[h8liu]

Interesting...

Chinese people also feel threatened by the West, because they don't trust you. There's not much more to it. They fear that you might abuse your power or use it to destabilize China. There's a lot of hatred of China, and they don't want you to try and trample Chinese norms, culture, society... things which they care about and are deeply connected to.

That's not to say the West actually would do any of those things, the key point is the lack of trust, specifically trust that you would do anything to benefit Chinese people or protect Chinese or that you care about them at all. They don't trust you, and the specifics of what you could do to hurt them are not really something they consider (but as you, the West is already powerful, you have many more options... to the point where one day maybe be the Chinese are dwarfed again by the West, and have no ability to defend themselves should they have to.) The west is very scary to Chinese people.

See how this goes?

[eradicatethots]

Yes I see how this goes, but I don’t see your point. I don’t agree with the conclusion that the existences of mutual distrust is proof that distrust is wrong, and I do t think you’ve provided any argument besides that.

I don’t see why my distrust of China implies to people that China is not allowed to distrust me, or that I’m somehow saying that They’re unique. This is a statement of fact. This is reality. I’m not being prescriptive here. I would personally like for China to be more friendly towards the us and vice versa but I’m not sitting here saying the us is perfect or free of sin. I don’t see why the us must be perfect before I can announce what is already reality, that I distrust China.

Perhaps you shouldn’t read my post as a diplomatic action, something that I just said as part of an argument to try and manipulate China or something, because that’s not what it is. It’s a statement of fact and some analysis on the cause. I’m not trying to criticize China or convince China to change, even if I would definitely like that to happen, and think it should.

[h8liu]

You are justifying your fear of a rising power, as if you are threatened, and you have all your rights to fear. However, the truth is that the West is still arguably more powerful, where the Chinese people are the ones that have been living in this exact kind of fear that you stated for a very very long time. If your reasoning holds as a universal value for all human beings (but not just for you), then it is effectively justifying a historically less powered entity, China, now eventually becoming free from this threat, where the world becomes more equal and multi-tenant in power, and you should happily embrace it.

Maybe what you fear is not that you are threatened, but that your current way of threatening other people in the world is no more. What you fear is change.

And yes, you are stating the facts: one of the ugly parts of human nature.

[eradicatethots]

Did you really need to call me ugly? Lol

I fear a loss of security. You’re overthinking it to say I’m attached to the fact that our security comes from threats. Security is what matters, not being threatening. I think your comment is a little bit rude to be honest, but that’s not a big deal.