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Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

economist.com

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Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#121

Post by koheripbal »

zavi wrote: post #111

For those who say it's OK to be a president for life because he's a competent person: he's 64 years old. Brain deteriorates rapidly with age. The most reasonable person today can suddenly start rounding up Chinese who post memes on WeChat a year from now simply because of a normal biological process. That's where you need a system in place that strips them off power very quickly. History has had plenty Mad Kings.

The biggest problem is the precedent it sets. Once Julius Cesar made himself "first citizen" and took control over the senate, absolutely NONE of his successors relinquished power back to the Senate. ...and some of them were disastrous leaders.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#122

Post by mistermann »

islanderfun wrote: post #85
mistermann wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how clear this is, yet so few people can see it, it makes me wonder if there would be less confusion if we didn't have two different cultures involved. Of course, Western corporations and their executives who are profiting handsomely from it have good reason to "not notice" what's happening and continue to talk their book, but the wilful ignorance of genuinely well-meaning liberals is more complex. I alw…

There is willful ignorance mostly by those profiting. But it's not as simple as "well-meaning liberals". That seems like a re-writing of history when there are plenty of examples from the left protesting these deals. And it's a bit hard to peg who on the right/left we're talking about as high level politicians tend to blur the line when talk about trade deals. "True scotsman" and all. Sanders was all over unfair trad…

> But it's not as simple as "well-meaning liberals". That seems like a re-writing of history when there are plenty of examples from the left protesting these deals.

I suppose I should have said modern "liberals", the word almost has no meaning anymore.

Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky are both historically very philosophically aligned with Trump on many of these topics, but many on the modern left, if you take them at their literal word, would have you believe they are some sort of alt-right hyper-capitalists.

I am of the opinion that some very powerful people have discovered a number of psychological tricks that the human mind, particularly under current Western moral beliefs, is almost completely defenseless against.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#123

Post by Slansitartop »

jotm wrote: post #119
Apocryphon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan is a first world democracy that has at least existed with its own distinct government for seventy years. A Chinese military invasion would be unprecedented in the history of the world since WWII. I wonder what such a war would signify for the postwar order.

A very sudden decline in Chinese manufacturing, that's what. With such a bold action, many if not most US and EU businesses will pull out of China, this would be no joking matter. Still not sure there would be a WW3 over Taiwan or any other small country that is not is some sort of bigger union.

> A very sudden decline in Chinese manufacturing, that's what. With such a bold action, many if not most US and EU businesses will pull out of China, this would be no joking matter.

Could that be a policy plus for China? IIRC, they have wanted to reduce their export-dependence for some time, though I'm sure that they'd prefer to accomplish it is a more gradual and controlled way.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#124

Post by adventured »

purplezooey wrote: post #86

Strange as it is, centrally planned economies are kicking the West's arse right now. We're busy electing far right faux populists (like Italy yesterday) and giving money to the rich.

Not even remotely close. Let's examine the countries in question anyway.

Liberal economies: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Portugal, Switzerland, Israel, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Iceland, Taiwan, Austria

Planned or otherwise heavily state controlled: China, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Sudan, Angola, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Egypt, Burma, Cambodia, Pakistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Laos, Sierra Leone, Liberia

Who doesn't love self-explanatory lists?

And speaking of giving money to the rich. China has the highest real inequality of any nation that has ever existed in world history. They have half a billion people living on less than $10 per day, and a quarter of a billion people living on less than $3 per day, while they have over 600 billionaires, including 100 billionaires in their parliament:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-...

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#125

Post by koheripbal »

purplezooey wrote: post #86

Strange as it is, centrally planned economies are kicking the West's arse right now. We're busy electing far right faux populists (like Italy yesterday) and giving money to the rich.

I wouldn't be surprised if countries like Russia and China are surreptitiously inciting partisanship in the west.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#126

Post by Slansitartop »

freech wrote: post #48
jerf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the strategies is to keep Taiwan itself armed. Civilians like us can't know this, but it has been hypothesized that one of the levers being used on China with regard to North Korea's development of nuclear weapons is explaining to them that if North Korea goes nuclear, they can expect Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and who knows who else to go nuclear, either via local development of the weaponry or via assisted…

> We'd probably know if they'd ever tested a weapon. We wouldn't necessarily know if they'd actually built one. If I were them, I totally would have. What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

> What's the point of having nuclear weapons and not telling everyone? The entire point of nuclear weapons is to deter attacks.

The ambiguity is still a valuable deterrent, and avoids the diplomatic cost of violating the NPT in peacetime, etc. That cost would doubtlessly be less if the violator was presently facing an existential threat.

IIRC, Israel follows this strategy. Everyone knows they have nukes but they've never confirmed it.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#127

Post by arialeks »

jotm wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a related note, could someone explain to me how Russia manages to stay a threat with a military budget that's about 6% of the US budget? Because Russia: (1) has ICBMs, which makes it a strategic global threat, even though they can't directly control territory that way, (2) because Russia has a large and capable conventional military than makes it a strong regional power threatening US interests and allies (it ca…

And Russia can apparently influence world opinions and politics to a major unknown degree. Cyber security tends to get the short end of the budget stick, but Russians seem to excel at it.

I read an article that says that Russia would be the country that benefits the most from US tariffs on import goods, because the EU must retaliate and therefore is much more likely to lift the sanctions of, of Russia.

Didn't want to believe it that the US government could be under Russian influence, but this move could very well prove that to some degree, or it just so happens that Trumps way of doing this aligns perfectly with their interest. On other note, people might just be reading into it too much, as it could all just be a move to, gain popularity in the US, thinking short term rather than long term.

EDIT: also recently watched a youtube video from a Google employee that says that the US government, just can't compete with big corporations for the talent pool, because government wages are limited, so yeah that certainly could be a issue for you guys.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#128

Post by forkLding »

drraid0 wrote: post #87
bgee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more on why China's increasing military budget is a disturbing sign to you? China spends a mere 1.9% of its GDP in 2016 and that number is smaller than from Vietnam, Korea, India even Singapore [0]. To me China is only trying catching up its neighbors. BTW Japan's PM has just submitted his 2018 Military Budget and if approved would be the 6th "straight annual increase" [1]. [0]: https://data.worldba…

It is disturbing because China did not hesitate to kill 10000 of their own people in 1989 on a shoestring budget, and faced no consequence. Who knows what they would do to Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc.

I highly doubt China will start a war, its not financially positive, unless they wanted to just expend some of their excess population.

I rather think domination via trade, investment, manufacturing and economical means is more plausible because thats what they're doing right now and they have more resources and capabilities to do more.

As well, its never good to fight a land war in Asia, korea, afghanistan, vietnam, cambodia and others has demonstrated that, as from a military perspective, you would be losing lives trying to police an area where locals have a more-than-significant population advantage over you.

Modern military tactics are no longer invade via land forces with air as support but rather spread fake news via social media and watch for signs of weakness in cyber structures.

Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#129

Post by dang »

moreorless wrote: post #19
anthonyleecook wrote: post #4

Some other disturbing signs from China: increasing military budget https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/03/06/china-splash-us175-bil... , kidnapping relatives of the reporters in other countries that exposed the uigher concentration camps http://m.dw.com/en/chinese-authorities-detain-relatives-of-r... , China literally banned words and letter n in social media https://mashable.com/2018/02/28/china-bans-n-xi-jinping-term..…

You have a very interesting post and comment history.

Your comment breaks the site rule against insinuating astroturfing or shillage. We enforce that pretty rigorously because it's a poison that can destroy the whole community if we let it. So would you please not do it again, regardless of how wrong someone is or seems?

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Re: Xi Jinping decides to abolish presidential term limits

#130

Post by Apocryphon »

jotm wrote: post #119
Apocryphon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan is a first world democracy that has at least existed with its own distinct government for seventy years. A Chinese military invasion would be unprecedented in the history of the world since WWII. I wonder what such a war would signify for the postwar order.

A very sudden decline in Chinese manufacturing, that's what. With such a bold action, many if not most US and EU businesses will pull out of China, this would be no joking matter. Still not sure there would be a WW3 over Taiwan or any other small country that is not is some sort of bigger union.

Most recent invasions by the great powers have been against pariah states (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya) or somewhat diplomatically isolated countries that are shaky (Georgia, Ukraine, Syria). Taiwan might not have much diplomatic recognition, but it's very much economically integrated into the global economy. It's a stable democracy with one of the highest living standards. Militarily challenging the existence of such a state- that would indicate the world is slipping back into a pre-Potsdam world, where advanced nations could fight each other again.

Granted, Taiwan is much militarily weaker than China, a little similar to the Ukraine-Russian relationship, but it's also a much more stable and richer state. I think what could be comparable is if Russia really was to threaten the Baltic nations.

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