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Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

economist.com

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Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#411

Post by FooBarWidget »

zucker42 wrote: post #296
FooBarWidget wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that Taiwan is merely a nationalism and internal unity issue, and that people's views are merely a result of propaganda, ignores the very history of how Taiwan came to be and how the Chinese civil war developed. Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years. But more im…

> Your take also ignores the fact that unification is Chinese core value It seems to me that you are saying that a contemporary political position (that Taiwan should be ruled by the same government as mainland China) is in fact a "core value". Unity can be a value, but the political position that the island of Taiwan is an integral part of China, and China can't be unified without it, is not . That's the position wh…

That is correct. But as I said: Taiwan is being used by the US as a strategic military location to contain China. As long as this situation persists, China can't accept any other situation than Taiwan being part of the same state.

Were this danger to disappear then I foresee much greater chances of Taiwan emerging as a independent state, probably as one that is aligned with PRC in the same manner Canada is to the US.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#412

Post by whimsicalism »

scottLobster wrote: post #335
whimsicalism wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US views itself as the enforcer of UNCLOS for all navigable bodies of water in the entire world, a treaty it hasn't ratified. It has tons of military bases in the SCS, a region not even close to it, compared to the furor when it becomes possible that China might build a single military base along Africa's atlantic coast. It seems like a bit of a double standard to me. I wish a good faith discussion about China wa…

What-aboutisms and calling people jingoist. Who exactly do you think you're convincing other than yourself? Point me to the last time the US used its navy to directly threaten merchant shipping.

I am not making a whataboutism claim. I am merely trying to figure out what our standard for "bullying" behavior is. If the standard for "bullying" behavior happens to also apply to the US and is the impetus for why Lithuana evacuated its embassy, then I would suggest they should evacuate their US embassy as well.

If there is a reason why Lithuania hasn't evacuated their US embassy, then I am just seeking to figure out what the standard is that makes China's behavior uniquely bad.

I think it is pretty undeniable that jingoistic rhetoric has increased in both China and the US in recent years.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#413

Post by GekkePrutser »

BrazzVuvuzela wrote: post #109
albeva wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, it is often ignored that combined EU does possess a huge, highly advanced and well trained military force. So more than that I'd hope EU can then put its squabbling aside and respong in unison to any military provocation as well.

Advanced weapons and good training, but lacking in the force projection in the Pacific department, relative to America anyway.

On the other hand, we don't really have any business being there. So why would we. We're not the world police.

In the EU we view the "Department of Defense" as a tool for actual defense. Not for invading the middle east for corporate benefit. We've been dragged into this several times by the US in the last decades and it's always been a huge failure and has sometimes led to worse threats (ISIS for example which was much more of a threat to us than Saddam Hussein was)

A land war against China is not winnable anyway. I do think we should help Taiwan if it comes to it. But this should just come down to strategic deterrents. There's no point sending armies. By the time they get there it's too late anyway.

Our main threat right now is mainly Russia. And mainly so because they view us as enemies. But having entire tank brigades like in the cold war won't do us any good. This is not how the next war will be fought.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#414

Post by neom »

whimsicalism wrote: post #401
neom wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's wrong in your book, but it's not in mine, so where does that leave us? Reasonable people cannot disagree? I'm a dimwitted plebeian? Shall we reach for the white gloves? Last I checked, folks were welcomed to their perspectives around here, we don't typically just go around telling people their opinions are "wrong".

Your point is self-contradictory. It is my opinion that your opinion is wrong. You are telling me to not express that opinion. But sure, we can agree to disagree about whether the killing of 6 million people of a specific ethnic group should be "discussed equally" with cultural genocide practices like Burqa bans in France, child marriage bans, or limits on having more than 3 children.

Sorry, I should have used the word "can" instead of "should" - As simply as possible what I was trying to convey is that cultural genocide can be discussed next to the holocaust in the context of genocide, the way an orange can be discussed next to an apple in the context of fruit. What I was trying to say is some people would say an apple is equally an orange in the context of fruit, not that some people might like orange more than apple, if that makes sense.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#415

Post by notpachet »

sfe22 wrote: post #390
notpachet wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That could be up to free market to decide I honestly spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to formulate a good-faith response to this, and I couldn't. I don't even know where to begin.

Well it is very hard to argue against this. Do you mean to say that people should not be able to decide what is more important to them so that resources can be appropriately allocated?

> Well it is very hard to argue against this.

That wasn't why I was struggling. I was struggling because I deem it a very heartless argument, and I don't know how to have meaningful conversations with people when they don't seem to have the good of their fellow citizens at heart. The free economy can function as both an instrument of liberation and oppression depending on your place in society. It is not a universal panacea.

Living in a society requires giving up some of your personal liberties from time to time, so that other people can enjoy theirs. That doesn't mean that I condone the government stripping away everyone's personal liberties. I wish that people were individually capable of making those sorts of sacrifices without any government intervention. But that isn't the world we're living in.

> Do you mean to say that people should not be able to decide what is more important to them so that resources can be appropriately allocated?

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be able to decide what is more important to themselves, but rather that they can't always be trusted to respect what's important to others. Thinking that a free market economy will always result in the most equitable distribution of goods and services for everyone -- that's childish.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#416

Post by antattack »

motiejus wrote: post #200

I am Lithuanian; Lithuania Taiwan PRC conflict is frequently a topic of discussion these days among my peers. My position, shared by a few others, is that this is the next best thing that happened in Lithuania after leaving USSR: the first being joining NATO and EU in 2004. Everyone in the world can (and almost everyone do) endorse PRC. "You won't get fired for picking IBM/Oracle/PRC". While very few countries have t…

It's impossible to do that for larger countries, cooperation with China is the only way. Large economies are too tightly coupled to just cut China off. It would take a decade or two.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#417

Post by Atomskun »

Aperocky wrote: post #370
hollerith wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unification is Chinese core value, which is valued more than western freedom of speech, and that this core value has been around for thousands of years. I don't have an opinion on that. Just want to point out that out of the previous 2500 years, China has been unified for only 500 years, and 300 of those 500 years was spent under the yoke of a foreign invader (the Mongols).

> I don't have an opinion on that. Just want to point out that out of the previous 2500 years, China has been unified for only 500 years, and 300 of those 500 years was spent under the yoke of a foreign invader (the Mongols). This is not true, Mongol rule only lasted for about 100 years. Han dynasty lasted 400 years. Tang about 300 years, Ming and Qing together lasted about 550 years. All of that adds to about 1250 y…

Why are you counting Qing dynasty into that?

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#418

Post by BrazzVuvuzela »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #413
BrazzVuvuzela wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advanced weapons and good training, but lacking in the force projection in the Pacific department, relative to America anyway.

On the other hand, we don't really have any business being there. So why would we. We're not the world police. In the EU we view the "Department of Defense" as a tool for actual defense. Not for invading the middle east for corporate benefit. We've been dragged into this several times by the US in the last decades and it's always been a huge failure and has sometimes led to worse threats (ISIS for example which was m…

To be clear, I'm not faulting the EU for it. The EU should be concerned more with their own security, particularly if America gets tied up with China and is consequently less capable of helping to defend the EU against Russia.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#419

Post by tacon »

synergy20 wrote: post #225

Here is a perspective on China's current aggressiveness: those in power are from the culture-revolution age(1966-1976), which means they did not get good education(if anything at all). Most of them are not even middle-school graduates. Their youth time are filled with beating those well educated ones based on ideologies accusations. Xi himself did not even finish middle school, his professional skill is the worst com…

It would help if the West stopped fooling itself about the abilities of the Chinese government. The Chinese government is awash in people that have been selected, filtered, and tested as very well educated. Their average government bureaucrat would put our average government bureaucrat to shame in raw ability to get things done. We may be ahead in creative, rule breaking ideas, but do not underestimate the raw intelligence available in the Chinese government.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#420

Post by cosmodisk »

vincnetas wrote: post #409
cosmodisk wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software:NordVPN. Hardware: Deeper,Teltonika.

deeper.com (NSFW) is not the right site. deeper.eu is the correct one ;)

I suppose deeper.com doesn't offer that much when it comes to hardware:)
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