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Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

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Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#201

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

hacknat wrote: post #191
loughnane wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By some measures China's navy is larger than the US's [0]: >In a report published this month, the Pentagon acknowledged a grim milestone: China’s navy, having churned out warships like sausages, has become the world’s largest. I'm not aware of many signs that this trend will decrease. [0] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/09/26/china-now...

China is, at best, a Pacific power, but really they're just regional. China cannot project sea lane power past Japan at this point. The dirty secret of China's economy is that they're incredibly dependent on the American military for stable trade relations.

150 years ago, the same was said of the US by the then global hegemon, the British Empire.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's important to note that these things can change.

The Pax Americana is a real thing, even if it's held up more by Hollywood than gunboats right now.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#202

Post by chaostheory »

kccqzy wrote: post #174
chaostheory wrote: post #7

Under XJ, China is declining. One of the big reasons for China's meteoric rise was that stupid laws weren't being enforced properly or at all, and free speech was on the rise which in turn led to more creativity and economic freedom. Under that old reality, I was worried that China would inevitably surpass the West, but Zhou Enlai & Deng Xiaoping's golden egg laying goose is dead now in exchange for more centralized…

I find this hard to agree with, even though I really want to agree because I want the Chinese people to have the freedom they deserve. But the facts aren't right. China in the 1980s enjoyed a similar period of increasing freedom of speech under the leadership of Zhao Ziyang. We all know what happened in 1989. But the economy kept chugging along just fine.

I've already accounted for that. As I've already mentioned, stupid laws weren't enforced well if at all. That's one of the big changes.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#203

Post by jfengel »

RestlessMind wrote: post #185
jfengel wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been doing its best to alienate its allies, and has called NATO "obsolete". The alliance hasn't fallen apart entirely, and in the event of an actual shooting war with China would most likely be forced together. But shooting is unlikely, and the fragility of the alliance makes peacetime coordination more difficult. That's potentially to China's advantage. It's not larger than the US plus its allies, but whe…

US stance is mainly Trump's stance and neither Democrats (Obama / Clinton / Biden) nor mainstream Republicans want to alienate our allies. While Trump is indeed tapping into "America only" sentiment prevalent in some sections (make NATO allies allocate more budget towards defense, end endless wars in the Middle East etc), I don't see a broad political support to completely alienate the allies.

It focuses on one person, but that person was elected. Whether he's re-elected or not, the support that put him there remains. It makes the US an unreliable partner: agreements made today can be broken tomorrow. Our allies will be much less likely to make the kinds of serious, long-term commitments if they can't be sure they'll be held.

That America-first sentiment has always been there, but other countries have always trusted the government to rein it in. It could be dog-whistled at but didn't drive policy. Now that it has done so, they must assume it will do so again.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#204

Post by hosh »

jimmyvalmer wrote: post #186
hosh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the more than 2000 years of history, the Chinese have demonstrated a willingness to assimilate, and oppress dissenting voices. Even the Mongolians (Song dynasty) and the Manchurian (Qing dynasty) rulers adopted those methods to maintain power during the consolidation phases. The Tibetans are a great example. Both the Mongolian and Manchurian descended rulers had left Tibet as an autonomous region primarily because…

> Mongolian and Manchurian descended rulers ... were Buddhist. However, the Qing dynasty... Huh? First Manchuria equals Qing in my limited remembrance of imperial history. Second, the Manchurians were Buddhist?

I'll be more precise -- the Qing dynasty (Manchurian) emperor that asserted state power over theocratic power in Tibet was himself personally a Buddhist. This was from a paper I read -- it's a book review of Forging the Golden Urn ; the book is written by Max Oidtmann, and the review was written by Matthew Mosca, published in the Journal of Chinese Studies. In the review, it talked about the Qing emperor trying to assert state power without alienating the Hans. I don't know if all of Qing were Buddhist.

I am also not saying all of the ethnic Manchurians were Buddhists. I didn't get that deeply into the history.

I do know that the Mongolians greatly respected the tulkas of Tibet, with branches of the Tibetan Buddhis monastaries found in Mongolia. The search for reincarnations also extends out into Mongolia. The review mentioned that -- during the Song dynasty, the Mongolians let the Tibetans have enough autonomy to concern the Hans, and politically, they were seeing if the Qing emperors will do the same. The creation of the Golden Urn lottery system was a way to assert state power while also respecting the religious process in Tibet. (Whereas, in contrast, I think the Chinese selection of the Pachan Lama and control of the "tulka" was done as part of the cultural assimilation and oppression program by the Chinese). But yeah, the impetus for the Chinese conquest of Tibet in the twentieth century was centuries in the making.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#205

Post by LatteLazy »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #81
est31 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China would be severely affected by such a measure as well. This is WTO's doing, and is a big reason why there has been no world war 3. It's easy to wage war if your economy is truly sovereign, but with a nation your economy is intertwined with, it's hard to wage with. Trump's anti-China policy, while it is sensible in many ways, could have the ill effect of enabling a major war in a few years.

This argument reminds me of the pre WW1 pro-bismark arguments for entangled, complex alliance systems, because they would make "war unlikely"..

In fairness, no country in a pact attacked another country in its pact. The issue was there were 2 competing and independent alliance groups rather than 1 (World) trade group.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#206

Post by landryraccoon »

zepto wrote: post #194
landryraccoon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to believe that Democracy has systematic benefits, but we don't have enough data points to say that for sure. You can easily argue that the rise of Democracy in the 20th century is simply because the United States won world war 2 and the cold war, and all other countries adopted Democracy just to emulate the US. If Germany had discovered the atomic bomb before the US (which arguably could have happened if hi…

What? The US wasn’t the only country with democracy before World War 2.

There have been democracies since the ancient era.

I'm saying that before World War 2 you wouldn't generally consider Democracy to be the default paradigm for how nations were governed.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#207

Post by novok »

landryraccoon wrote: post #98
novok wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents countries from saying thanks china, we aren't going to pay and then allying with the rest of the west, or playing back and forth to negotiate ever better deals? The problem with infrastructure investment is it's hard to move.

A country never stops wanting more investment, and once a country has accepted investment money, there are parties in both nations that are incentivized to continue the relationship. If a country takes money from China, they will continue to want to take more money from China instead of switching to a less well known, more risky alternative. Also, if a country reneges on their investors, why would investors in any ot…

It would probably be part of a negotiation with the west to 'join their side' because they're worried about annexation by china or similar.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#208

Post by rawgabbit »

puranjay wrote: post #6
echelon wrote: post #2

So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy? Or are the predictions that China's growth will decline true? Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies. Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just…

It has been nearly impossible to find objective analysis of China. Most sources are either soft propaganda or irrational jingoism. What are some good sources for a rational discussion about China's growing dominance?

https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/china...

https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/2402.pdf

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#209

Post by nradov »

RestlessMind wrote: post #28
echelon wrote: post #2

So is China going to surpass America to become the world's #1 economy? Or are the predictions that China's growth will decline true? Some analysts think China's population is too old and that youth will peter out, whereas others think that all the CCP has to do is ask its millennials to have more babies. Some analysts think that democratic nations will band together and give China the cold shoulder. China could just…

> China could just as easily form alliances. Can you please elaborate? I find this to be an Achilles heal for China. If there is a bipolar world with US on one side and China leading the other, who do you think will ally with China? I can see Russia, Iran and North Korea but not really anyone else. In the US camp, I see Western Europe + NATO countries, Australia, NZ, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, India and Israel. Do you t…

China is trying hard to gain a foothold in Europe by establishing an alliance with Serbia. So far Serbia has been shut out of NATO and the EU due to the Kosovo issue.

Re: Dreams of a Red Emperor: The Relentless Rise of Xi Jinping

#210

Post by [deleted] »

whimsicalism wrote: post #96
smallnamespace wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem with this argument is that it can be flipped on its head to justify an aristocracy: the wealthy today are the ‘best’ and they will pass on their genes, successful values, and educational strategies to their children.

> it can be flipped on its head to justify an aristocracy: the wealthy today are the ‘best’ and they will pass on their genes, successful values, and educational strategies to their children. I disagree, I don't think this argument can be flipped on its head: The point is that it's pretty clear that the wealthy today are not the best and that meritocratic approaches are much more effective than crossing your fingers…

[deleted]
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