manqiangrexue
Brigadier
In a nuclear world, they're gonna have to. This isn't Spartan spears vs Athenian ships.
Trade War with China
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This is the only regret I have about China's rise.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Let us be calm and analytical instead of hot with hatred. Recognize the situation as blue team vs red team, each trying to achieve their purposes rather than our good team fighting against their evil team. Only then can we gain a true and useful understanding of the situation and our rivals so that we may create the right strategy to prevail over them. One of China's great advantages over America is that that the Chinese understand Americans much much better than Americans understand the Chinese and this has led to China having an effective strategy when dealing with America and Americans having a failed strategy when trying to suppress China. While the Chinese see Americans as humans with many valuable traits to learn from and who wish to cling to their hard-won dominance/technological prowess, Americans dismiss the Chinese as mindless drones with neither honor nor non-materialistic ambition ready to topple their own evil government for "freedoms" if given the chance and who copy and steal because they have no innovative capability. Thus, China is likely to see the situation clearly and the US is likely to underestimate and make mistakes. We should not return the favor.
Back to the original statement, sometimes giving the opponent a comfortable way to back down is the key to peaceful victory.
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I don't want to delve into my own psychology publicly, but I will say this: it is possible to both be clear-eyed and nurture a cold hatred - to be analytical and to enjoy every injury an enemy suffers.
But enough about that. It seems the Trade War has claimed a major casualty:
I think yes under normal circumstances. But in this instance, I'm not so sure.
When I was growing up, i keep hearing the phrase from certain politicians "Better dead than red".
So this cohort of people with this mentality is still around, and the scary bit is they are now in the position of power. So with this mentality, they certainly got no quam about using force to maintain their position in the global pecking order.
They probably calculate that the weaker party will back down, and to "encourage the weaker party to back down, you have to show you are prepare and willing to use force.
The danger is that if the weaker party doesn't take the threat seriously enough.
Then, the "dead better than red" might be the only option.
Having enjoyed over hundred years of hegemon, it's difficult to give this up without a fight (peaceful or otherwise).
The sad thing is, China's rise, and others as well will come despite the best efforts of the western world. If they just embrace this, instead of fighting to maintain their dominace we all would be sleeping easier at night.
King Canute anyone?
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
"Better dead than red" is a slogan they were chanting when they weren't imminently faced with the choice, and its meaning is to fight to the death rather than lose their "freedoms" to an invading Soviet Union. This is a sheeple chant as the Soviets had absolutely no intention of occupying the US or taking their "freedoms" and neither does China. The situation now is that China will keep growing and rising and the US must decide whether to just be outgrown or to begin a nuclear war. Of course the third choice is to try to grow faster and not be outgrown. In this case, it's going to be much more difficult to get the nerves to just one day decide to "push the button" rather than continue to default to the natural everyday choice which is to stay alive and try to find a hope in way to grow faster than China.
Equation
Lieutenant General
And than there's the 4th choice is to retch up the China bashing rhetoric with the usual single narrative through the media and hoping that China will comply. We all know that ain't working.
solarz
Brigadier
It's only a race because the US makes it so. Trade is a two way street, and we all know America's economic woes are self-inflicted, they just want to blame someone else.
The only real points of friction between China and the US is in China's neighborhood: SCS, Taiwan, the two Koreas, and Japan. If the US was not playing in China's backyard, there would literally be nothing for the two nations to compete about. Of course, the US is there because it *wants* to be there, and hypes up China-threat rhetoric in order to justify its presence.
There's no need for the US to "cede" its position to China, as China is not pursuing a global hegemony. All the US needs do is to re-align its priorities: what benefits are common Americans deriving from American military presence in the Western Pacific?
The US would not be considered the undisputed No 1 if it can no longer call shots in Asia, and Asia, particularly East Asia is increasingly the gravitational center of the world where the largest wealth are generated and the largest productive population is located. From the US's long-held strategic stand, it could not afford to have another power to dominate the Eurasian continent, from which a global hegemon could emerge. Psychologically, the US politician and population are having a very hard time to accept some other nation to even be their equal.
But adjust they will, it just takes time. China is playing a very patient game to carefully manage the relative decline of the US.
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