Prokorov wrote:is the us no longer having global control a bad thing?
Arguably not, and the US itself is responsible for a litany of ruthless manipulations of countries and exploitation of people around the world, through much of the 20th century.
That said, I think it's pretty clear that China is even worse, probably a lot worse, and their particular war is much more of an active threat to the rest of the world.
My personal take is-- after the US gets what it wants from another country, it will usually look to build regional democracy and maintain various aid and support in return. Sort of a vassal state thing, I guess. China, by contrast, is perhaps more insidious. They'll buy off politicians from the inside and get them to sign up for fancy Belt & Road lending projects for building new infrastructure. Then they'll import Han Chinese to run the projects, displacing as many of the locals as possible, and creating a return economy with its own citizens that provides zero real benefit to the locals and the local nation. Meanwhile, they'll ensure that the building project fails, forcing the unfortunate nation to default, allowing China to seize assets and territory, getting a major foothold. Various key ports around Africa and Asia have already fallen this way. That's the predatory lending stuff.
They'll basically gut you from the inside with far worse repercussions than if you had merely become a Western vassal nation. They'll defer the bloodshed that the US usually brings upfront via stirring up revolutions and such.
MrDollarBills wrote:All good points to raise about China, but I think we can, at least from an NBA standpoint, separate Joe Tsai from the actions of the Chinese government. It's not like we have proof that he's sitting there calling for Muslims to be put into death camps, or has any say in what Xi Jinping is doing. Regarding their long term goal of becoming the world's primary super power, they really don't have to work too hard at it since the United States is currently **** ing itself into oblivion and irrelevancy globally...
It's not so much that I have any suspicions about Joe Tsai. If he's like most Taiwanese, he's no doubt extremely distrustful of the CCP.
The problem is that the CCP treats all Chinese enterprises (of which Alibaba is one) and citizens abroad as potential pawns & resources to be used as they see fit. We're already seeing this for example in countries where locals speak up about some particular ongoing Chinese f-ckery, like Hong Kong or Xinjiang, where a swarm of local Chinese will be directed to in turn harass the protesters. This is happening even in first world Western countries, btw. One recent example was an Uyghur refugee in Canada who was slated to speak at a conference, sharing her experiences and so forth. Somehow China got her shut down, and she wasn't able to speak. IIRC she fears for her life, now. That's how that works.
No matter where you live in the world, if you have links to China or family back there, you are likely on the CCP's list, and they expect you not to question the CCP at the very least. But if they do happen to contact you, evidently they expect more, such as getting involved in counter-protests (harassment, really) against locals, or stuff like espionage. Coincidentally, around the same time, your family members back home will strongly encourage you to be a good patriot, etc. So yeah, as Orwellian as the situation here has been the past three years, the China situation is far more terrifying.
Most of America is still only vaguely aware of this stuff, strangely. Then again, seems to me that Americans have a history of not paying much attention to what's going on around the world. Probably goes hand in hand with the traditional practice of America imposing its will to get what it wants, therefore it doesn't matter in some ways. China is a big emergingly-powerful country tho, and what changed with them is that Emperor Xi decided to do a 180 from the patient, democracy-building approach of his predecessors. The new China is hyper-aggressive and coming after us, with a huge population of borderline brainwashed citizens to serve as the foot soldiers, both for export and for internet f-ckery.
