escobar
Brigadier
Was a Rhetorical question
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Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
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I dont think it will go that far, yet.
However with China climbing up the value chain, its most immediate competitor is going to be the EU which for years dominated the intermediate value added goods.
Ideally China should have structural and other non-tariffs barriers for EU goods so that it can accelerate the growth of its own domestic suppliers. After 10 years, then China can move on again and challenge US-dominated industries directly.
For now though, EU is the target. Either make a deal with China or get steamrolled from the Chinese economic train
escobar
Brigadier
CN should change to please the West, lol I never say something stupid like this.
I want CN IR politics and PR against West to be sneaky, machiavellian, and ruthless.
Not a PR based on Uyghur people dancing...
I dont think anyone here disagrees with that
We all know that these old men inside the propaganda apparatus should retire and enjoy life, but alas, they insist on their old methods...
What, you dont feel engaged hearing from a guy who speaks broken English, monotonous video, no background, no music on the background, low resolution reporting, low-budget special effects, low budget Studios, low budget dressing, low budget on marketin, boring news reporters who speak with a flat voice (no emotion, no highs, no lows) etc
The list is endless lol
Imagine representing a 1.4 bln people nation and constantly having videos with less than 1k views on YouTube...
solarz
Brigadier
So I'm gonna break up the responses into multiple posts, since they're fairly complex topics. For this post, let's just look at this question.
Racism is a regarded as a particularly vile sin in American social norms due to its history of slavery. What I'm about to describe only applies to the US, and to a lesser extent, Canada.
To understand how Capitalism uses racism to exert control, first we need to look at how Capitalism exerts control in the US. I see three main vectors of control: elections, lobbyism, and media. First, with elections, we can see that American politicians aren't actually beholden to the people who elected them, but rather to the people who financed their election campaigns. Elections are less about the performance record of a particular candidates, but rather how well their election campaign is run. To run a good campaign, you need money. Lots of money. That's where the Capitalists come in. The money they give to particular politicians to run their election campaign always comes with the understanding that once elected, that politician will use his powers of the office to reward his donors.
The second vector, lobbyism, comes in two stages. First, there are the benefits that a politician can get right away, while they are in office. These can include dinners at expensive restaurants, tickets to entertainment events, and even under-the-table cash incentives. Then there are the rewards a politician gets after they leave office, provided they've served certain special interests well: cushy jobs at mega-corporations, lucrative speaking fees, or some kind of board position at various NGOs.
The third vector is through control of the media. We're all familiar with how Fox News conducts character assassinations on "leftist" politicians, but really all the media do it. Step out of line, and a politician might suddenly find themselves in hot water over a decades old liaison, or maybe their less savory activities suddenly gets exposed. Or maybe it's as simple as shutting them out of the limelight.
So how does Racism play into all of this? Since we've established that the Capitalists run the show by controlling the politicians, Racism provides a way to exert that control by creating division.
For example, gerrymandering is the act of manipulating electoral boundaries to favor one party or class, and that is only possible if there are existing divisions to exploit. Since people of the same culture and ethnic group tend to congregate in the same region, Racism provides an easy way to geographically divide people on their political views. The vast majority of black Americans vote democrat, and this could be exploited in a number of ways. You could redraw the boundaries so that black Americans are always the minority in an electoral zone (or the majority, depending on what you want to achieve). You could use existing racial tensions between, say, Asians and blacks, to manipulate one group into voting the way you want. For example, the whole college admissions scandal. Are Asian parents blaming the white people who are keeping Asian students out on unfair criteria? No, they're far more likely to blame the black students who benefit from affirmative action.
Creating divisions among the people also has the benefit of distracting them away from what you're really doing. Obvious example: blaming China for IP Theft, currency manipulation, climate change, the coronavirus, and now genocide, has made most Americans completely oblivious to the fact that their infrastructures are crumbling and their politicians are enriching themselves at their expenses.
Look at the way the right wing media attacked Obama. Accusing him of being a Muslim, of being born in Kenya, or secretly working for al-Qaeda. Obama was basically a lame duck during his final years, and his healthcare reforms were ultimately put in the dustbin. Now I'm not saying racism was the only reason Obama lost control of both houses, but they were certainly additional bullets in his opponent's arsenal.
Today, we can see racism being used to shut down opposition voices to wrongdoings. Voice opposition to the Israeli pogrom in Palestine, and you're labeled an anti-semite. Chinese Americans are being singled out for their ethnicity and ostracized if they dared to speak any word of support for their homeland. In this current environment, I would argue it is far easier to voice support for China as a white or black person than it is to do so as a Chinese person. In this way, consent is manufactured, and the interests of those doing the manufacturing are advanced. Who benefits? The MIC gets to continue sell more weapons to Israel (operating that Iron Dome ain't cheap!), Apple and Google gets to hamstring their major rival, and Exxon Mobile can continue to siphon oil from Iraq.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Ah, this answered a different question than what I asked and that's my fault for phrasing it the way I did. I understand that existing racism and divides are exploited by politicians (and at the highest level everyone exploits anything they can to achieve their goals) but my point is that racism is natural/inherent and it is what causes the world to reject each other vying hard in any way possible for dominance while Spring2017 seemed to assert that racism is not the real issue but it was just created and sowed by capitalists to draw mass attention from the crimes that they commit against the people. In other words, he believes that the fundamental struggle in the world is between classes which transcends nationality/race while I believe that it is between different races, pitting them and their countries at conflict with each other as they all wish to be regarded as the dominant race in the world thereby giving their children and descendants a significant starting advantage in life.
It's a complete deficiency of understanding in behavioral or population or quantitative genetics. Presumably the reason different racial groups begin discriminating when they are newborns is because some infants are malevolent capitalists.
Racism, if it is described simply as noticing the existence of people with differing traits than your own, and subconsciously reacting in a way you wouldn't (positive or negative, usually negative) otherwise towards someone whose traits don't seem uncommon, is perfectly normal and is entirely genetic. Of course, what we've learned to do as a thinking species is to reign down any conscious bias in favor of meritocracy which is a laudable goal.
Only problem is Germanic peoples, especially Anglos but certainly not limited to them (look at Sweden), have taken this to a whole new level due to some kink in their behavioral predispositions. The White far-leftist doesn't exist in any other culture, not in Egypt or Yemen or Japan or Russia or Mongolia or India. At least not in any appreciable numbers.
Nationalism, an evolution of tribalism (which is based in a territorial commonalities, shared symbolic belief-systems, and common systems of exchange), and a precursor to imperialism, has been a more fundamental contributor to war and conflict from the Classical period to the contemporary era than has racism (or racialism), an evolution of clanism (which is based in real or constructed familial relationships), and precursor to tribalism. Although nationalism and tribalism can resemble clanism, surficially appropriating and exploiting its concepts of connectedness and belonging (usually by imposing mono-lingual imperatives), neither are based in biological/familial/ and, therefore, racial facts. Stated briefly, nationalism is a conceptual product of the cultural reproduction of symbolic communication/exchange while racism is a symbolic conceptualization of the products of biological reproduction. As such, there are formal, technical, and functional distinctions between the two.
This is not to say that nationalism and racism cannot and do not overlap in many political ‘philosophies’ and personal world views. However, where and when they do, they are, more often than not, based in misunderstandings derived of historical ethno-nationalistic propaganda. The very same historical propaganda to which several of the previous commentators have referred.
This is not to say that nationalism and racism cannot and do not overlap in many political ‘philosophies’ and personal world views. However, where and when they do, they are, more often than not, based in misunderstandings derived of historical ethno-nationalistic propaganda. The very same historical propaganda to which several of the previous commentators have referred.
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manqiangrexue
Brigadier
On whose part? Your post seems to agree with me.
This, I assume is sarcastic towards Spring2017?
Seems to agree with me; I certainly don't disagree.
I believe that it is because they were so successful post Soviet collapse that without any credible outside enemies to challenge them, they are turning on themselves and attacking the ruthless/heavy-handed tactics that their leaders used to achieve their success as a way to find something to stand against. They have not yet adapted to China's new challenge and people who have spent a good portion of their easily influenced years thinking one way may never think another way as long as they live.
