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Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

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Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#191

Post by mistermann »

acct1771 wrote: post #186
mistermann wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxic (in this case racist) behavior like this is starting to become common enough that I wish mods would step in with a friendly reminder.

For the last time, it's not racist to question a Nation's decisions just because they have a homogeneous population. Holy hell.

I was referring to the motivation of the downvoters. I would be happy to consider any valid motivations you could raise for downvoting a question (for clarity: a question is generally not an assertion, this one certainly wasn't.)

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#192

Post by jazzyjackson »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #119
mtw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, last time China accepted major trade deals from the West to fully open their market, they got their cities flooded by opium and got land ruled by foreign law, and then got their government toppled. The lessons learned from that was that if you are not careful, western countries will come and dominate you. Look around, the same happened in India and many other countries with often exctintion of natives F…

Definition of "developing country" from WTO. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/d1who_e.htm China is no longer a developing country. The can say they are developing but that is no longer true.

?? So your link says anyone can present themselves as developing. what alternative definition contradicts this?

China surely has some very shiny metropoli, but there is a few decades worth of modernization to be done still as you go inland.

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#193

Post by kipchak »

agent008t wrote: post #92
wallace_f wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US does this, but I'm glad it's a country where we value being able to openly criticize our government for it. We have an independent judiciary, democratic institutions--what are structural Separations of Powers which is the most important structure of a civilization consistent with liberty. China doesn't have that. Saying the US also cheats the rules, too, is important, but shouldn't be confused with the reality…

Rhetoric- and you believe it! Don’t you know where those slogans come from? Well-paid researchers - how do you say it? - "think tanks," funded by big businesses. What is that? A "think tank"? China is the last sovereign country in the world. Authoritarian but willing - unlike U.N.-governed countries - to give its people the freedom to do what they want. The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government.…

Our governments have limited power by design.

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#194

Post by MR4D »

dalbasal wrote: post #84
product50 wrote: post #10

Isn't the ball in China's court here? I am not sure what is the expectation of US in this. China has a completely closed market while at the same time they are reaping the benefits of selling in markets of other countries with no penalties. How is that fair? Also, they force companies to share their technologies/IP if they are interested in coming into Chinese markets - and then they just steal it to undercut the for…

I agree on the market access point, to an extent. There an assymetry that can't stand forever, given the size of China's economy today. But, free trade has never really been free. There are tons and tons of caveats, exceptions, special rules and bad faith. So, I think it's misleading to represent china as "closed" and other countries as "open." On the second point, I disagree. IP is not some basic, natural law. It's…

You've got to be trolling with your statement:

>>Why should china (or any country) have to subscribe to an IP system under which they don't own as many patents.

Is is fine if I steal from you because I don't have as much money as you do?

Or, would you prefer that I don't "subscribe to" your notion of money in your pocket as wealth because I don't have as much and therefore it is perfectly moral to take yours?

Come on - let's have a rational discussion here.

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#195

Post by baybal2 »

thefounder wrote: post #96
baybal2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, how they will sing if Xi will get angry for real this time and call for something like blanket ban on exports to US. If you think of China as a rational player who can be "mindgamed around" take in mind that Xi has goood record of shooting himself in the foot politically, which he has been doing consistently through his reign. Americans have really have nothing to mentally reference when dealing with this t…

US being the world's superpower has experience with communists, dictators, royals and all kind of leaders. The only issue here is that China is the 2nd world economic power so it's a bit harder to use the stick.

US has no experience, it looses it once every electoral term

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#196

Post by heraclius »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #175
chvid wrote: post #25

As others has observed the economies of USA and China are tied at the hip. China sells goods cheaply to USA and takes the dollars it makes and invest in US treasuries. This keeps inflation low and keeps interest rates low. And allows the US to maintain an unnatural high living standard with low savings and asset price inflation. The central bank may be able to compensate from the lack of Chinese buying but it is an u…

> Also notice that Singapore seems to be saying: Please don't ask us to pick sides ... > The US may have fewer friends in Asia than it assumes. Isn't Singapore political system famously authoritarian capitalist and its people ethnically Chinese? It might be a mistake as viewing it too much of a representative of the rest of Asia. It sounds very similar to contemporary China, in many respects, so it may have an unusua…

> Isn't Singapore political system famously authoritarian capitalist

Most of Southeast Asia is increasingly authoritarian.

> its people ethnically Chinese?

Mostly (this is a trivial Google), but importantly not entirely.

Singapore was the last country to recognise the PRC instead of Taiwan. This was for good reason. First, Singapore maintains internal harmony by pretending to be multiracial. (It isn’t, obviously—the best candidate for the PM by far was ignored because “the people aren’t ready for a non-Chinese PM”, even though he was the most popular.) This involves insisting on English translators when visiting China, asserting independence, doing military drills in Taiwan, etc. Second, Singapore historically had to do the same thing to convince its neighbours that it was not a Chinese puppet.

But the crucial difference is that Singapore optimises for minimal oppression given a certain developmental outcome, whereas China doesn’t. Repression in Xinjiang, the Tienanmen Square massacre, current crackdowns on liberal thinktanks, etc. are not necessary to secure the régime. No Singaporean government would bother. (That is why New Naratif is still around.) Singapore is in fact qualitatively distinct from almost all other authoritarian states in that it requires extremely little oppression in view of the outcomes achieved compared to any other state, where the tradeoff is much worse.

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#197

Post by heraclius »

throwaway552231 wrote: post #190
mensetmanusman wrote: post #112

It would be so much easier to accept China's rise if they weren’t pulling a North Korea and imprisoning a million minorities with dystopian technology solutions. I don’t think China realized how that policy is going to backfire in terms of their relationship with the West. We want to see countries with individual rights rise, not authoritarians.

Aren’t the people they are imprisoning criminals that broke the law? For perspective, the US has 2.2 million minorities in prison.

There are 11 million Uighurs, and about a million in the camps. There are over 30 million blacks in the US, and under a million blacks in jail. (2.2 million is the total number of prisoners.)

The situation in Xinjiang is therefore much worse.

Most of the people concerned should not be locked up anyway—think of people who can’t afford to pay fines in the US, or people who pray in Xinjiang. It is extremely rare that a population is so poorly socialised that it is necessary to imprison over a tenth of the population. Perhaps they are in some strict sense “criminals”, but China can choose who to criminalise (as can the US), and it is clearly making unhelpful decisions.

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#198

Post by heraclius »

HansLandaa wrote: post #183
mensetmanusman wrote: post #112

It would be so much easier to accept China's rise if they weren’t pulling a North Korea and imprisoning a million minorities with dystopian technology solutions. I don’t think China realized how that policy is going to backfire in terms of their relationship with the West. We want to see countries with individual rights rise, not authoritarians.

So, I'm not making a value judgement of what's going on but I always cringe when I see complicated geopolitical actions being reduced to one line talking points on HN. Of course it is actually much more nuanced in reality. These observations about imprisoning minorities always fail to include information about past terrorist attacks and militant activity in the region. Most of the people in the reeducation centers we…

It’s not clear that the situation is “geopolitical”, but, more importantly, simply pointing to terrorism is not helpful either.

(1) The area is not inherently Chinese. China does not need to occupy Xinjiang. It has belonged to other people at other points. (See texts on the Islamic conquest.)

(2) China has encouraged mass Han immigration to Xinjiang. The Han who moved were not moving because of hunger or thirst. They moved because the state provided incentives to do so.

(3) Radicalisation is largely driven by ideologies that the CCP helped to support in the first place, when sowing chaos in Afghanistan without deciding what to do next. Of course it did not do so alone—the Americans and Pakistanis were also involved. But it at least props up Pakistan who continue to empower the Taliban.

(4) The Chinese state is very violent—and more violent than most other states.

Ergo it is misleading to suggest that the Uighurs are being particularly violent, and to imply that they are simply being violent for the sake of it. China could try a number of things, including getting out, reducing violence against Uighurs, and ceasing to incentivise Han migration.

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#199

Post by coldtea »

nullwasamistake wrote: post #135
coldtea wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, what's your take on China's behavior specifically, do you believe they are acting in a "fair" manner? Regarding trade: I think China (and any country) should have absolute say in how they do business, and who they want to do business with, who to allow in their internal market, etc. And of course other countries should be free to reciprocate. That would be actually free trade in my book: with any n…

Free trade is like free markets. I can buy shares of nearly any public company in the world (notably, not including China). I can move my stuff for free (besides shipping cost) to many countries. That is free trade and free markets. China has neither. Free is free as in no restriction, not free to do whatever you want. Free to do whatever will make global trade more difficult for everyone as all countries will have t…

>Free is free as in no restriction, not free to do whatever you want.

Well, the term (and its proponents) should not hijack the concept of freedom them. One could call it "open" (or sometimes "forcefully open" market, e.g. like when the British waged war on China so that they are free to sell opium there).

Free as in freedom should include the freedom not to trade.

>China has neither

Well, despite that is one of the biggest importers and exporters of the world, and they've been rising from an agrarian economy to the worlds top manufacturer, and being in the top-2 global players. So looks to be working for them.

>Free to do whatever will make global trade more difficult for everyone as all countries will have tariffs, as it was historically.

That's a good thing in my book. We need less global trade, if not for anything else, for environmental reasons (the "reduce" part of the reduce, reuse, recycle).

If the people in some country feel as if they benefit from trading something, they can always choose to trade it. But if they have negative consequences from trading, i.e. importing or exporting X, then why should they continue to do so and suffer them?

Re: Singapore Urges U.S. to Accept China's Rise, Spare Other Nations

#200

Post by blago »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #189
blago wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world might be a better place if everyone stole and remixed IP Until it becomes unprofitable to invest in innovation

innovation comes from graduate students everyone building out a new technology borrowed ideas freely without compensating the real innovators (of course, implementation can be the more difficult piece) As long as governments subsidize public universities and research departments, there will exist a font of innovation

> innovation comes from graduate students

This is such a sweeping statement it's just false

> everyone building out a new technology borrowed ideas freely without compensating the real innovators (of course, implementation can be the more difficult piece)

Implementation is innovation too

> As long as governments subsidize public universities and research departments, there will exist a font of innovation

We need both

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