Trade with China since the 80s has not included the voluntary labor of the Chinese people. They have been forced to accept paper promises (local currency) while the state has squandered the vast majority of the real value they should have earned. Immigration restrictions have kept workers unable to arbitrage their labor, and financial restrictions have prevented them from earning a fair return on any accumulated capital. This situation has primarily benefited Chinese and western elites.
Discussion
That may be so but is a bit outside of areas I know much about. It sounds a lot like what happens in every other country too, but maybe different (as I say, outside of my working knowledge).
I know that China is made up of a lot of different people in wildly different situations. Often people working in Beijing send money home to their extremely poor village families. And nearly everybody goes back home for chunjie. My impression is China is very upbeat and many people are excited and hard working. But I'm sure others are near suicidal, and I suspect Uighurs are having their organs harvested. They aren't socialist anymore, they are capitalist ("with Chinese characteristics")... but they are single-party authoritarian.... still that sounds to me like a monarchy, and in a monarchy things can be very good if you have a very good king. They may have a very good king when it comes to economic issues, even if he is a dick when it comes to social and human rights issues.
So you're pro-authoritarian as long as you can get rich? Cool cool.
This isn't Twitter. But I'm going to block you for that.
lol. double Mike battles are on and I am here for it!!
Btw, I think Chinese people should not be demonised for the dictatorial nature of their leaders. Can't speak for all but the few I know, the work ethics are top notch, incredibly hardworking, respectful, very old school manufacturing but no labour issues - i have gone to the inner cities to verify (not uyghur). I also think Russia sanction hurts the poorest of Russians the most - and if the goal is to suffer Russians so that they would revolt against their leaders, that's just cruel.
But on that same note, I do not believe in hegemony trade be it China or US, and i think small manufacturers building up globally will make a diff in diff regions.
Btw China is capitalist and still socialist - which is why they cant have so much money ie Jack Ma and Ant, and govt taking over it. Same like US (there is no verification to my theory) but if you wanna see where capitalist is leaning towards, see who see who CIA supports more - after Nixon, this support swung to democrats more than republicans
ok, intermission over. please continue back with the Mike battles
I'm not keen on any Mike-vs-Mike battles. I don't think I have enough topical knowledge to compete. I just express my current semi-informed understanding.
I often speak negatively about the US and positively about Russia and China. But that isn't because those places are better. They are worse, often far worse. The US is a much freer place. But I'm mad at her because she has been going downhill for decades and abandoning so much of what was great about her. She is corrupted and becoming less and less free (don't take my word for it, watch the latest Reason video about it). And China has been ascending and seems on the polar opposite trend, becoming more free and has suprassed America in most technical disciplines.
Maybe it is just a reversion to the mean?
Im just kidding, both Mikes are super smart. Mike Brock has vast knowledge and has gone through many cycles of diff ideologies and brings various interesting perspectives to the table.
I’m remaining an intermission and noise! :) In comparison US is a much fairer and liberal country no doubt. China started with tech adoption by piracy, reverse engineering tech (90’s , early 2000) similar to how Japan was in the 50s with piracy and then stepping up to the manufacturing game. Japan tackled the US market for example by sending Toyota team to the US to learn how US lifestyle and big cars work before creating Lexus and penetrating to the US market. But Japan and US formed close ties so US still lead. China market penetration in US has been different mostly through globalisation talking over workforce manufacturing and investing in large US businesses. And US has no control on this relationship. And it’s hard to beat a super low cost, easy logistics. I think Nostr and even apps like Tik Tok globalises the Chinese people more and gets them to mingle more with the world on a friendly, lifestyle basis and that’s gonna make a difference in liberating the Chinese people - it’s their Trojan horse.
I've seen first hand how China has developed over the last 20 years and I don't think that's an accurate assessment.
The increase in the standard of living has been mind blowing, as is the percentage of humanity that has been lifted out of poverty.
20 years ago if you asked 100 people on the street in china what the biggest problem with being Chinese is, the answer was almost unanimously that there's no dignity in being Chinese. This is no longer the case, and the importance and relevance of this is massively under appreciated by people outside of China.
It's also important to put things in historical/political/philosophical context:
- China is a civilization state, most of the west is not.
- Chinese culture is primarily a tug of war between confucianism and daoism. The western world is mostly post-enlightenment rationalism.
- You wont find many Chinese people who'd want to go back to any other point in Chinese history over the last 1000 years because this is the best it's ever been.
- The biggest fear that the average Chinese person has (aside from cold water) is political instability.
- The western world has been going through a process of manufacturing consent for xyz, it appears on the surface to be aimed at starting a war with china, but IMO it's actually for a war against the western pleb, "we need these powers because china/russia", e.g. the recent attempts to restrict access to certain apps or data.
That all fits with my understanding. Except your opinion at the end that the manufacturing of consent (great book btw) is only facially about China but actually against the Western pleb. I think instead that power always seeks more power (against the Western pleb, yes) but also seeks to neutralize threats to it's power, which realistically is the Chinese state. So IMHO it is both. I take John Mearsheimer's view on this.
If you are concerned about great risks to humanity such as climate change, nuclear war, gain of function research, or the emergence of out of control general A.I., then you should consider that the only approaching-reliable way of containing those risks is for humanity to cooperate on them worldwide. That means that in at least some sense the West should be maintaining friendly relationships with China, not posturing for war. Because in a war posture there is no hope of containing their research which becomes a desperate attempt to win. E.g. we need to make hyper-intelligent missiles... oops! or we need to make a bioweapon... oops! Etc.
Now more than ever before we need to normalize relations and cooperate. The battle for power seems so childish to me in the face of the real threats.