[_djo_]

I didn’t go into all the ramifications, consequences, and threats to the global order that results from China’s change in direction under Xi, I only showed how Xi’s premiership has been a distinct change in direction for China than his recent predecessors.

From that and China’s own statements about its intentions you can determine why it’s seen as hostile by the US and Europe. For instance, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is absolutely a huge threat toward US and European interests, and would cause them substantial economic harm. Moreover if China were successful in it there’s also not much that would stop it from using military force to take over other countries in the region, because the justification would be as legally flimsy.

The post-war consensus against the use of force to conquer, annex, and swallow other countries has been extremely effective in preserving a level of global peace and allowed for a level of trade that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. It’s also arguably necessary in an age of nuclear weapons, where wars between major powers become unthinkable dangerous.

What Russia and to a much lesser extent China are doing, with regard to Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, is tearing up that post-war global order, returning the world to a might makes right system without much care given to international law, and therefore destabilising the world. I’d say those are reasons for Europe and the US to begin treating them as hostile and disengaging.

To be clear, none of this means the US or European countries are entirely blameless or saintly either. The US’s invasion of Iraq was wrong, possibly illegal, and cost them a huge amount of moral authority.

[publicola1990]

It is not clear if any well defined "red line" has been crossed. If it has not been, then this is a "pre-emptive" strike, which could be morally hazardous.

More than the cold war, US-China relationship is now looking more like US-Japan relations in years prior to world war 2. A wary US clamped down on access to resources to Japan, including oil, which denials could be seen as one of the reasons used to justify Japanese expansionism which lead to the war in Pacific which was extremely costly and tragic to all involved. Have US policy makers learnt the lessons of that conflict?

Is Taiwan a major concern for the US?. The status quo on Taiwan is also the result of US policy too, Taiwanese sovereignty is not something US has really stuck out their neck for.

[_djo_]

Doesn’t have to have been one specific red line.

Something else that’s being lost is that China has long had similar export restrictions on high technology items of strategic importance, including many items in biotech, AI, materials science, and medicine.

The comparison to US-Japan relations before WWII is not a good one. Relations soured after Japan invaded Manchuria and infamously massacred civilians in Nanjing. That was followed by Japan becoming part of the Tripartite Alliance, aka the Axis, with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s fascist Italy in 1940 Even then, the US continued to supply oil while cutting back on some other goods.

It wasn’t until Japan invaded French Indochina in 1941, done partially as a way to prevent the US from continuing to support China, that the US embargoed oil exports to Japan. Notably, the Imperial Japanese Navy began seriously working on the plan to attack Pearl Harbor in January 1941, long before the oil embargo was in place. Japan was going to war whether that happened or not.

This chip technology embargo isn’t going to cause the same devastating impact for China as the 1941 oil embargo was for Japan.

And yes, Taiwan is a major concern for the US and for much of the rest of the world, because it houses so much of the world’s high technology semiconductor manufacturing. A war over the island would be devastating for global supply chains and the global economy as a result.