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Bathtub Cheese posted:I was saying that if all it takes to legitimize secession is that a simple majority of the population agrees that it is now independent, regardless of any other circumstances, then what would prevent a hypothetical Texas from seceding from the rest of the United States under the influence of foreign powers to undermine the US’s sovereignty. I’m sure you could find more than a few deep red counties in the United States already that would take you up on an offer of secession, especially if you packaged it as a revival of the confederacy. I apologize if I was unclear but that does not merit giving me a six hour probation over a simple disagreement. LOL you posted all this to bitch about a sixer?  Taiwan has been an independent state with no reliance of the mainland for 70 years. They are a separate country. By your logic the US should be able to just swallow up Cuba because hey, we have more people and if Venezuela tried to stop us it would be a bloodbath for them. therobit fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 06:35
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Bathtub Cheese posted:I was saying that if all it takes to legitimize secession is that a simple majority of the population agrees that it is now independent, regardless of any other circumstances, then what would prevent a hypothetical Texas from seceding from the rest of the United States under the influence of foreign powers to undermine the US’s sovereignty. I’m sure you could find more than a few deep red counties in the United States already that would take you up on an offer of secession, especially if you packaged it as a revival of the confederacy. I apologize if I was unclear but that does not merit giving me a six hour probation over a simple disagreement. The Texas Nationalist Movement is a political party that operates openly in the US despite being funded by the Russians. Nobody is arresting them or their leaders. I don't think anyone here is willing to start a war to prevent red states from voting to split off, polls show half of americans from both parties would be fine with a peaceful separation.
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Oct 8, 2021 06:37
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Texas has too much oil and gas and too many refineries to be allowed to secede. The US would never allow it, nor should we.
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Oct 8, 2021 06:40
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Taiwan is as much a part of the PRC as Canada is part of the US and the Falklands are part of Argentina. The continued state of their independence is not a secession. And considering how they've got way more democracy than the PRC, more people are voting for them to stay independent than there are functionaries in the PRC who might arrange their conquest.
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Oct 8, 2021 06:48
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Cpt_Obvious posted:"Empire" is usually used You're at least 20 years too late to be right by any reckoning. They figured out you don't need to invade someone to own them. Late-stage imperialism, if you will.
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Oct 8, 2021 07:01
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Bathtub Cheese posted:I was saying that if all it takes to legitimize secession is that a simple majority of the population agrees that it is now independent, regardless of any other circumstances, then what would prevent a hypothetical Texas from seceding from the rest of the United States under the influence of foreign powers to undermine the US’s sovereignty. I’m sure you could find more than a few deep red counties in the United States already that would take you up on an offer of secession, especially if you packaged it as a revival of the confederacy. I apologize if I was unclear but that does not merit giving me a six hour probation over a simple disagreement. If the US federal gov't literally didn't exist in a meaningful way or support those places, and they operated entirely independently for the last 70 years including their own diplomats, passports, military etc., with the US Federal govt not being able to go to Texas et al without starting a war, you'd have something here. To bad they're not at all meaningfully analogous You'd have a much better case making a comparison with Puerto Rico or American Samoa et al. but you won't because you're trying to frame Taiwan as fractious rebels and associate them with slaveowning assholes and other modern racists in order to pin that baggage on them despite it making no sense at all. Bathtub Cheese posted:That said, Taiwan does have an exceptionally (for a “democracy”) serious problem with politically-connected organized crime engaging in human trafficking so if I were to HYPOTHETICALLY make an analogy between Taiwan and the antebellum American south that would be the place to start. lol "if I were to HYPOTHETICALLY do the stupid thing I've been doing this entire time here's how I'd do it"
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Oct 8, 2021 07:20
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Here's a take: if a US state forms a clear political consensus that it wants to leave the union then it should be allowed to do so. Democracies only work if the minority accept the legitimacy of the majority.
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Oct 8, 2021 08:34
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https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1445975294511177728?t=BVCkZ05pA5gogBNdk90npA&s=19 This thread had a pretty interesting take on the great firewall, basically saying that it has allowed the prc to develop a tech industry that can actually compete with America's megacorpd
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Oct 8, 2021 08:45
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Alchenar posted:Here's a take: if a US state forms a clear political consensus that it wants to leave the union then it should be allowed to do so. Democracies only work if the minority accept the legitimacy of the majority. I feel like this has never been true, unless you count subjugation as "legitimacy". But I guess if Texas wants to bail that would the be internal business of the US and China should stay out of it.
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Oct 8, 2021 12:05
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I feel like this has never been true, unless you count subjugation as "legitimacy". a better example is the catalan movements for secession, i think
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Oct 8, 2021 12:12
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A big flaming stink posted:https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1445975294511177728?t=BVCkZ05pA5gogBNdk90npA&s=19 While the Great Firewall has undeniably had an effect like import substitution for the Chinese tech industry, I don't think that was the primary purpose of the Great Firewall or even the primary means by which the domestic tech industry was protected. There were tons of policies that protected and promoted the domestic tech industry. I certainly find it hard to believe that China foresaw the state of US tech companies decades in advance. It reeks of 'the Chinese think in terms of centuries!' There are probably a couple of PhD dissertations up for grabs in researching that with more depth than a Twitter thread and my hot take on it. I do think that versions of import substitution are way underrated in the winner-takes-all global economy, so hats off to China. It'll be interesting to see how some of the companies fare outside of China, or if they even try. Tiktok has done well, obviously, whereas others are so uniquely Chinese that I can't imagine them going global. I find a lot of them to be really terrible from a UI/UX perspective, and a lot of the fintech stuff feels super dodgy.
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Oct 8, 2021 12:23
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Smeef posted:I do think that versions of import substitution are way underrated in the winner-takes-all global economy, so hats off to China. It'll be interesting to see how some of the companies fare outside of China, or if they even try. Tiktok has done well, obviously, whereas others are so uniquely Chinese that I can't imagine them going global. I mean, Tencent is Chinese owned too and they are massively successful, as is alibaba.
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Oct 8, 2021 12:37
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I mean, Tencent is Chinese owned too and they are massively successful, as is alibaba. Non-domestic Chinese revenue accounts for like 10% of Alibaba's revenue. I think it gets a lot more attention because of Jack Ma and being listed overseas. I'm not as sure about Tencent's revenue sources, but I believe it's most of their overseas revenue is driven by overseas partnerships. It's still real money and growing fast, but it might not have the same significance for advancing domestic tech innovation. They're much more dependent on gaming revenue than WeChat, so it'll be interesting to see if the gaming crackdown affects them. But really I'm thinking more about the apps that are big in China but still unknown overseas. Baidu is never going to compete with Google outside China. They probably couldn't even compete with Bing. A lot of popular divisions of big companies are hard to imagine as global, too. Weibo is not going to compete with Twitter overseas. Taobao is not going to compete with Amazon, even though it's got some pretty awesome features. Like, I can order a set of custom furniture and chat with the manufacturer live to adjust dimensions, and it will get freight forwarded and delivered to my door. They're not complete garbage or anything, but they can be really hard to use, even if you can read Chinese and have a Chinese bank account and phone number, etc. Maybe it'll change when they top out their domestic growth and need to look overseas for more growth. It also seems like every Chinese tech companies is now up to their eyes in fintech stuff that could blow up. Recall that Jack Ma had to kowtow to Xi on the eve of Ant Finance going public, which got cancelled.
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Oct 8, 2021 13:09
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Also, calling the PRC "imperialist" doesn't really make sense even if it might be technically correct ... quote:"Empire" is usually used to describe a violently expanding power utilizing a perpetual state of warfare, puppet states, military bases on foreign soil, espionage, etc. to seize foreign resources for their own gain. Empire is used to describe empire. It is always worth observing that pernicious soft-power empire through more neocolonial means is equally as damming an exercise of imperialism. If you make excuses for China by omitting these methods of imperialism, you end up having an interesting conversation about why it now makes equally not much sense to label America imperialist anymore.
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Oct 8, 2021 13:29
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Also, calling the PRC "imperialist" doesn't really make sense even if it might be technically correct. "It's not imperialism because Marxstradamus said so" isn't much of an argument.
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Oct 8, 2021 13:36
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Kavros posted:... Unless China is setting up colonies in which case please link. Kavros posted:If you make excuses for China by omitting these methods of imperialism, you end up having an interesting conversation about why it now makes equally not much sense to label America imperialist anymore. Make that argument because it appears that you are trying to claim that the US no longer has puppet regimes or invasions.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:00
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Cpt_Obvious posted:If expanding political power through trade is considered empire then the word is effectively meaningless because every state in the history of the world has tried to do that Counterpoint: no. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 8, 2021 14:04
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Cpt_Obvious posted:If expanding political power through trade is considered empire then the word is effectively meaningless because every state in the history of the world has tried to do that I don't think you can swear off Qing imperialism if you're making Qing-era territorial claims.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:10
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Plastic_Gargoyle posted:"It's not imperialism because Marxstradamus said so" isn't much of an argument. The only "argument" they're making is that nothing China ever does is wrong.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:20
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Yeah I'm not sure how you argue China is no less an empire than any other large, industrial first world country. They have ambitions just as broad as the United States, Russia, or UK back when it was an Empire. And arguing that China should be allowed to swallow up Taiwan IS Imperial in nature. China isn't investing and modernizing other countries, especially in Africa solely for their benefit.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:27
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It's not imperialism unless it comes from the Imperial War College in London, otherwise it's your continued existence is an abrogation of China's sovereignty and self-rule.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:28
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Alchenar posted:It's not imperialism unless it comes from the Imperial War College in London, otherwise it's your continued existence is an abrogation of China's sovereignty and self-rule. Mmmm, sparkling Imperialism.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:28
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Cpt_Obvious posted:If expanding political power through trade is considered empire then the word is effectively meaningless because every state in the history of the world has tried to do that https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html quote:Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing’s largest state-owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing, as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the port drew only 34 ships in 2012. Loading up a corrupt government with debt, then seizing territory (sorry, a 99 year lease) to release them from that debt seems like a clear-cut example of imperialism. Very reminiscent of American behavior in Latin America.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:30
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Ok, let's use the threads definition of "influence expansion through soft power" as the definition of empire. What foreign policy could a state take that does not constitute imperialism?
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Oct 8, 2021 14:30
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Smiling Knight posted:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html Yeah, ok, that's definitely imperialism.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:31
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Yeah, the "soft power" thing is unhelpful. China does a lot more unambiguously imperialist things, like stealing pieces of Bhutan when nobody's looking.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:32
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Silver2195 posted:Yeah, the "soft power" thing is unhelpful. It's unhelpful because of the tankies throwing sand in the air to try to claim that nobody can agree on what words mean and therefore who can know what is right? China does explicitly imperialist things, like flying armed planes repeatedly into another nation's airspace to demonstrate that it doesn't acknowledge their sovereignty.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:35
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Silver2195 posted:Yeah, the "soft power" thing is unhelpful. Or just making their own islands to expand their claims on the seas around the China sea.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:35
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Cpt_Obvious posted:If expanding political power through trade is considered empire then the word is effectively meaningless because every state in the history of the world has tried to do that Military aggression (or the threat) as well as softer forms of influence and power like trade and culture are are used by China, US, and basically every state that ever had the ability to do so. It's false to say that PRC has not been externally aggressive in a way that could be described as imperialistic. Even ignoring that some of the regime's first actions involved annexing Tibet and Xinjiang and that aggression towards Taiwan has been constant, the PRC has instigated numerous wars with its neighbors throughout its history. They even annexed part of India. As you noted earlier, PRC also continued the millennia-long Chinese tradition of invading and getting their asses kicked by Vietnam. Their behavior in the South China Sea has been really aggressive, too, towards numerous states. Recently there were stories about China moving in on land in Bhutan. It has of course been nowhere near the scale of the US's military misadventures during the same time period, but then again China has only very recently become a global power with the ability to do so. Remember that China's GDP per capita didn't pass $1000 until 2001. In a previous post you also implied that the US does not pursue approaches like Belt and Road. That is incredibly wrong. The US has used foreign aid and FDI for the same kind of poo poo forever. I imagine it has invested many orders of magnitude more than the PRC and probably still invests multiples more. (The more you know: China has been a big contributor of foreign aid to Africa since the 50s or 60s, when it was still a very low-income country. Zhou's principles of foreign aid still guide China's policies today and are pretty interesting to compare to how US and much of the rest of the world view foreign aid. Most notably, the first principle acknowledges that China foreign aid is for 'mutual benefit', i.e., no illusions of pure altruism.) Note that I am not going to bat for the US here, defending US aggression, or saying it's better/worse than PRC. Rather I think that PRC does all the things that powerful states do, and it shouldn't be controversial to recognize that. I expect we'll see more of it, too, as China becomes more capable of doing it.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:36
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I mean, along those lines, the PRC's war with Vietnam after the US/Vietnam war ended has actually resulted in increasingly good relations with the US again as they are rightfully concerned that the PRC is going to start coming down on them again.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:41
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Smeef posted:Military aggression (or the threat) as well as softer forms of influence and power like trade and culture are are used by China, US, and basically every state that ever had the ability to do so. Just wanted to highlight this post. A bunch of good points made.
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Oct 8, 2021 14:57
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Smiling Knight posted:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html even this is a distortion of the actual negotiations that took place and the role IMF loans played in this but it is an aspect of Chinese imperial projection, yes. It's not equivalent to how the western imperial projects have operated and are operating though. Very easy to say both sides the same but you have to ignore the magnitude of dead bodies, coups, massacres and atrocities the US foments, causes or outright perpetrated and had perpetrated to treat this as the same thing. We exist in a world of empires and there is no sign of that ending any time soon, but one side is a magnitude more bloody. As is usually the case. Very rarely is a conflict metted out by 2 factions equally steeped in blood. In other news, US soldiers in Taiwan. A direct provocation, considering US has not reneged on its prior agreements on sovereignty. This is what I mean by the US choosing war. Negotiation and a drawn down of separatist rhetoric is what is needed to avoid conflict, this is escalation. The DPP ran on resisting pressure form. Beijing but neither party explicitly stated they wanted to break with the one China policy, but now that that aligns with US appetites for open conflict we are going to get a series of escalating provocations directly challenging the legitimacy of the PRC, by reneging on agreements and open military positioning around them. We will say they shot first, but given how Vietnam went even that is doubtful, we will become impatient and manufacture something. And we will stride in confident of our victory, as we bathe the world in fire.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:05
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:even this is a distortion of the actual negotiations that took place and the role IMF loans played in this but it is an aspect of Chinese imperial projection, yes. Disagree. The US has just been at it longer, the idea that PRC won't do nearly the same thing is laughable. And the idea that Taiwan should deserve no protections is also laughable. China has made it clear that they view Taiwan as part of China, they very clearly have intentions around the island, and as someone already pointed out, this would be like the US claiming Cuba is part of the US mainland. Both the US and PRC are Imperial in nature, both in goals and methods.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:39
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CommieGIR posted:Disagree. The US has just been at it longer, the idea that PRC won't do nearly the same thing is laughable. And the idea that Taiwan should deserve no protections is also laughable. China has made it clear that they view Taiwan as part of China, they very clearly have intentions around the island, and as someone already pointed out, this would be like the US claiming Cuba is part of the US mainland. I reject that premise because there were multiple occasions for the US to operate through finance imperialism and it explicitly chose to back reactionary coups and foment massacres of communists (or ethnic groups associate with communism, like in Bali) and there has never been an equivalent moment from the Soviets or a international non western group. China is not clean but there methodology does not prioritize conflict like our does. There are different ways to do this and the US has, for the better part of a century, opted for whatever sowed chaos. You can argue the hypotheticals of what a much longer lived PRC will/would look like but that does not match the observable history we have. We are also the only side to ever nuke someone, and we started with civilians. I firmly believe we will be the instigators of this and we will also be unprepared for the scope of what it will kick off.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:53
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:I reject that premise because there were multiple occasions for the US to operate through finance imperialism and it explicitly chose to back reactionary coups and foment massacres of communists (or ethnic groups associate with communism, like in Bali) and there has never been an equivalent moment from a non Weste group. China is not clean but there methodology does not prioritize conflict like our does. There are different ways to do this and the US has, for the better part of a century, opted for whatever sowed chaos. This is straight up PRC apologist stuff dude, not anything founded in historical fact. They don't prioritize conflict....yet, but they do prioritize outright dystopian ideals that crush criticism and freedom of expression. Not a healthy starting point.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:54
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:I reject that premise because there were multiple occasions for the US to operate through finance imperialism and it explicitly chose to back reactionary coups and foment massacres of communists (or ethnic groups associate with communism, like in Bali) and there has never been an equivalent moment from the Soviets or a international non western group. China is not clean but there methodology does not prioritize conflict like our does. There are different ways to do this and the US has, for the better part of a century, opted for whatever sowed chaos. How on earth could the US instigate a Chinese invasion of sovereign Taiwan? How could such a hypothetical be anyone's fault but Chinas?
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Oct 8, 2021 15:58
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CommieGIR posted:This is straight up PRC apologist stuff dude, not anything founded in historical fact. They don't prioritize conflict....yet, but they do prioritize outright dystopian ideals that crush criticism and freedom of expression. Not a healthy starting point. what do you base this claim on? My arguments are premised on US cold war history and the many events only recently coming to light about what we have done. I've looked at the Chinese record. Not spotless, nowhere near equivalent.
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Oct 8, 2021 15:59
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:what do you base this claim on? They're literally putting an entire ethnic group into concentration camps. Someone paid for you to have that red text, the least you could do is read it e: \/\/ I think the grimmest thing is that given it's the 21st century despite the fact that it's happening in a remote corner of China this isn't hidden. You can see the commercial satellite imagery showing mosques disappearing, the prison complexes expanding. They're doing classic barefaced denial in the face of the evidence everyone can see. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 16:07 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 16:00
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Alchenar posted:They're literally putting an entire ethnic group into concentration camps. They're pioneering 21st century model genocide and lying to the world's face about it for years and years and years. It's extraordinarily grim.
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Oct 8, 2021 16:04
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Giggle Goose posted:How on earth could the US instigate a Chinese invasion of sovereign Taiwan? How could such a hypothetical be anyone's fault but Chinas? the US directly agreed to Chinese Sovereignty over Taiwan in the 70s. regardless of whatever conventions and unofficial agreements are in place, on paper, in international law, the US recognizes Taiwan as under Chinese jurisdiction. We now have troops there, deployed with no negotiation or authorization from Beijing. On paper, that is an invasion. That is a direct violation of our prior agreements with no notice or reasoning or negotiation given. If The US wants Taiwanese sovereignty, that could happen but it has to take into account existing agreements, treatise and norms. Unilateral declarations of independence, under the current system of agreements, is an open declaration of civil war and our backing of it is equivalent to a declaration of war. You can think international law is a bit ridiculous, and it is, but unilateral action premised on military follow up is the international politics of Terror. ruling via the sword. And that only holds until a faction no longer fears you, then open war begins to test who really has the resolve That is what I see happening. China is not afraid, and will not back down. We, having abandoned diplomacy, will press also. And we will fire the nukes first, because our conventional arms and forces are spent and in tatters right now.
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Oct 8, 2021 16:05
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