[Fricken]

What would holding China accountable entail, exactly?

"America doesn't like they way you do civilization. We don't like the way you brought 650 million people out of extreme poverty in a generation. If you have to use authoritarian tactics to do that, it's better that they stay poor and addicted to opium. You have to disband now."

"Oh, okay. Sorry America. We recognize the error of our ways. We will stop being China now."

[adventured]

What's actually happening right now, is the US and others (eg South Korea, Japan, some countries in Europe) are aggressively begining to redistribute their capital allocations to other nations (eg Mexico), including South East Asian competitors to China (eg Vietnam).

Samsung for example is making the majority of their phones in Vietnam now.

US imports from Vietnam have gone from nothing to $50+ billion per year in 20 years. A 100 fold increase. It's equivalent to 1/4 of their entire economy and it's almost entirely a deficit. We're going to build large regional competitors to China for strategic purposes. Conveniently, they can also buy up US debt with all of those dollars we're pouring into their economy.

Some of this is because China's manufacturing costs have climbed so much, some of it is intentional strategic emphasis (as the TPP was / is meant to be). The US very clearly has shifted its political interest in Vietnam for example.

[bb88]

The problem is that if you don't hold China accountable, it gives them the green light to do even worse things.

[dlwdlw]

You should look more into the history of the US as well as international opinions. The US isn't a paragon of virtue, it is only able to sell its own narrative of events because of its economic and cultural weight.

Even the belief that the rich/powerful mist have some sort of virtue is only one perspective that conveniently allows the US the moral high ground.

No country, no person, no thing is perfect. All evil comes from things that pretend to be and act as if they were. The humans that pretend to or want to be gods inevitably are the one who dehumanize others and so become demons.

[bb88]

I'm fully aware of the failures of US Foreign Policy.

But when you argue about a topic that affects the security of the US, there really is no such thing as "moral high ground".

Edited to add:

I believe China holds that true as well when discussing the security of China, considering the number of spies that are in the US.

[baursak]

> But when you argue about a topic that affects the security of the US, there really is no such thing as "moral high ground".

So all your concerns boil down to us-vs-them tribalism?

[natalyarostova]

Classifying something as tribalism doesn't make it not an important or real factor to be acted upon. Although I think the term nationalism is more pointed. I live in the US. My family lives in the US, and my well-being is attached to the success of the US.

I'm not arbitrarily in favor of everything the US does, but on the margin, I am in favor of policies that optimize this country's success.