61–70 of 727 posts
I wish whole of EU would declare in unison support for Taiwan. Wonder if China would kick out every single EU nation embassy then?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.
I'm actually not sure why this is being downvoted. I'm not a fan of the heavy dependence on Chinese manufacturing as it comes at huge human rights/ecological costs (in that order), but companies typically care about the bottom line above all else. How the product is made is less important typically than whether or not it __is__ made. And it's a simple truth that right now a lot of companies are heavily dependent on C…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.
I'm actually not sure why this is being downvoted. I'm not a fan of the heavy dependence on Chinese manufacturing as it comes at huge human rights/ecological costs (in that order), but companies typically care about the bottom line above all else. How the product is made is less important typically than whether or not it __is__ made. And it's a simple truth that right now a lot of companies are heavily dependent on C…
But I don’t imagine Western nations will ever remove their embassies from China, as OP suggests. Those are useful for both official and backchannel communications, and have no bearing on nation’s leverage over the other.
Why "evacuate"? Were the safety of the embassy's staff under threat? I can't help but wonder if the word was deliberately chosen for click-baiting --- the only three occurrences of "evacuate/evacuation", including the one in the title, are concentrated in the second and third paragraphs --- it is as if they are injected as a last-minute after-thought.
Yes. China is known to use undisclosed radiation weapons against diplomats. US diplomats have suffered on multiple occasions.
China pretending to be the victim of Lithuanian bullying really is a farce more ridiculous than usual.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.
Sure we can. It may hurt a lot at first but we'll get over it. Think about how hard it was to rebuild after WW2. This would be nowhere near that difficult since none of the west is a bombed-out ruin today and all of the west is made up of advanced economies with highly educated populations. Furthermore, there are developing countries (such as Vietnam) that are going full-steam-ahead with ramping up production, especi…
In the past I would have said "there's no way that we would tolerate that," but for the last two years we have seen substantially diminished standard of living already due to [redacted], the monetary response to [redacted], and the policy response to [redacted], but now that we've seen that it is conceivable that the US would go a more austere route now. I also have seen now that no one in our leadership believes in anything or has any principles, so radical shifts really are possible.
With Vietnam, a lot of its recent development is related to expansion of Chinese foreign direct investment with substantial percentage increases every year in recent years. A lot of the notions about Vietnamese hostility to China and Chinese business is out of date and becoming more out of date.
There's virtually no US industry that is not heavily dependent on Chinese industry for refined materials, intermediate goods, and consumer goods. A lot of substitution could conceivably happen at higher prices, but really the way that we get out of it is defaulting on the government's medical obligations to the boomers and rededicating the money that was slated to giving them their to-the-grave care to industrial redevelopment.
China would be much better off if they just gave up on the whole Taiwan charade. I understand how badly they want to put Taiwan under thumb like they did HK, but Taiwan is really the only issue I foresee with potential to derail China's progress.
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China's economy would crumble a little if it could not sell anything outside anymore. Imagine a few billions of people losing their current level of life in China... a good recipe for regime change.
Europe is much smaller than you think.
So if EU got its shit together and formulated a coherent unified foreign policy - it would be at the very least on equal terms with both US and China. Hence why everyone (from Putin, to China to even our allies the US) are so invested in breaking EU apart (and even succeeding - the Brexit).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.
Sure we can. It may hurt a lot at first but we'll get over it. Think about how hard it was to rebuild after WW2. This would be nowhere near that difficult since none of the west is a bombed-out ruin today and all of the west is made up of advanced economies with highly educated populations. Furthermore, there are developing countries (such as Vietnam) that are going full-steam-ahead with ramping up production, especi…
Cutting off all reliance on China would be economic suicide for any individual nation unless every one mutually agrees on it. Best of luck getting that to happen.
There is a simple solution. If most of western world allowed Taiwan embassies China would have to relent. They can't afford having entire western world stand against them. Unfortunately, that would require western nations to agree on something.
They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.