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Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

economist.com

451–460 of 727 posts

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#451
post #423
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Yes, of course it is. Do you not see a difference between a nuclear threat to, well, agreeing to the opening of a Taiwanese office? In what world is this even similar?

In what world was that an actual threat?

You're missing the point. NK/Iran aggressiveness isn't remotely similar to Lithuania letting Taiwan open an office.

As for how real the threat is - I'm not an expert, and I don't know you calculate threat, but NK does have nuclear weapon and it's probably the only reason why the are allowed to starve millions of human beings. They also literally, well, threatened to use it. Iran doesn't have one yet, but are lying about their status of development, enriching way more then required for civil purposes, and kicking out international watchers. Oh, and at the same time threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Saying there's no threat sounds like nitpicking to me.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#452
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't imagine country run by a middle school bully. Now I can.

As someone who have spent 13 or so years of their life in China, I absolutely agree with this perspective. The culture of modern China seem to support a strangely "macho" image particularly for men: it's acceptable and maybe even encouraged, for men to be overtaken by rage, and thrash and kick around while yelling things. [1] It looks like this mentality is reflected by the politics of china as a whole. [1]: This is…

Emotional regulation issues are generally caused by childhood abuse. Mainland China is a society suffering from untreated PTSD and inter generational abuse.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Enlighten me.

China was organ harvesting in the early 00s. You didn't see anywhere near as many negative articles constantly about China, Chinese enroachment, etc. etc. then. It is only now that we are afraid China will eclipse our spot on the global stage that anyone gives a crap about Chinese human rights abuses, because of coverage largely driven by the media. We've also switched to spinning things that China does that we also…

We also burned coal for decades before people stared learning about how bad it was for our planet. How does modern awareness change the ethics of a perpetual ethnic slaughter?

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Calling disproportionate imprisonment (and racist imprisonment by ethnicity) "genocide" is genocide-trivialization, in my view. It wasn't a "genocide" when we imprisoned 1 in 3 black people in this country, even though it was pretty awful. The Holocaust was a genocide.

You seem to love to trot out the "1 in 3" statistic, and have done it several times in this thread. Maybe time to look behind this catchy headline:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/...

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#456
post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You’re advocating for a position on China’s 2 child policy that, in America, would most certainly would be deemed unconstitutional under a disparate impact framework. I know we’re talking about China here, but most Western countries have recognized that you can target a subgroup without saying you’re targeting a subgroup. You’re basically arguing that the Holocaust would not be a genocide as long as Germany was unive…

So you are saying that having lots of children is intrinsic to being Uyghur? It's a Uyghur "characteristic"?

The US law around this issue is in flux, see for instance [0], where policies that were neutrally applied but impacted people a specific religion were ruled constitutional. This specific case was later rendered moot by congressional action.

Regardless, is the claim that China is conducting a genocide, or that its actions would be in violation of the Civil Rights Act if it were a US state? Are we enforcing the Civil Rights Act globally now?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Division_v._Smith

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China was organ harvesting in the early 00s. You didn't see anywhere near as many negative articles constantly about China, Chinese enroachment, etc. etc. then. It is only now that we are afraid China will eclipse our spot on the global stage that anyone gives a crap about Chinese human rights abuses, because of coverage largely driven by the media. We've also switched to spinning things that China does that we also…

We also burned coal for decades before people stared learning about how bad it was for our planet. How does modern awareness change the ethics of a perpetual ethnic slaughter?

So your claim is that we weren't aware in the year 2003 that organ harvesting was wrong?

I'm not making any claim about ethics, merely that the perception that China is doing so many bad things all at once because they "want the rest of the world to hate them" is more likely driven by US media highlighting terrible things China does because we view them as a great power competitor now, and it is important that our populace is rallied against them.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes a fair bit beyond “disproportionate imprisonment”, as I’m sure you know.

What do you mean a "fair bit beyond"? I don't think imprisoning a large proportion of a certain ethnic group due to BS laws around extremist ideology is all that different from imprisoning an even greater number of a different ethnic group (1 in 3 black men imprisoned) due to BS laws producing a 100:1 sentencing disparity based on which drug is more popular among a certain ethnic group.

Please review the data behind your catchy "1 in 3" headline. At the very least it's out of date, if not sensationalist.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/06/...

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#459
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't that easy. It's not just China's government that believes Taiwan is part of China — China's people also believe that. There is a saying that if China is democratic, they would have invaded Taiwan yesterday. Or another saying: if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow. Another factor that complicates things is the fact that Taiwan is a strategic location for the US's military co…

CCP has a much greater control on its people than others can imagine. If they want to give up on Taiwan, they can do it without much trouble. Japan used to be China's mortal enemy. CCP has no trouble normalized relationship with Japan and built "Sino-Japan friendship" [1]. No citizen uprising over this in China, though CCP used Japan as a whipping symbol to flame up nationalism from time to time. Mongolia used to be…

[dead]

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unification is Chinese core value Is warring with all neighbors a core value too? Chinese government, through censorship, controls the minds of the Chinese people. The government needs to update the core values.

My point is that whether the west thinks the Chinese ought to think that way, is not very important. People can debate that all day long, but at the end of the day the Chinese do think that way, and they are willing to fight for it. This has strategical implications. Do we want to grandstand or do we want to actually solve a problem? If we want to grandstand at all cost, then we have to wage war with China and force…

> and they are willing to fight for it.

No, they aren't. China has been making empty threats for literally decades.

Yes, I am sure they will throw around more empty threats and not follow through on them.

But this "red line" thing is just internal propaganda that they never actually follow through on.

It is time the rest of the world stops pretending.

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