[cromwellian]

I don't think there will be a war with China, I don't want a war with China, and a war with China would be disasterous, even if it didn't involve nuclear weapons, it would disrupt the global supply chain. In fact, leaving aside China, I don't want the US involved in any wars, I don't want them selling arms, whether large or small, to countries, I don't want them running proxy wars.

I've lived in China, much of what the CCP is doing infrastructure wise is admirable. They've built 10s of thousands of miles of highways, high speed rail, waterways, electric grid, into historically underserved areas. And they have understandable paranoia having observed the breakup of the USSR, as well as bloody historical Chinese rebellions, like the Taiping rebellion, about what could happen if there is a revolution against the ruling party. This paranoia has perhaps fueled an overreaction, that is driving historical levels of brainwashing nationalism, down to the elementary school level, and insane levels of surveillance, etc. After 9/11, the US government utilized fear from terrorism to launch the Patriot Act, the Global War On Terror, invasion of Iraq, and NSA surveillance programs. Xi similarly latched on a few Uyghur terrorist incidents as an excuse to do, IMHO, massive violations of human rights.

I don't think it's a stable situation. Sooner or later something will give, either nationalism will spill over into a conflict because eventually the nationalists need to start an invasion against someone (probably Taiwan) to regain lost honor or satisfy a past humiliation, or if there is ever a financial implosion, they'll be great internal unrest, and without the "relief valve" of even pseudo-democracy, you'll great more and more tightening by the government, until a fed up population who is facing a declining economy for the first time, destabilizes the government.

This is not really about what Wolf Blitzer is saying on CNN, it's more or less about personal observations I see around rising fascism and nationalism around the world that has be deeply worried about this century, and that's without considering the Thucydides’s Trap, and that 12 of the last 16 confrontations between a superpower and a rising superpower have resulted in war.

[woshicoolbe]

It looks like you are very well informed and very eloquent. Do you have any plan or actions to help to solve the problem of nationalism and oppression towards Uyghurs?

[cromwellian]

That's another common logical fallacy in debates in trying to shut people up. "Stop talking, if you really care about it, go do something." Well, for one, the reason why speech is important and criticism is important, is that it raises awareness. You can't get tell a guy to go toss starfishes back into the sea if the problem is industrial boats polluting the sea, you've got to hopefully get enough people from the bottom up aware of the issue to create the beginnings of a political movement, through boycotts or elections. I think it's perfectly fine for people to talk about, complain about, things in public forums, or at the dinner table. It's step 1 to change.

I can't solve the problems of the Uyghurs anymore than I can solve climate change. But do you think people should have sat quietly by in 1930s while Germany murdered Jews just because they couldn't do anything directly about it? I could choose not to buy Chinese goods the same as I could choose to recycle, but we all know it doesn't do anything. So the real change must occur at higher levels, that is, Western governments and corporations need to stop appeasing China for market access, compromising their art, their IP, just to please the CCP, only to be betrayed later, while at the same time, supporting violations of human rights. Condition your contracts, your trade deals, on transparency, protection for the environment, humane treatment, etc.

Right now Xi Jinping is thinking China can eventually survive on their domestic market only. Welp, that'll be a good experiment to try that Western governments can help with, and if the result is a severe economic recession in China, it may eventually lead to a new Chinese President as other CCP factions takeover, who takes the country in a different direction.

[woshicoolbe]

I did't want you to stop talking, I wanted to hear your ideas. And thanks for your ideas, and I hope the western leaders could hear them as well.