14:08
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ThomasPaine posted:Lol the Americans didn't give a poo poo about the sino Japanese war until it started to look like it might interfere with their own interests and didn't offer significant material support or engage in any real hostilities towards Japan till pearl harbour forced their hand in 1941, ten full years after the original invasion of manchuria and four since the nanjing massacre, probably the worst atrocity of ww2 behind the holocaust, was reported globally by Western eyewitnesses As opposed to other countries, famously benevolent and humanitarian even when it doesn't interest them directly at all States: benevolent as a rule Also this is wrong because the US had interests in China long before the second sino-japanese war but go off
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Jul 4, 2021 14:14
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Why are we posting about Americans in the China thread? Shouldn't this discussion be in USPOL? Also most of the people who did the things in that tweet are long dead
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Jul 4, 2021 16:35
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There's a difference between posting about US-China relations and posting "BUT DID YOU KNOW ALSO AMERICA IS AN IMPERIAL POWER WHAT DOES GENOCIDES" aka whataboutism but tankies won't acknowledge it I know, it's fine
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Jul 4, 2021 16:39
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:There's a difference between posting about US-China relations and posting "BUT DID YOU KNOW ALSO AMERICA IS AN IMPERIAL POWER WHAT DOES GENOCIDES" aka whataboutism but tankies won't acknowledge it I know, it's fine Usually what "whataboutism" is intended to point out is that China critics hold the CCP to a standard that nowhere else in the world can actually meet and that maybe people who don't live there should concern themselves first with the places where they live instead of repeating your own crappy government's propaganda about China like it's a fact
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Jul 4, 2021 17:08
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Bathtub Cheese posted:Usually what "whataboutism" is intended to point out is that China critics hold the CCP to a standard that nowhere else in the world can actually meet and that maybe people who don't live there should concern themselves first with the places where they live instead of repeating your own crappy government's propaganda about China like it's a fact So your thing is what, blinkered nationalism where it is disallowed to care about the suffering of people in other countries? Or just "it's impossible to care about two things at once, so you should care exclusively about the thing that's closer to home"? It's an inane argument. There are plenty of countries that don't (for example) currently run re-education camps for religious and ethnic minorities, or concentration camps for border immigrants, or concentration camps for gay people. There are also plenty that do. Is there some kind of utility cap where you have to pick which of those countries you think have bad domestic policy?
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Jul 4, 2021 17:13
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Android Blues posted:So your thing is what, blinkered nationalism where it is disallowed to care about the suffering of people in other countries? Or just "it's impossible to care about two things at once, so you should care exclusively about the thing that's closer to home"? It's more like you're not going to get a fair assessment or accurate information about China from the vast majority of US sources because of the current overblown geopolitical rivalry and long history of racial hatred against the Chinese in the US. I wouldn't judge any country or ethnicity by what the Nazis said about them in the 1920s or 1930s for the same reason. If you aren't going to take concrete action to uphold the standard you hold China to in your own country, why should anyone over there take you seriously?
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Jul 4, 2021 17:21
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Bathtub Cheese posted:Usually what "whataboutism" is intended to point out is that China critics hold the CCP to a standard that nowhere else in the world can actually meet and that maybe people who don't live there should concern themselves first with the places where they live instead of repeating your own crappy government's propaganda about China like it's a fact And yet it usually seems to manifest as "China is engaging in genocide right now with the Uighurs" "But whatabout the Trail of Tears!" I'm absolutely happy to discuss the horrible poo poo Australia has done and continues to do, yet am able to do so without constantly whining about other countries and their sins. And just looking at the thread lists and posts therein of this subforum and CSPAM show that many other countries are the same. Are more than willing to level brutal self-criticism at their politicians, businesses and peoples. What makes China and Daddy Xi so special that you feel you have to defend its crimes from all criticism? What is it that makes you want to defend a country engaging in genocide? Which crushes any attempts at democracy? Whose leader made themself king in all but name? Which jails those who want free speech or a free press? Which invades other countries under literal loving lebensraum? Why can't you just say all of that is bad in and of itself, without going "But whatabout!" constantly? Megillah Gorilla fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 17:27
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Idk about 'whataboutism' or 'tankies' but I just wanted to pop up and say the short-lived panic over china amassing wind farm-mounted nuclear missiles should be cause to contemplate how reliable aerial reporting by credulous idiots can be
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Jul 4, 2021 17:31
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Megillah Gorilla posted:And yet it usually seems to manifest as "China is engaging in genocide right now with the Uighurs" "But whatabout the Trail of Tears!" You're repeating Western agitprop intended to gin up conflict and an eventual war while trying to lend it a veneer of respectability with empty words about genuine concern for the Chinese people.
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Jul 4, 2021 17:32
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I wanted to go back to that Water video posted about the North-South project. Their major criticism seems that it would only supply 1/4th the total water demand of the urban portions of Northern China in 2050 on its own...this seems ridiculously unfair framing. I mean even if it didn't solve their problems in one go, how could that be considered a failure? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 18:22
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The infrastructure just cannot handle the demand of fresh water and the accompanying waste water. Beijing floods every single time there is even a slight drizzle, let alone an actual storm.
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Jul 4, 2021 18:42
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Darkest Auer posted:The infrastructure just cannot handle the demand of fresh water and the accompanying waste water. Beijing floods every single time there is even a slight drizzle, let alone an actual storm. It seems you are talking about 3 different types of water there: useable water, wastewater (brown water), and runoff are all different. As far as the North South project goes, the focus is useable water which it seems to mostly accomplish even if it can't independently meet demand 30 years in the future on its own. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 18:47
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quote:For example, regarding the so-called "one-party system," which is not easily understood in the West, Authoritarianism tracking to purer forms of dictatorship, a concept obviously so foreign to the west that the west certainly installed no such regimes abroad.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:02
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re: water to lay out some context - for an actually useful US comparison, the North China plain is a lot like California: it's a big, arable area enabled by industrial agriculture but is dependent on a depleting supply of groundwater or on imported water. Like California, suppress agricultural usage and suddenly the water problems diminish greatly. Like California, that's not really realistic either. - groundwater does recharge; this is not fossil water. Between groundwater, mega-aqueduct projects, and desalination/reverse osmosis, I don't think existential fear for the capital region is at all justified. Desalination already supplies a chunk of residential tapwater - the biggest challenges, as is often the case, are political. First, people have to pay more for water, or pay for water-efficiency measures. That's basically unpopular everywhere. Second, mega-aqueducts and desalination are both pretty expensive so people have to pay even more for water, or pay for water-efficiency measures (ditto). Third, there's the usual thicket of institutional legacies and inter-township or inter-provincial water claims to navigate. These are not impossibilities to manage though - for now, the most visible impact is that water tariffs in the relevant areas will go up. This is what is happening already, so. to be clear China is not new to the concept of paying for water - industrial, agricultural, and residential users all already do, these are not the Bolivian highlands
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Jul 4, 2021 19:03
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Kavros posted:Authoritarianism tracking to purer forms of dictatorship, a concept obviously so foreign to the west that the west certainly installed no such regimes abroad. to be clear, the CCP is enthusiastically committed to the concept of a state constitutionally bound to be governed by the communist party and that no other party is entitled to govern; Zhang is not setting out a one-party system as a bad thing that could be offset by better things achieved elsewhere. Zhang is saying that this is the better thing. the real peculiarity here is that Zhang (and really a lot of contemporary Chinese theory) bases this nominally on Marxism-Leninism but mentions exactly zero of the traditional second-world official reasons like e.g. that multi-party systems can only reflect class struggle, that the vanguard leadership of the communist party is a basic precondition for progress to dictatorship of the proletariat beyond which lies the true democratic freedom unlike the false democracy under capitalism, etc., but instead invokes quite sundry appeals to multi-party systems pursuing '民粹主义、短视主义、法条主义' - populism, short-sighted policy, and legislative judo. It's just the superior governance of one-party rule, underpinned by the supposed idiosyncrasies of the Chinese warlord-era experience. (which is why I noted the resemblance to the Asian values debate of the 1990s) ronya fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 19:27
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Not to discount or crudely summarize your details, but what it mostly comes down to is that the CCP is enthusiastically committed to the CCP, and whoever rules the CCP will follow the boring and predictable future track of their own autocracy. the vested ruling class who inevitably consolidate power vertically within their own structures and broadly constrain the limits of acceptable dissent basically guarantee this. It's nothing even very unique to China. It's just very strange to watch from a perspective of global capitalism.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:49
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Thank god Ardennes is here to keep the discussion on track.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:50
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Bathtub Cheese posted:You're repeating Western agitprop intended to gin up conflict and an eventual war while trying to lend it a veneer of respectability with empty words about genuine concern for the Chinese people. The CCP is enacting a genocide in Xinjiang.
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Jul 4, 2021 19:50
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Kavros posted:Not to discount or crudely summarize your details, but what it mostly comes down to is that the CCP is enthusiastically committed to the CCP, and whoever rules the CCP will follow the boring and predictable future track of their own autocracy. the vested ruling class who inevitably consolidate power vertically within their own structures and broadly constrain the limits of acceptable dissent basically guarantee this. I think professed reasons matter; the Soviet Union signing up to Helsinki laid the groundwork for its dissidents to articulate their opposition (Zhang here is certainly betting very heavily that the CCP maintains a solid domestic reputation for competence, decisiveness, and far-sightedness, even as takeoff growth eases off - certainly this view of itself doesn't allow the CCP to plead, as the CPSU did during the Brezhnev stagnation, temporary difficulties)
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Jul 4, 2021 20:01
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ThomasPaine posted:Lol the Americans didn't give a poo poo about the sino Japanese war until it started to look like it might interfere with their own interests and didn't offer significant material support or engage in any real hostilities towards Japan till pearl harbour forced their hand in 1941, ten full years after the original invasion of manchuria and four since the nanjing massacre, probably the worst atrocity of ww2 behind the holocaust, was reported globally by Western eyewitnesses Aid to China from the US started months before Pearl harbour, with Lend Lease beginning in March of 1941 but China was receiving aid from the Allies before that through Indochina which was a main reason why in 1940 the Japanese occupied it after France fell to cut off supplies to China. Bathtub Cheese posted:Usually what "whataboutism" is intended to point out is that China critics hold the CCP to a standard that nowhere else in the world can actually meet and that maybe people who don't live there should concern themselves first with the places where they live instead of repeating your own crappy government's propaganda about China like it's a fact What propaganda are you talking about, the vast overwhelming majority of information about China comes from independent news outlets who researched into various matters by talking to people who left China and other eyewitness accounts. All this information has been collaborated and verified. Bathtub Cheese posted:It's more like you're not going to get a fair assessment or accurate information about China from the vast majority of US sources because of the current overblown geopolitical rivalry and long history of racial hatred against the Chinese in the US. I wouldn't judge any country or ethnicity by what the Nazis said about them in the 1920s or 1930s for the same reason. If you aren't going to take concrete action to uphold the standard you hold China to in your own country, why should anyone over there take you seriously? What information about China is currently inaccurate; as an example is reporting on the Tienanmen Square massacre inaccurate? Can you point out examples? Bathtub Cheese posted:You're repeating Western agitprop intended to gin up conflict and an eventual war while trying to lend it a veneer of respectability with empty words about genuine concern for the Chinese people. I think at the moment the people being targeted by China for genocide are who Americans are primarily concerned with. Neurolimal posted:Idk about 'whataboutism' or 'tankies' but I just wanted to pop up and say the short-lived panic over china amassing wind farm-mounted nuclear missiles should be cause to contemplate how reliable aerial reporting by credulous idiots can be China basically admits that these are nuclear silos. quote:The US wants China to stick to the line based around minimal deterrence. It's true that China has said it keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required for national security. But the minimum level would change as China's security situation changes. China has been defined as the top strategic competitor by the US and the US military pressure on China has continued to increase. Therefore, China must quicken the increase of its nuclear deterrence to curb the US strategic impulse. We must build credible nuclear second-strike capability, which needs to be guaranteed by enough nuclear warheads. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 20:30
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quote:It's unknown whether the Washington Post report corresponds to the real situation. But generally speaking, silos are normally used for liquid-fuel intercontinental missiles. Such missiles are high-thrust and long-range, and could carry higher-yield nuclear warheads. Silos provide good conditions for the storage and maintenance of missiles and are able to shorten launch time under emergency situations. However, Lewis assumed that the "silos" in Gansu are intended for DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles. In reality, DF-41 is solid-fueled and is loaded on high-mobility launcher vehicles. The necessity of putting it inside a silo is questionable. Therefore, the latest accusations by Washington Post and the US State Department over China cannot hold water. Sounds less like "yeah those are nukes" and more "gently caress are you going to do about it cunts, also that's stupid". E: also, it seems like a questionable idea to build your underground silos in an alluvial fan next to a population center of 160,000. On the other hand, circular formations right next to a wind farm, might in fact be wind turbine foundations: 
Neurolimal fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 20:49
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It's very clearly "We're neither confirming nor denying" language; those sheds/coverings are the standard for silo construction in China, it isn't just "strange building must be nukes" those are environmental shelters used elsewhere for confirmed nuclear silo construction. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/30/dont-panic-about-chinas-new-nuclear-capabilities/ https://fas.org/blogs/security/2021/02/plarf-jilantai-expansion/ I don't think you're qualified to assess if it would be stupid for solid fuel missiles to be kept in silo's but you'd have to ask the coldwar airpower thread for details. But the Russian solid fueled Topol-M ICBM is both road-mobile and silo based. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jul 4, 2021 |
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Jul 4, 2021 20:59
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ronya posted:(Zhang here is certainly betting very heavily that the CCP maintains a solid domestic reputation for competence, decisiveness, and far-sightedness, even as takeoff growth eases off - certainly this view of itself doesn't allow the CCP to plead, as the CPSU did during the Brezhnev stagnation, temporary difficulties) State Capitalism With Pretending-Its-Communism Characteristics has been such a wonderful bet for them to take in this jank-rear end neoliberalized world we have
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Jul 4, 2021 21:03
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All current US ICBMs are solid fueled, and all the ground-based ones are in silos. The use of a silo doesn’t tell you anything about how a missile is fueled.
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Jul 4, 2021 21:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:What information about China is currently inaccurate; as an example is reporting on the Tienanmen Square massacre inaccurate? Can you point out examples? This is an unintentional softball question; you're inviting him to be technically-correct-best-kind-of-correct by pointing out that the massacre happened near Tiananmen Square rather than in it.
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Jul 4, 2021 21:23
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Bathtub Cheese posted:Usually what "whataboutism" is intended to point out is that China critics hold the CCP to a standard that nowhere else in the world can actually meet and that maybe people who don't live there should concern themselves first with the places where they live instead of repeating your own crappy government's propaganda about China like it's a fact This is an exact echo of the Hasbara talking point that it is ridiculous double standards to expect Israel not to do what they are doing to the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. They are the only Democracy in the Middle East don't you know! Ardennes posted:I wanted to go back to that Water video posted about the North-South project. Their major criticism seems that it would only supply 1/4th the total water demand of the urban portions of Northern China in 2050 on its own...this seems ridiculously unfair framing. I mean even if it didn't solve their problems in one go, how could that be considered a failure? I think it is fair to take the initial pitch, which was definitely of the "this will solve the North's water problem" variety, when assessing the eventual outcome. I do agree that is it stupid if your takeaway is that it did nothing. The big question is how much the focus on that megaproject took resources and attention away from potentially more effective measures. You mentioned that the CCP have been taking measure around water rates etc. Have they had effective programs around improving their water productivity? You also have to say, again, that China's water issue is shared by many places, including the US, and I don't know of any place which has managed to overcome all the political, institutional, and practical hurdles to solve it in a sustainable manner.
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Jul 4, 2021 21:45
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Wistful of Dollars posted:Thank god Ardennes is here to keep the discussion on track. So far all of the posting I have seen has been about China, so I don’t know what to tell you.
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Jul 4, 2021 23:07
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The water situation in China is a legitimately interesting line of discussion and I don't think there's any problems there in people wanting to bring focus to it. Perhaps as a somewhat out there question, but would ice asteroid mining be something that could solve water insecurity if the logistics were solved? I always figured that if China could build a space elevator it would go a long way to solve many of their existential problems; access to cheaper and less environmentally toxic rare earths; water; infinite free real estate to build condos.
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Jul 4, 2021 23:13
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