Discussing Biden's Potential China Policy

  • Thread starter Deleted member 15887
  • Start date

hullopilllw

Junior Member
Registered Member
I think tendency on part of the Chinese(be it people or state, nation as a whole) to be rational and reasonable will be a form a weakness in the long term. They seem to feel the need to 顾大局, maintain relation with other powers, all the while with a desperate US carrying on with blatant salami slicing tactics on China, be it milking favourable access term to Chinese financial market/consumer market, while steadily toying with China's sovereign integrity on a daily basis.

Does anyone feel the same way here ? Either the Chinese leadership are too dumb or seem to naively think that time will brought the West to their sense.
 

DarkStar

Junior Member
Registered Member
I think tendency on part of the Chinese(be it people or state, nation as a whole) to be rational and reasonable will be a form a weakness in the long term. They seem to feel the need to 顾大局, maintain relation with other powers, all the while with a desperate US carrying on with blatant salami slicing tactics on China, be it milking favourable access term to Chinese financial market/consumer market, while steadily toying with China's sovereign integrity on a daily basis.

Does anyone feel the same way here ? Either the Chinese leadership are too dumb or seem to naively think that time will brought the West to their sense.
Yes and no; it's true that dealing with autistic people tends to require a certain form of finesse for eg, you can't reason with someone on 4chan using facts, figures and common win-win solutions; you need to bludgeon them with concrete facts on the ground, force of arms even, and turn the screws on their pressure points ie not purchasing treasuries and whittling away at the petrodollar and arms and tech sales to Iran, north korea, syria and diluting US power in US institutions.

Eventually, the powers that be in the Anglosphere will be forced to have periodic moments of rationality where their very core interests are concerened; the Sino-russian tag team is a great therapeutic against anglo autism.
 

Franklin

Captain
In 1981 the US wanted to sell China weapons to counter the Soviet Union. This was a threat made towards the Soviet Union if they invaded Poland. Its a nice read up and it also tells you of the American's assessment of China's military capabilities back then. Its just shows you that countries have no forever friends or enemies just forever interests.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

ChongqingHotPot92

Junior Member
Registered Member
In 1981 the US wanted to sell China weapons to counter the Soviet Union. This was a threat made towards the Soviet Union if they invaded Poland. Its a nice read up and it also tells you of the American's assessment of China's military capabilities back then. Its just shows you that countries have no forever friends or enemies just forever interests.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Exactly, no forever friends or enemies. The Brezhnev Doctrine and Soviet expansionism/hegemony on the Eurasian Continent drove the United States and China together, despite the unresolved political status of Taiwan (well, China lacked the means to take Taiwan back then anyway). From Stalin until Brezhnev, Moscow always wanted China to become an ally of subordination like other Warsaw Pact nations, but with 600 million people and a highly nationalistic CCP with memorizes of foreign occupations still fresh, it was unacceptable for the Young PRC to allow itself to become a subordinate of another hegemonic power, not mention that Moscow sought to station its troops on Chinese territories. It was Khrushchev's realization that China would not become a subordinate (or allow Soviet troops to be stationed on PRC territory) that led him to withdraw all Soviet industrial aids to China in 1960. Then you got the ideological rift between Moscow and Beijing after 1956, as well as Moscow's vocal support for India during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. They all contributed to the eventual Sino-Soviet Split.

With the marriage of convenience between China and US from 1972-1989, however, there is another problem for China. Beside the shared common goal of containing the USSR, Washington sought to ideologically and materially transform China into a liberal democratic capitalist state (if not states). Anything less would be unacceptable for Washington in the long term. In other words, you got Wilsonianism on steroid. In other words, Washington would not feel secure unless every single major power becomes a liberal democracy with institutionalized handicaps (such as a Congress or Parliament where making war or other drastic actions/mobilizations by the state would be difficult and require lengthy compromises between interest groups) in place to limit the expansion of state capacities. My Dad used to tell me that back in the 80s, every college student would turn on their radio and listen to Voice of America, despite doing so was (and still is) illegal. It is also why after the Tiananmen Incident, the US sanctioned China so harshly because it realized that the CCP Party State could not (and still cannot) be easily transformed into a liberal democratic capitalist state. Clinton and Bush would try again by granting delinking human rights from annual MFN renewal in 1994 and allow China to join the WTO in 2001 with the hope that economic liberalization would lead to political liberation (thus, end of the One-Party rule). However, China did liberalized economically with private firms dominating the Chinese economic landscape, but liberalization actually solidified support for CCP. As a result, you now have the Trump-Biden disenchantment and all-out strategic competition. And as the response to the Wuhan outbreak in 2020 has shown, with no institutionalized handicaps, the CCP Party State is fully capable of swift mobilizations against national emergencies. Such state capacity is also extremely effective in stifling dissent, ensuring there is only one voice united behind the state and the CCP faction currently in charge (I am not going to judge if it is good or bad here).

For China, liberals have long argued for embracing Washington's offer and develop a political system where multiple interest groups have their voices represented in a parliamentary democracy. However, the problem with China that it is a nation with very little resources, while it has 1.4 billion mouths to feed. In other words, Chinese are far more likely to be on survival instincts than the Anglos, whose ancestor conquered vast territories and resources for their descendants to enjoy. With 1.4 billion people on survival instinct, liberal democracies (emphasizing limits placed on state power) would most likely be hijacked by powerful interest groups/cronies with money and guns, turning the country into warring factions who could overtime disregards to rule of the game. A liberal democratic China would also likely to lose Xinjiang, the richest territory with most of China's oil, gas, and coal. This is cause turkic people are still the majority in Xinjiang and has a more martial culture than Han Chinese immigrants. In other words, One-Party system is currently (not necessarily the future) the best of the bad apples available to more justly redistribute limited resources in a nation on survival instinct for the past 200 years. It is also why despite the success of market economy in job creation and stability maintenance, China simply cannot allow the emergence of people like John D. Rockefeller, whose wealth was powerful enough to bury an entire nation.
 

Franklin

Captain
Exactly, no forever friends or enemies. The Brezhnev Doctrine and Soviet expansionism/hegemony on the Eurasian Continent drove the United States and China together, despite the unresolved political status of Taiwan (well, China lacked the means to take Taiwan back then anyway). From Stalin until Brezhnev, Moscow always wanted China to become an ally of subordination like other Warsaw Pact nations, but with 600 million people and a highly nationalistic CCP with memorizes of foreign occupations still fresh, it was unacceptable for the Young PRC to allow itself to become a subordinate of another hegemonic power, not mention that Moscow sought to station its troops on Chinese territories. It was Khrushchev's realization that China would not become a subordinate (or allow Soviet troops to be stationed on PRC territory) that led him to withdraw all Soviet industrial aids to China in 1960. Then you got the ideological rift between Moscow and Beijing after 1956, as well as Moscow's vocal support for India during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. They all contributed to the eventual Sino-Soviet Split.

With the marriage of convenience between China and US from 1972-1989, however, there is another problem for China. Beside the shared common goal of containing the USSR, Washington sought to ideologically and materially transform China into a liberal democratic capitalist state (if not states). Anything less would be unacceptable for Washington in the long term. In other words, you got Wilsonianism on steroid. In other words, Washington would not feel secure unless every single major power becomes a liberal democracy with institutionalized handicaps (such as a Congress or Parliament where making war or other drastic actions/mobilizations by the state would be difficult and require lengthy compromises between interest groups) in place to limit the expansion of state capacities. My Dad used to tell me that back in the 80s, every college student would turn on their radio and listen to Voice of America, despite doing so was (and still is) illegal. It is also why after the Tiananmen Incident, the US sanctioned China so harshly because it realized that the CCP Party State could not (and still cannot) be easily transformed into a liberal democratic capitalist state. Clinton and Bush would try again by granting delinking human rights from annual MFN renewal in 1994 and allow China to join the WTO in 2001 with the hope that economic liberalization would lead to political liberation (thus, end of the One-Party rule). However, China did liberalized economically with private firms dominating the Chinese economic landscape, but liberalization actually solidified support for CCP. As a result, you now have the Trump-Biden disenchantment and all-out strategic competition. And as the response to the Wuhan outbreak in 2020 has shown, with no institutionalized handicaps, the CCP Party State is fully capable of swift mobilizations against national emergencies. Such state capacity is also extremely effective in stifling dissent, ensuring there is only one voice united behind the state and the CCP faction currently in charge (I am not going to judge if it is good or bad here).

For China, liberals have long argued for embracing Washington's offer and develop a political system where multiple interest groups have their voices represented in a parliamentary democracy. However, the problem with China that it is a nation with very little resources, while it has 1.4 billion mouths to feed. In other words, Chinese are far more likely to be on survival instincts than the Anglos, whose ancestor conquered vast territories and resources for their descendants to enjoy. With 1.4 billion people on survival instinct, liberal democracies (emphasizing limits placed on state power) would most likely be hijacked by powerful interest groups/cronies with money and guns, turning the country into warring factions who could overtime disregards to rule of the game. A liberal democratic China would also likely to lose Xinjiang, the richest territory with most of China's oil, gas, and coal. This is cause turkic people are still the majority in Xinjiang and has a more martial culture than Han Chinese immigrants. In other words, One-Party system is currently (not necessarily the future) the best of the bad apples available to more justly redistribute limited resources in a nation on survival instinct for the past 200 years. It is also why despite the success of market economy in job creation and stability maintenance, China simply cannot allow the emergence of people like John D. Rockefeller, whose wealth was powerful enough to bury an entire nation.
The "liberal democracy" as being practiced today in the West only emerged from the late 1950's to the early 1960's. So liberal democracy has a track record of little over 60 years. Shorter than the CCP. And considering the problems the West is facing right now it may not be the best system after all. No political order lasts forever rather its liberal democracy or the CCP they will all come to an end. Its not a matter of if but its a matter of when. All political and economic systems have three things in common.

1. There is a (huge) gap between what is propagated versus how the system actually works.
2. Its always a compromise. Every system has its own strengths and weaknesses.
3. All systems comes to a end because of human failure.

Personally I like to see a system emerge that is between the West and China. You need to find the right balance between protecting the rights of the individuals and the responsibilities towards the community/collective for a society and nation to be healthy. I think the West has gone too far to the rights side of things and China maybe too far to the responsibilities side of things. Of course all people's of the world has to find the right balance within their own country based on their own history and culture. There is no such thing as a one size fits all solution of how to run a country and a society. The West's believe that they have found THE perfect system is their mistake. And they will pay dearly for it. As the West today is facing mounting social, economic, financial and political crises at home there is no solution in sight. Today in the West there is a situation where everyone has an opinion but no one has a solution because there is no consensus. Everybody is talking if not screaming passed each other and no one is willing to listen to the other side.
 

NiuBiDaRen

Brigadier
Registered Member
The "liberal democracy" as being practiced today in the West only emerged from the late 1950's to the early 1960's. So liberal democracy has a track record of little over 60 years. Shorter than the CCP. And considering the problems the West is facing right now it may not be the best system after all. No political order lasts forever rather its liberal democracy or the CCP they will all come to an end. Its not a matter of if but its a matter of when. All political and economic systems have three things in common.

1. There is a (huge) gap between what is propagated versus how the system actually works.
2. Its always a compromise. Every system has its own strengths and weaknesses.
3. All systems comes to a end because of human failure.

Personally I like to see a system emerge that is between the West and China. You need to find the right balance between protecting the rights of the individuals and the responsibilities towards the community/collective for a society and nation to be healthy. I think the West has gone too far to the rights side of things and China maybe too far to the responsibilities side of things. Of course all people's of the world has to find the right balance within their own country based on their own history and culture. There is no such thing as a one size fits all solution of how to run a country and a society. The West's believe that they have found THE perfect system is their mistake. And they will pay dearly for it. As the West today is facing mounting social, economic, financial and political crises at home there is no solution in sight. Today in the West there is a situation where everyone has an opinion but no one has a solution because there is no consensus. Everybody is talking if not screaming passed each other and no one is willing to listen to the other side.

Historian Alfred McCoy Predicts US Empire is Collapsing while China's Power Grows
 

Petrolicious88

Senior Member
Registered Member
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Listen very carefully to political language beetween the lines: He says that they don't want dialogue with china, they only want to isolate economically an politically China. Essentially to destroy china. This is only a step before war hot, not cold. They don't want to change China, they want only to crush It.
Why destroy China when you can continue to harvest China. So no, US doesn’t want to destroy China. There’s no money in that.
 

ChongqingHotPot92

Junior Member
Registered Member
Why destroy China when you can continue to harvest China. So no, US doesn’t want to destroy China. There’s no money in that.
Agree. There is no point for US to destroy China when it could turn 1.4 billion people into subservient liberal fans (who would not actually understand what liberal democracy is). That's why Washington has long emphasize political reform in China, full liberalization of financial market, and give Western journalists the right to preach their versions of China's story. The goal is to transform the majority of Chinese into thinking like the intellectuals of the 1980s, so that Washington could exist as a beacon on the hill 灯塔国 in the minds of Chinese academics and students, ultimate destination for China's top 1% (who monopolize domestic political power while sending their corrupt money to Wall Street) to invest their money and future, and welcome big banks from Wall Street and Big Techs from Silicon Valley to dominate the Chinese consumer market. When such degree of mind control and market penetration were to be achieved, Washington could then "politely ask" the CCP (or whoever in charge) to renounce China's nuclear arsenal and buy expensive American conventional weapons instead, while allowing Tibet and Xinjiang to become independent in the name of "self determination". The final step would be to turn China into a bigger version of Thailand: a military ally (whose soldiers' professionalism are kept under those of the US military), market for American goods, a source cheap labour for final assembly (with zero technology transfer allowed) and light industrial production, and a tourist destination for white men with yellow fever for "authentic" female bodies. Most importantly, give vast majorities of Chinese opportunities to be employed in low-skilled factory floors, but don't allow them to received high levels of education or understand what liberal democracy means. Otherwise, they would start questing the international capital and racial hierarchy. Oh yes, on very important thing, pressure whoever in charge to allow Silicon Valley big techs to buy up Huawei, SMIC, VIVO, Alibaba, etc. in the name of free trade. For ones too big to swallow like CRRC, CASC, CASIC, Norinco, etc., privatization and subsequently allow their CEOs and families to move to the US, as well as transferring their wealths to the West. The few educated Chinese elites would rule the country by being tools of Western capital, while their loyalty to the West were to be guaranteed by owning large mansions in the West, as well as having their kids sent to Ivy League unis. Finally, and most importantly, be sure to put in multiple layers of checks and balance (especially filibustering) in a the Chinese national people's congress, so that no important consensus that challenge Western corporate and political interests could ever pass a filibuster-proof majority. Even if such consensus were to pass, the pro-West President would simply veto it. There you go, ideal liberal project completed!

Of course, with Xi in charge, the above scenario would unlike to play out in the near future.
 

ChongqingHotPot92

Junior Member
Registered Member
1. There is a (huge) gap between what is propagated versus how the system actually works.
2. Its always a compromise. Every system has its own strengths and weaknesses.
3. All systems comes to a end because of human failure.

Personally I like to see a system emerge that is between the West and China. You need to find the right balance between protecting the rights of the individuals and the responsibilities towards the community/collective for a society and nation to be healthy. I think the West has gone too far to the rights side of things and China maybe too far to the responsibilities side of things.
Yes I agree. In the West (at least in the US), the overemphasis on limiting government power to supposedly protect individual rights have resulted in unchecked corporate power, which is just as detrimental to individual freedom as dictators. In fact, the compromise of the US political system has not only gave the richest a free hand to expand their personal power at the expense of the nation and society, but also let to the collapse of the post-Civil War Reconstruction, allowing the Jim Crow South the reign for another millennia until 1965, when the US finally transformed from a plutocratic republic to a liberal democracy (honestly I do think the period from roughly 1964-1967 should be consider the pinnacle of US political development and democratisation). But keep in mind that the US won WWII and underwent the mass democratisation of 1964-1967 not because of protecting the negative political freedom of whites or priviledged, but the state and society acted as one collective to achieve overarching national goals. End game: more liberties for individuals, and the state became stronger and more capable of safeguarding such liberties. Of course, many of the progressive gains from Roosevelt to Johnson were later reversed during the Reagan Administration (the so-called Reagan corporate/social conservative revolution). Then we have the good old USA we see today.

As with China, it is kind of an extreme collectivism on steroid. Such extreme collectivism reached its pinnacle during the Cultural Revolution, when the political ideology behind such collectivism was abused to settle individual problems at all levels of society. Then you for the 1980s-2008 liberal backlash, when neoliberal economic and political ideology (despite the Tiananmen Incident), as well as "learning from the advanced West" attitude dominated all discourses, be it in corporations, government, or universities. However, after 2008, there was a re-think at the top levels of the CCP regarding whether giving private corporations too much freedom in the market would be a good idea. At the same time, the losers of the 1990s SOE reform (60-70 year old workers who were on their own when their work units were privatized through corrupt deals) began to unite and form movement demanding the government to take care of the poor. Yet, if would ultimately take Chinese society as a whole until the Trump Administration (especially the 2020 catastrophe) to realize that the US is no longer the city on the hill. On the contrary, with China's successful whole-of-Party-State-society in containing the outbreak and remain the only nation growing economically in 2020, support for collectivism would likely increase again.
 

broadsword

Brigadier
Agree. There is no point for US to destroy China when it could turn 1.4 billion people into subservient liberal fans (who would not actually understand what liberal democracy is). That's why Washington has long emphasize political reform in China, full liberalization of financial market, and give Western journalists the right to preach their versions of China's story. The goal is to transform the majority of Chinese into thinking like the intellectuals of the 1980s, so that Washington could exist as a beacon on the hill 灯塔国 in the minds of Chinese academics and students, ultimate destination for China's top 1% (who monopolize domestic political power while sending their corrupt money to Wall Street) to invest their money and future, and welcome big banks from Wall Street and Big Techs from Silicon Valley to dominate the Chinese consumer market. When such degree of mind control and market penetration were to be achieved, Washington could then "politely ask" the CCP (or whoever in charge) to renounce China's nuclear arsenal and buy expensive American conventional weapons instead, while allowing Tibet and Xinjiang to become independent in the name of "self determination". The final step would be to turn China into a bigger version of Thailand: a military ally (whose soldiers' professionalism are kept under those of the US military), market for American goods, a source cheap labour for final assembly (with zero technology transfer allowed) and light industrial production, and a tourist destination for white men with yellow fever for "authentic" female bodies. Most importantly, give vast majorities of Chinese opportunities to be employed in low-skilled factory floors, but don't allow them to received high levels of education or understand what liberal democracy means. Otherwise, they would start questing the international capital and racial hierarchy. Oh yes, on very important thing, pressure whoever in charge to allow Silicon Valley big techs to buy up Huawei, SMIC, VIVO, Alibaba, etc. in the name of free trade. For ones too big to swallow like CRRC, CASC, CASIC, Norinco, etc., privatization and subsequently allow their CEOs and families to move to the US, as well as transferring their wealths to the West. The few educated Chinese elites would rule the country by being tools of Western capital, while their loyalty to the West were to be guaranteed by owning large mansions in the West, as well as having their kids sent to Ivy League unis. Finally, and most importantly, be sure to put in multiple layers of checks and balance (especially filibustering) in a the Chinese national people's congress, so that no important consensus that challenge Western corporate and political interests could ever pass a filibuster-proof majority. Even if such consensus were to pass, the pro-West President would simply veto it. There you go, ideal liberal project completed!

Of course, with Xi in charge, the above scenario would unlike to play out in the near future.

Good points, but please use paragraphs.
 
Top