Miscellaneous News

BoraTas said:

I'd like to learn what the US means by containment. For the Soviet Union, it was obvious. It was stopping the spread of communism and Soviet expansion. This was achieved through signing mutual defense treaties with 40+ nations and regime changes. The US read the Soviet Union's unwillingness to challenge the US head-on well.
I don't think cold war strategies would work against China well. China's influence is not dependent on military power or ideologies. It's economic. There are no ways the US can stop China's influence from spreading at the expense of the US influence as long as China's economy grows faster. It is trying to limit countries' cooperation with China to slow down China's development but that slows down the other side too. It is trying to make China's neighbors stronger so they can be more assertive against China but there are three problems with that.

1- A lot of China's neighbors are not US allies. India and Vietnam are not US allies regardless of Foreign Policy articles.

2- A lot of those countries have problems with each other too. For example, Vietnam and the Philippines dispute each other too, and Japan and South Korea aren't friendly at all. This is the primary reason why there is no Asian NATO.

3- Selling weapons to East Asian countries is useless. China is not going to attack these nations and they are not going to go to war against China in a Taiwan contingency.

I am quite bullish on China, to be honest. The US containment efforts started in 2011 with the pivot to the pacific. There are very few results to show for it except ruined Sino-Australian relations.

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Yes, containment is impossible against the world's largest trading nation, world's largest creditor nation, and world's largest manufacturing nation (and soon, world's largest economy). The best they can is cultivate a high baseline of sinophobia by stretching and exaggerating the truth to prep domestic population for future conflict. So long as China doesn't start randomly going Hitler on neighbors, the only thing US can do is seethe and be salty. For China, all it needs to grow grow grow into Second Superpower, it's a race for her to lose now.

KYli said:

Actually, it is the other way around. China finally realized how untrustworthy and unreliable that the EU is. From the Chinese perspective, if it sees the EU doesn't have any independent policies, then China would no longer actively engage with the EU. In addition, China learns the Russians lesson to never trust the West and would try everything in its power to develop an alternative against the Western financial system.

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China’s support for Russia galvanises US, Europe as Washington examines once-unthinkable sanctions against Beijing ​

• Chinese leaders get a look at what can be possible when Western allies unite to hobble the economy of a major power
• Beijing has failed to convince the West of its self-proclaimed neutrality on the Ukraine war as political winds shift rapidly

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Think these clowns will end up falling onto their own swords. 10% inflation not enough? How about 50%

Phead128 said:

Yes, containment is impossible against the world's largest trading nation, world's largest creditor nation, and world's largest manufacturing nation (and soon, world's largest economy). The best they can is cultivate a high baseline of sinophobia by stretching and exaggerating the truth to prep domestic population for future conflict. So long as China doesn't start randomly going Hitler on neighbors, the only thing US can do is seethe and be salty. For China, all it needs to grow grow grow into Second Superpower, it's a race for her to lose now.

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Yeah, exactly!

Time to watch another re-run to leave no doubt.

Time for another kung fu kick up their containment!











What seems to be not understood by the stupid mainstream media, is that the Chinese economy is still growing. That Chinese economic strength, underwrites all the above.

That means those trends will be increasing more in the near future, where China becomes even bigger.

What kind of containment policy is that? Where containment only produces a bigger China?

They got problems. Need more therapy for that butt hurt ailment.

Then again, maybe just hemorrhoids.

escobar said:

Unlike RU, CN have some issues with India which make them possible partner for a containment strategy.

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Again, please expound on this idea. In what capacity, capability can India reasonably give the U.S. meaningful assistance in containing China. There was an article linked by @Maikeru from the BBC essentially spelling out that the Indian Army is being alleged to have cut down their Army stealthily in order for the Indian Armed forces (IAF) to transfer some of their $70 Billion budget (3rd largest in the world) into a much needed military modernization. But the apparent issue to this is that shrinking the force, or doing away with creating a temporary military hires (3 tours of duty) for the Indian Army that provides permanent jobs to young male Indians in a country where joblessness is a persistent issue, how is India going to squeeze or even become a threat to China strategically when it's economy isn't good enough to begin with?

Come on dude, you ought to be more deliberate with your opinion and not just type in one or two sentences and then leave, only for you to come back and post articles from the usual sources.

solarz said:

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to say with ACLs and Regex, but if you think the GFW is only there to prevent Chinese people from seeing unauthorized content, then you are woefully misinformed.

The GFW was instrumental in the existence of the current Chinese online ecosystem. It is what allows China to have a completely independent internet. This has ramifications far beyond censoring sensitive keywords or preventing Chinese netizens from engaging in meme wars with Indians or Westerners.

First of all, the GFW allowed China to control the data of it's own citizens. Consider that for every other country in the world, except NK, all of their data are within easy reach of the CIA, it is difficult to overstate the importance of this achievement.

Secondly, the GFW allows China to keep a lid on populism and give the government latitude in decision making. The US government, for all their control of big tech, is falling prey to exactly this kind of populism because they do not have a system in place to moderate extremist content. It's the very reason why the US has a million covid deaths, and is in the process of destroying is own pillars of power first under Trump and now under Biden.

So there is no doubt the GFW has been immensely beneficial to Chinese development. What is debatable is the direction the GFW should take in the future. It's clear that while the GFW created the Chinese big techs, it is now also hindering them in their global expansion.

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You listed a few historical considerations and current benefits. In a few posts here in the last few weeks on GFW, I already said that it served some purposes. I have never said or argued it was not useful or important or insightful. So just to clarify the context.

What I have been saying, actually since the Covid breakout, is that China today is no longer the China during the formative years of the Internet revolution. China today is already ahead of US in some aspects of the Internet eco-system. So early benefits and low hanging fruits have already been harvested. But those downside effects are still there, since the day one. In other words, the cost-benefit calculation has been altered significantly, in comparison to those formative years.

Just to clarify:
(1) Would Alibaba have become what it is today without GFW? No.
(2) Would Tencent have become what it is today without GFW? No.
(3) Would ByteDance have become so big so quickly without GFW? No.

My arguments here were in the context of the entire Internet eco-system from about 2000 to this date. During that time, opposite to the benefits sides, there are new bureaucracies and entrenched interests developed within the Chinese Internet eco-system who are against any opening, not for the original gov purposes, but just to protect their own interests that 20 years of GFW has brought to them. I say all these because I know at a personal level, not propaganda craps or idealogical leanings, about China Internet eco-system.

I hope I can clarify a little here. And I am not interested in any pissing contest, especially not against to those who really don't know the Chinese Internet eco-system. And as I said earlier to another poster, this is indeed literally a trillion dollar topic inside China.

So go figure...

As far as Internet security and data protection (like GDPR or else) is concerned, I don't want to brag, but there are not even many people in the US that can hold my water, like a patient arguing with a doctor about how wrong he/she is.

BoraTas said:

I'd like to learn what the US means by containment. For the Soviet Union, it was obvious. It was stopping the spread of communism and Soviet expansion. This was achieved through signing mutual defense treaties with 40+ nations and regime changes. The US read the Soviet Union's unwillingness to challenge the US head-on well.
I don't think cold war strategies would work against China well. China's influence is not dependent on military power or ideologies. It's economic. There are no ways the US can stop China's influence from spreading at the expense of the US influence as long as China's economy grows faster. It is trying to limit countries' cooperation with China to slow down China's development but that slows down the other side too. It is trying to make China's neighbors stronger so they can be more assertive against China but there are three problems with that.

1- A lot of China's neighbors are not US allies. India and Vietnam are not US allies regardless of Foreign Policy articles.

2- A lot of those countries have problems with each other too. For example, Vietnam and the Philippines dispute each other too, and Japan and South Korea aren't friendly at all. This is the primary reason why there is no Asian NATO.

3- Selling weapons to East Asian countries is useless. China is not going to attack these nations and they are not going to go to war against China in a Taiwan contingency.

I am quite bullish on China, to be honest. The US containment efforts started in 2011 with the pivot to the pacific. There are very few results to show for it except ruined Sino-Australian relations.

Click to expand...

Chinese containment for America was mainly a political campaign. We saw the Hong Kong riots, the Wuhan hoax, and the fake Uyghur concentration camps. There was very little attention paid to the military aspects. Taiwan had a number of military deals cancelled/delayed and there was no significant effort to increase the presence of military bases and allies around China like we saw against the USSR. There was even talk about reducing military presence in South Korea/Japan.

Why? Most likely because America thought China wasn't a military threat. Despite what some neocon think tanks say, China hasn't invaded another country for decades. It's clear that the American political system thought they could take China on in a political war. They even dipped their toes into an economic war, but that didn't work out well.

I think the plan for China "containment" would have been more CIA created hoaxes, targetted sanctions against Chinese individuals and companies with the closest ties to the CPC/establishment. Military engagement would be limited to provocations in the SCS.

What they massively overlooked was Russia. They continued antagonising them pointlessly with NATO expansions, abrogations of bilateral treaties and supporting jihadism against Russian allies. Despite this, they didn't consider Russia a credible threat, even when they invaded Ukraine in 2014. Not predicting this invasion was a massive intelligence failure. For some reason they expected a nuclear superpower to sit back while people were getting genocided by Ukrainians on their own border. So far the French head of intelligence has been asked to resign, American/UK could follow (or maybe not).

Now instead of a political/economic war against China, they're faced with a real war on their doorstep. The funniest part is that they are now effectively begging China to help them against Russia. LOL.

Bellum_Romanum said:

I am really interested in hearing your own thoughts (not just some articles, twitter feeds) on this particular point for a change. What would a limited Chinese containment would look like that would be considered remotely successful with strategic implications

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When in GPC with US, instead of being focused only on deterrence against US&Allies, PLA need now to also deter India. Just see the massive military base expansion in WTC area. A non-ideal strategic positioning..

escobar said:

When in GPC with US, instead of being focused only on deterrence against US&Allies, PLA need now to also deter India. Just see the massive military base expansion in WTC area. A non-ideal strategic positioning..

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India isn't much of a military threat to China. Take out the nuclear weapons and India is less of a threat than Vietnam.

As I mentioned earlier, India will not be supported by America, you are too pro-Russia. If India has sanctions put on it, I think it would be the best time to strike.

escobar said:

One way or another, their containment strategy against CN will work even if it's limited

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No.

solarz said:

What is debatable is the direction the GFW should take in the future. It's clear that while the GFW created the Chinese big techs, it is now also hindering them in their global expansion.

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An excellent post overall except for this. I don't think it's debatable at all that the GFW should remain for the indefinite future. What's hindering Chinese web-tech overseas expansion isn't the GFW, it's the incumbent American players. America has an entrenched first mover advantage that will be nigh impossible to overcome unless America itself is cut down to size first.