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Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

economist.com

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Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#621

Post by whimsicalism »

d3vmax wrote: post #612
dang wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa - you can't break the site guidelines like this, and certainly not repeatedly ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29616354 ). We ban accounts that do this, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.

Hi dang, will be mindful to reply with more context, thank you for the warning. What can we do about commenters that spew misinformation or twist issues? Is there a report option?

You can flag, but you might have to have posted a little bit more in order to be able to do it. I am not sure what the guidelines are for flagging tbph

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#622

Post by ericjang »

pphysch wrote: post #607
ericjang wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out. Two questions, followed by a response to one of your comments: 1) On the Uyghur issue. If what you say is true, why is it difficult to get CSPAN footage in Xinjiang? 2) Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it? > Women being lifted out of poverty became "genocide through birthrat…

> Is there a hypothetical future event or evidence that would shift your viewpoint to believe the "western narrative"? If so, what is it? A good start would be a motive for why Beijing would do a Holocaust against peoples within China. Hitler had a motive, you can read all about it in Mein Kampf . It was out in the open. There is nothing even remotely resembling such a policy by Beijing. On the other hand, there is a…

When I ask pro-CCP people the question "what might change your mind", I often hear a variant of what you just said - "consider the motives (of the American hegemony), it explains our observations".

But that doesn't answer my question (2). Would you please answer it directly? Either there is some hypothetical evidence that would change your mind, or there is no hypothetical that could change your mind. Providing the affirmative to one or the other would help us understand whether you are open to changing your perspective at all.

For what it's worth, I'm happy to volunteer a hypothetical that would convince me to believe more in the narratives that you provided.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#623

Post by mountainb »

bredren wrote: post #90
mountainb wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible, but the US and much of the western world would have to tolerate a decade or so of severely diminished standard of living when judged by consumption standards. The country as a whole would also have to work a lot harder and for more years. 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 alread…

The endgame is robotic replacement for skilled labor. The pandemic has forced technology companies to push harder on communication products and development of virtual places. Severely diminished trade with China would require an acceleration in manufacturing technology on a scale that could only be borne out of necessity. Recognizing that robotics technology is orders of magnitude more challenging than an improved Zo…

Sure that will be a lot of it. Robots also require lots and lots of both skilled and unskilled labor to maintain. Christopher Mims has a great pop business book out this year about the state of automation in logistics and industry. One of the emphases he makes is which things are being automated now and what types of jobs for people that automation creates at multiple skill levels and social classes.

I think when it comes to articulating this to the public and to the government, I would never say "robots are replacing all skilled labor," because that would predispose the legislator or the staffers supporting the legislator to think about what they could do to quash it.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#624

Post by eloisius »

whimsicalism wrote: post #489
qwytw wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're trivializing "cultural genocide" by comparing it to child marriage bans in India or Burqa bans in France. Cultural genocide is not just banning random specific practices, the near complete eradication of local languages or cultures by the French state throughout the 19th and 20th centuries is a better example or what the British did in Ireland. And if "cultural genocide" is not the appropriate name for that wh…

1. I think it is up for debate what the way France treats ethnic and religious minorities, and their extreme focus on eliminating any sense of cultural difference from the public sphere constitutes. 2. I am not saying that "cultural genocide" is not the appropriate term. Honestly, it probably is. I'm merely saying that "genocide" is not the appropriate term for a "cultural genocide." The purpose in referring to the r…

Then let’s clear up this whole debate. I meant to type cultural genocide, but it was late and I was sleepy so I said “ethnic” instead of “cultural.”

It’s trivial compared to the Communist Party’s ongoing cultural genocide against numerous ethnic minorities, involving imprisonment, slave labor, forced sterilization, “re-education,” family separation, forced marriages to Han Chinese men, and many other abhorrent conditions, but still terrifying that Chinese diplomats in another country think it’s okay to gate crash a party, photograph attendees (presumably for identification and retribution), and then start a fistfight because they were “provoked” by a “false national flag.”

I don’t need to take some of the distaste we have for the holocaust and apply it to this. It’s shameful and terrifying enough on its own.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#625

Post by seoulmetro »

pphysch wrote: post #241

1. Beijing rejects being merely the "workshop" of the unipolar world, embraces sovereignty (GFW), high quality development (HSR), technological innovation (4IR), including in the military space (space, cyber, hypersonics). Oh and BRI. 2. Washington doesn't like that because it will displace the unipolar moment. USA has been in economic decline for half a century while PRC has been on a dramatic rise. Washington tries…

Yeah the writing is on the wall. Except it's being wiped out by the US and written as something else. Meanwhile the original writing wasn't so great, but it was true.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#626

Post by seoulmetro »

pphysch wrote: post #486
eunos wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really decline but relative decline, otherwise the rest of statements stand. The most amusing thing is that people forgot that US threw the firebrand Taiwan independence advocate Chen-sui Bian under the bus.

USA has absolutely been in economic decline since the 70s. Which was okay because USD is the global reserve currency and Washington can just print USD to buy things and offset the declines in productivity/etc. However, once the USD loses global reserve status, USA is in extreme economic trouble. In 2021 alone, it will have over $1T trade deficit in goods.

I would hate to see what the US would be like if the US didn't get to the tech space first. It's the only pillar holding them up beyond the 20th century.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#627

Post by manuelabeledo »

pphysch wrote: post #580
manuelabeledo wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vietnam War took off later. The war started half a decade prior. The US already had 50,000 soldiers stationed in South Vietnam by the time the Sino-Soviet split reached its point of no return, plus several thousand advisors and other personnel. > Believe it or not, US strategists in 1950 were capable of planning more than 0-4 years into the future. I agree. I also think they were a bit more concerned about an arms…

> The war started half a decade prior. We are specifically discussing American combat involvement in Vietnam, which did not meaningfully begin (beyond 100-1000s of noncombat advisors) until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. With the explicit goal of containing China.

As I said, 50,000 soldiers were already there.

> …until after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. With the explicit goal of containing China

You are making a single phase the whole reason why the US deployed millions of troops to Vietnam, which is patently untrue.

I see you would not acknowledge either that China became the aggressor a few years after the US withdrew, and eventually the Chinese got their asses kicked too.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#629

Post by ipaddr »

baybal2 wrote: post #359
ipaddr wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

63% voted for Biden. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna12...

Voting D, and being very right wind doesn't preclude each other. This election was really an outlier. As the article already mentions: "While Biden performed well among Asian Americans, the data suggest that Trump didn't lose support with the group, either."

Being right wing and voting D can happen. With Trump I'm sure many members of the Bush family voted D.

If the support didn't go down doesn't that mean the level of support hasn't changed? And this election wasn't an outlier for this group?

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#630

Post by noirchen »

I feel it amused that people here are discussing what and how Lithuania and the west can do to 'confront' China, but everyone in east Asia knows that before the next Taiwan election in 2024, China will do something to achieve some sort of reunification, either by forcing the Taiwanese government back to the old One-China promise (which is unlikely because the pro-China KMT lost power long ago) or by toppling the pro-independence DPP government.

And you people are seriously discussing the possibility that Taiwan goes nuclear, but it was in the KMT era after China had the bomb, Taiwan was considering building its own nuclear weapon, only to be quickly removed by the US. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to realize that the US has been selling Taiwan expensive out-of-date weapons, which is only logical if the US doesn't want Taiwan to defend itself. Taiwanese people know that, ever since the 70s when Taiwan was kicked off the UN and the US did nothing!

Do you guys know the real sentiment in Taiwan? They are more like, "F*k the US, they treat us like pawns. F*k the west, they would give us anything but real support! F*k the government, they got us in such a bad position. F*k China, they want to annex us. F*k the 20% Taiwanese, they do business with China, in China, for China!"

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