The diplomatic messaging from the CCP became extremely aggressive a couple of years ago. The outcome of this bullying was essentially to wake up the world to the threat that China had become. This period of Chinese open hostility towards the world essentially made many countries into enemies or at least adversaries of China. A new arms race began, and many countries started to economically decouple from China or pull out entirely.
Recently China seemed to realize its “wolf warrior” aggressive stance towards the world simply was leading to well armed and prepared adversaries, so the CCP stopped being so aggressive in its diplomatic stance.
The most disturbing part of all this is that at least here in Australia, much of society seems to have bought the new narrative that China was never a threat and indeed it was our own government at the time (now voted out) that caused the degraded relationship with China.
People seem to believe that China has gone back to being non threatening, non aggressive. They seem happy to believe that China’s clearly stated intent to control the world is no longer its goal.
It looks to me like China had a short period where it showed its true hand, and realizing its error, had gone back to hiding its true ambitions behind a friendly smile. This will lull countries like Australia into a false sense of security and does not bode well for the future, in which China has realized it must carry out its plans with surprise rather than telegraphing hostility early.
Our politicians are all too willing to back down and stop becoming prepared.
It’s extremely unfortunate that in Australia there are many people who equate being defensively ready with warmongering. I’m no hawk but I sure do believe we should defend our sovereignty and be ready well in advance to do so. We are far, far from able to defend ourselves right now.
China's tactical missteps with their political posturing, their security bill in Hong Kong, and the major blunder of COVID, were all pure providence for western civilization. Anybody who was paying any attention was pulling their hair out watching the world sleepwalk into a completely new global hegemony, and it was just by a series of jarring red flags that the rest of the world seemingly woke up to the dragon.
I'm not saying that the dragon is no longer a problem, either, I'm just saying that the world is at least suddenly treating it accordingly.
China became increasingly aggressive after the 2008 Olympics, and that accelerated in 2012 when Xi Jinping became president. Before 2008, the feeling in china (among expats and Chinese returnees) was that it would gradually liberalize more, rather than go in the opposite direction like they actually did. No one is making that mistake now.
I'm surprised to hear that about Australian public opinion. In the US, we have a rare bipartisan agreement that China is our largest strategic enemy. Biden was able to do radical things like ban export of advanced chips to China, a move which has generally been approved by both sides of the aisle.
Ironically, it was Australia via former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who alerted the USA to the true nature of the relationship with China. This happened when Turnbull urged the USA to ban installation of 5G by CCP controlled telecommunications companies. Australia alerting the world in this way is one of the reasons China became enraged with Australia and imposed a massive trade war against us.
There are, unfortunately, many people who when presented with modern reality, say things like “we need to stop being a slave to U.S interests”.
Many people I believe simply haven’t followed international affairs closely enough to realize what is actually happening, and they carry through 1970s “we are not a US colony” thinking to the present. I find it startling when people haven’t seen what is happening on our doorstep.
I for one am extremely glad of the US alliance and if anything want closer defence connections. We are going to need it.
It’s extremely concerning that the new Australian government has been working extremely hard to reestablish friendly and close relationship with China. This will come at a heavy price I fear.
>Im surprised to hear that about Australian public opinion.
Dissenting voices in Australia seem far more aware of the profit motive behind potentially unneeded militarization. I believe this is due to less complicated accounting of government spending when compared to countries like the US.
>The diplomatic messaging from the CCP became extremely aggressive a couple of years ago. The outcome of this bullying was essentially to wake up the world to the threat that China had become.
It's clear the Chinese hear western propaganda and respond to it, shouldn't be surprising. Everything from the blame for covid (which recent signs point to being a US lab creation) to western thought leaders openly discussing nuking a billion relatively peaceful people and not being condemned for it. This naturally results in a re-adjustment in approach to engagement.
>This period of Chinese open hostility towards the world essentially made many countries into enemies or at least adversaries of China.
This statement doesn't ring true. They havent been hostile to the world, just to factions within a few western countries that make up a small minority of the planet's population.
I doubt any recovering nation that's been invaded by these same western countries and is planning to survive the next few centuries would take further threats of mass murder and invasion lightly.
That's a very western reading consistent with the customary MSM/wonk talking points. If west thinks something PRC is doing is counter-productive, it probably means it's working. Wolf warrior has been a relative success, and has not stopped, what you're seeing is countries previously aggressive to PRC dialing down tensions, and PRC reciprocating. Wolf warrior tit for tat dynamic is very much still in play.
First, "wolf warrior" is a manufactured western label for PRC being diplomatically assertive in response to assertive western moves against PRC interests. PRC's assertiveness has relative success in deterring regional countries from signing up against PRC containment. Washington hopium prior to Trump era pivot envisioned massing US hardware all over the first island chain, then PRC diplomats showing a little fang and third parties in region decided signing up was suicide. Current arrangement of QUAD/AUKUS would have been given a barely passing if not failing grade relative to prior aspirational blob proposals since involve the already forgone partners while India is not committed to the security dimension. It's hard to overstate how bad US+co posture around PRC is currently with respect to earlier proposals relative to the amount of US diplomatic effort through two adminstrations. It's prime how it started, how it's going meme. Really apart from getting new bomber and missile basing in western Australia, PRC assertiveness has prevented backyard security environment from degrading to point that would stop/reverse trend of PLA dominating region over time. Reality is PRC has already established relative military supremacy within first island chain that PRC assertiveness can convince unaligned parties (most) in region PRC cooperation is better than containment. It was simply prudent for PRC to unleash wolf warrior to counter Trump/Biden's China hawk team (US wolf warrior) because PLA military is already modernized enough to compel everyone in region to hedge.
Other considerations, no more new EU sanctions after PRC finally decided to counter sanction EU officials. No more PRC elites getting kidnapped post Meng/Huawei after PRC counter kidnapped Canadian Michaels. There's more coordinated transatlantic tech/industrial containment policies, but IMO that was always forgone with how much US controlled the tech stack, but US had to unilaterally implement these sanctions with softpower costs, just like how 3/5th of 5VEYS didn't ban Huawei gear until US made it impossible with sanctions that made long term hardware supply issue. Even JP boosting to defense 2%, in lieu of adopting basing concepts that would actually assist US in PRC containment (AGILE basing). Mainly because JP fucked up so bad that now they're in crosshairs of THREE nuclear powers (PRC, NKR, RU). And that doubling unlikely not even get properly funded and if did, nor will it stretch far on US platforms with how much Yen has crashed. Also good luck on AU getting nuke boats in next 30 years.
The TLDR Wolf warrior essentially elevated PRC to become nearly sanction and extradition proof by anyone except US, including LIO countries who drunk the Uyghur genocide narrative. That's Hague Invasion Act tier privileges solidifying PRC's rising power status. Even USSR didn't have those perks. Like PRC diplomats just beat the shit out of HK protesters in UK and basically nothing. Ultimately, despite assertiveness being perceived as counterproductive by western, wolf warrior has revealed how much others will put on the line against PRC containment. And so far, including developments post RU/UKR it's been more words/theatre than action. It's not about making friends or peeling away entrenched US allies with aligned interests - that was never feasible. Constraining ostensible US containment arrangements and making them toothless was as good as it was ever going to get. And that it did, spectacularly.
Your example of AU simmering down to more cordial relations under new gov is reflection of that. AU short/medium term interests still US aligned, but AU politicians just learned sensibly that they can't out wolf-warrior PRC for domestic politics.
This reads like a CCP response. I note nearly all your comment history is defending the CCP.
>> "wolf warrior" is a manufactured western label for PRC being diplomatically assertive in response to assertive western moves against PRC interests.
Actually “Wolf Warrior” is an extremely anti western, deeply hostile Chinese movie. The aggressive Chinese diplomacy was named Wolf Warrior because the level of hostility was similar.
You can watch it here, it’s startlingly aggressive in its stance:
Wolf warrior diplomacy (Chinese: 战狼外交; pinyin: Zhànláng Wàijiāo) is a style of coercive diplomacy[2] adopted by Chinese diplomats during the Xi Jinping administration. The term was coined from the Chinese action film Wolf Warrior 2.
Yes, the west manufactured narrative using the title of a PRC _ACTION_ movie to label PRC diplomacy for merely being assertive in response to western assertiveness.
Hence it's a WESTERN label.
PRC foreign ministry doesn't call themselves wolf warriors, just like US State Department doesn't label themselves as Rambo for their Rambo Diplomacy. Linking to a wiki where the sources are just western MSM manufacturing and repeating the label reinforces my point. "Wolf warrior" or "coercive diplomacy" is western propaganda, which is really a side note to my broader point that PRC being diplomatically ASSERTIVE has worked well, and out maneuvered US failed minilateral efforts (soft power) in the region.
Wolf warrior, wumao, and so on are all terms that were invented and used by the Chinese, they aren’t western inventions. Censorship in china means that they are stamped out pretty quickly, but do not doubt the ingenuity (and subversion) of the Chinese internet community in inventing and defining the terms that the west then uses to talk about china.
BTW, since you use the term MSM, I assume you are a Trump supporter, since that is a favorite term of the Trump crowd. I’ve never heard anyone else use that word before, at any rate.
They're not western inventions, but entire PRC watching circles suddenly popularizing label by formalizing jingoist PRC netizen meme as state department verbiage and have such rhetoric deseminate into MSM as the default label when discussing PRC diplomacy is where we enter manufactured propaganda territory. There's reason it's popularized over the actual foreign ministry terms like big country / great power diplomacy by PRC watchers who should actually know better, but unsurprisingly clickbaity labels like "wolf warrior" gets pushed. Deng's 韬光养晦 / hide strength bide time was translated / shorthanded fine. Xi and foreign ministry elevating 大国外交 / big country diplomacy hard in the last few years gets the wolf warrior meme treatment, because that brings an entirely different set of imaginary connotations than merely "assertive" diplomacy. And it gets repeated online by "useful idiots" with only surface knowledge for intended affect.
I'm not American and indifferent about Trump. "Western MSM" is just useful term when describing western manufactured consent / propaganda system in relation to PRC perspective. It's no different then when I describe CCP perspective as "state media narrative".
The author's book description doesn't inspire confidence in his motives
> It was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe since the Second World War, and the largest man-made famine since the Great Leap Forward. And it was all for nothing. Lockdowns had never been science. Rather, they’d sprung into global policy on the order of the CCP princeling who would become the most influential member of the Baby Boom generation; an aberration thrust upon the world through an unprecedented, international influence operation.
> By corrupting global institutions, promoting forged data, publishing fraudulent science, and deploying propaganda on an unprecedented scale, the CCP under Xi Jinping transformed the snake oil of lockdowns into “science,” the greatest crime of the 21st century to date. This is the story of how he did it, and why.
The scariest thing about China's geopolitics is that it has embedded itself in pretty much every country on the planet. Whether that is by financing major infrastructure projects, being the world's largest creditor (beyond the World Bank and the IMF), or having hundreds of police stations around the world. This gives it immense leverage to influence governments to act in their favor.
This is not even accounting for the propaganda machinery spamming the internet, or their role as the world's factory.
While the US has been overthrowing governments and replacing them with puppets, China has been diplomatically and methodically setting up the chess board to be in a winning position in the long run. This makes them a far scarier adversary than the West with its military superiority.
It has certainly been their intent to buy influence by throwing money around the world. I'm not sure how effective it will be. If there is an invasion of Taiwan, the Western financial powers will give the rest of the world permission to default on their debts and renege on their deals with China (just as we "froze" $300B of Russia's that was in Western banking systems, which we'll probably give to Ukraine for reconstruction).
It remains to be seen whether African countries will prefer to continue paying their debts to China or join the Western side and take all that infrastructure for free.
China's infrastructure investments are to a significant extent work programs for Chinese laborers, whom they send overseas to build these projects rather than employ local labor. The preference for Chinese laborers doesn't play well in countries where they "invest", which diminishes the political value even more. Unsurprisingly, China ends up cancelling much of this financing debt.
> Chinese interest-free loans are frequently cancelled. And it’s widely understood that when China extends such credit lines, they are rarely ever paid back in full. Beijing was certainly not counting on the likes of Burundi, Congo or Mozambique to service these debts. And it has regularly rescheduled loans to African sovereigns worth billions in the last 20 years.
He needs an editor. It's too long, it rambles, it uses language repetitively like "western elites" who exactly does this mean, beyond hand waving dislike of academia? Last time I looked a room full of academics was a disagreement, not really influential to public policy.
The agencies engaged in China are mostly commercial like Tesla, apple, car manufacturing and media like News Ltd. Intellectuals my arse!
There's a point to be made, and it's made: do not trust propaganda coming out of China which disagrees with basic measurements you can make from outside, or comparable situations outside which disagree by orders of magnitude in health and economics. Do not trust any licence or contract which retains substantive control inside China of a bilateral outcome, without significant evidence of mutual benefit to the state.
Accusations against intellectuals and politicians in the west are at best polemic, and at worst bad faith. The author appears to want to bash western intellectuals they disagree with.
Very little we do in the west would alter the trajectory inside China, and parallels with interwar Germany are over stated: the modern state of China post 49, at no point has been subject to partition (Taiwan and Hong Kong noted) or oversight or forced to pay reparations. It's grievance with the global free market economics is about the cynicism of trade agreements, the historical disagreement over Taiwan & Hong Kong and the utility inside China of harping on about Japan, Britain and the west's perfidy over time. Calling out a protest against Japan or Britain is as trivial for the Chinese state as it is for the Iranians to remind people about Jimmy Carters helicopter fiasco.
If you want realistic views on China, talk to Vietnam. The Vietnamese I know from inside that economy are careful how they engage for a reason: little brother grew up, big brother doesn't fully understand it.
China hasn't invaded anywhere outside its own territory for a long time. (Other states dispute what its own territory is, eg the spratleys) It bickers with India along a border. China draws attention to western military forces having been active in multiple unrelated territories consistently across the same timeframe: this is a point of some substance inside China, and in client states in Africa and pacific Islands. They sell this story to source "Coltan": we invest in you for minerals and fish: repression inside your own polity is your own business. Contrast this with world bank economic obligations or social requirements to get western funding. (We're not wrong to seek the social justice. It's hurt us economically because China doesn't and pays well)
Australia and New Zealand dropped the ball in their own backyard, China picked it up. There's been a massive about face by the west reinvesting in the places China opportunistically invested in, for fisheries rights and for future military/police relationships. China asks for friendly faces in votes at the UN and related agencies on matters which don't directly affect the states it engages in. It's a low bar, easy payback. It probably has raised the price for western re-engagement which is of course beneficial for those same states.
The spratleys and the other islands and sandbars of the China Sea are the major worry. The Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and japan have food for thought there. Australia's refusal to accept international court jurisdiction over its bullying and spying of East Timor undermined its own standing in the same courts acting against what China is doing.
I accused the author of rambling. I've committed the same offence.
Hardly. Hitler and his cronies were driven by a level of crazy that outdid most of the other autocracies of the 20th century. Just two examples:
* Starting a war of conquest that utterly destroyed Germany itself.
* Murdering millions of Europeans in the name of anti-semitic racial theories developed decades earlier. (Hitler and Goebbels were quite clear about this long before they came to power.)
There are many more. China's rise looks more like great power politics.
If you want to go there, the CCP has its own brand of horrible (The Great Leap Forward) which in some ways is worse, as it continues to treat even its own Han majority as disposable.
That's completely true. But my point is that comparing them to Nazis is at best misleading and at worst actively harmful if you want to reason about what happened then and what's happening.
Perhaps it's more useful to look at figures like Stalin and Pol Pot to understand what happened in the Great Leap Forward. Or from Chinese history itself.
And to understand the current situation and how to react to it (from the point of view of American strategy) you need to look at comparisons that include nuclear and naval power. In some ways what's going on now in the Eastern Pacific looks like a replay of the Japan/US rivalry with a more formidable adversary operating on interior lines. As for nuclear issues, look at the Cold War. (If only because we got out of that one without incinerating the planet.)
<rant>
I'm an American and find the constant Nazi analogies really tiresome. It's as if everyone's knowledge of history comes from WW II movies. GGPs post was a thoughtful and enjoyable contrast.
</rant>
It's pretty awful but does not seem to rise to the level of Nazi extermination camps as far as I can tell. Seeing it through the lens of the Nazi regime does not seem either illuminating or helpful to stop it.
Its intent to treat Hong Kong like the rest of China? How is that anything like Hitler's intent to conquer Europe? The author is as delusional about China as he is about democratically elected governments using COVID to gain permanent control over their citizens.
Yes, Xi is bad, and we should not want to be governed as Xi governs, but there is absolutely no risk of this happening outside the areas China controls or claims it should control.
Japan's refusal to fully acknowledge comfort women, and the evils of the co-prosperity sphere is feeding opposition in countries as diametrically different as south Korea and china.
If they want to defuse tension, stopping writing their history books as white out and celebrating yasakuni shrine war criminals would be a good start, based on the west German experience. I don't love the federal Republic of Germany or the CDU but they aren't in denial about 33-45.
No amount of prostrating will ever appease every faction, such as Polish conservatives regard Germany. It's all irrelevant anyhow as Japan and Germany are about distant from their pre-war selves in terms of militarism and nationalism as any country on this planet. What's actually keeping these debates alive are cultural enmities which predate WWII by centuries. That's why you don't see, e.g., Vietnam constantly making a fuss about American reverence for their soldiers who fought and killed Vietnamese--the history just isn't there to support that kind of national grudge even if there are plenty of individuals who might be bothered by it.
> the People's Daily, ran an article in which two Chinese academics challenged Japan's sovereignty over the Ryukyu chain of islands, which includes Okinawa.
This is Beijing's policy about as much as Fox News' rantings were GOP or Trump Administration policy. Beijing holds a leash and can tighten or loosen at will, but to that extent it's still just saber rattling and fodder for domestic politics. Just like with American media, such opinions deserve attention only after after a long-term, durable pattern of specific policy preferences which see significant uptake by the political machine.
> How is that anything like Hitler's intent to conquer Europe?
I thought you were hinting at the Anschluss, but here is something to think about: why does Putin invade Georgia, Moldavia, Ukraine? The answer is that dictatorships ultimately have to eat outside its borders, because for a productive society you need to have a broad middle class, allow dissent, foster debate, allow ideas to spring up so as to make sure society can progress, keep the rule of law, have an accountable government etc. Instead, if you want to make it you will need to be part of the Party. You need the favor of those that are closer to the center of the power.
Your business can be closed any day, you have no say about what new legislation will be put in place. All the power and capital will accumulate at the center of the party.
The rule of dictators tend to end with a bang. The bad thing is: the surveillance is on such an evil level that it will be really hard for the people to rise up and free themselves. They can only hope for a power struggle in the highest echelons. These are dark days..
Largely yes, we have. De facto most western powers prefer not to engage on the topic. They're also pretty apathetic about Uigher issues. I find that depressing too. China used to make a lot of noise about tolerance for minorities, the re-education camps are a sign of deep seated fears. Flooding Tibet with a han Chinese overclass, is pretty much complete now.
The CCP has always claimed Tibet was part of China, with the Similar Convention not signed by any representative of China. China does not lay claim to Europe, the entirety of Asia, or anything like that.
> Very little we do in the west would alter the trajectory inside China,
We altered the trajectory by making a pact with Mao, who bears the honor of more killings on his name than Hitler.
> Accusations against intellectuals and politicians in the west are at best polemic, and at worst bad faith. The author simply wants to bash western intellectuals they disagree with.
I think your criticism is a bit shallow here. Kissinger did sell the pact with Mao as a strategic outmaneuver of the Soviet Union. But his main point is that "Wandel durch Handel" (as the Germans insisted on in the last decades towards Russia despite US warnings) is just an eufemism of "lets make money".
I guess you'd have seen how big western brands bend over to China to betray human values. Apple, Tesla, Google you name it, they all sold their soul (if there would have been anything left) for more, more.
The result is that in the West people gets cynical or don't think about human values as worthy to uphold anymore. Its a slippery slope. To the surprise of the autocrats, we are not morally dead yet. Putin thought we would bend over again for some coins, calculating that we already went in a deadly, eternal sleep. Us acting for once altered Xi's calculation wrt Taiwan.
> China hasn't invaded anywhere outside its own territory for a long time
You should wonder why every neighbor of China is wary or is having a conflict right now. You should pay closer attention to Hong Kong, look even more closely how the Party deals with Han-Chinese vs non Han Chinese, and how any one not Chinese enough ends up in a concentration camp.
> (We're not wrong to seek the social justice. It's hurt us economically because China doesn't and pays well)
"We're not wrong..." You are missing the forest for the trees I am afraid. One of the central themes of the CCP and Putin is that they support autocracies and try to thwart democracies.
The biggest threat to any autocratic leader is democracy, the rule of law and innate rights for the people.
They call their disgust for those matters as striving for multi-polarity. The rule based world order is what they try to overthrow. For that, they need support from the oligarchs in the West. They need their capital and the knowledge of the free world. Our billionaires brought it, they are bending more on request.
This is not just hurting us a a by product, it is a win-win for the CCP.
This is a bit ahistorical. "We" made a pact with Mao because it was expedient in war against Japan. We made a pact with Stalin for the same reason, and Tito. Chiang Kai Shek wasn't able to keep control and had actively collaborated with Japanese forces when it suited him.
Western arms did not prevent or provoke CSKs abandonment of the mainland. Mao wasn't armed by the west.
Mao's insane famine inducing policy, his rapprochement with the USSR and breakup, his involvement in the Korean war was all in the future, as was Kissinger and Nixon. At the time, needing bases to bomb the Japanese heartland, making a pact with Mao made sense. Do you argue otherwise from non post-hoc reasoning?
My biggest fear is a post-Xi destabilising China-internal fight for control. It's more likely it leans to Russia than not. No claimant to controlling the Chinese autocracy will want to look weak and agreeing to western norms will look weak, where selling arms to a fellow autocrat and sourcing cheap oil looks clever.
Xi must be weaker now than he's ever been, caving in on covid restrictions caused predictable chaos. He's off-brand. It's worrisome.
This article doesn’t resemble reality at all. It indicates that China’s subterfuge is succeeding. But all evidence points to nearly every political wing of most Western countries becoming ridiculously suspicious of China.
Australia’s most left wing government in a long time has adopted an incredibly anti-China stance.
The UK has become incredibly anti-China despite basing Brexit on the idea that trade with China will compensate for trade with the EU.
A couple of years ago the EU was looking likely to collaborate far more with China. That has changed dramatically since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. political class is broadly anti-China. The current Democratic government has taken extremely strong steps to reduce trade with China and Trump the Republican made opposing China a centerpiece of his campaign.
Edit: Unfortunately this article is little more than BS propaganda. None of the claims it makes actually follow from the evidence it provides. Just as an example, it claims that many Western countries had stricter lockdowns than China, which may be the most asinine claim I’ve ever heard. And it pretends lockdowns were about eliminating COVID. That’s absolute BS. The entire lockdown argument in the West in the beginning was about “flattening the curve”. The entire idea was to avoid the acute need for medical services that were seen in China that required it to build hospitals treating tens of thousands of people in days, the massive deaths in Italy and NYC due to the explosion of illness at a time when we knew nothing about treating COVID (the gold standard of treatment at the time, using ventilators, was almost certainly wrong and led to the deaths of thousands of people in NYC who would have been alive if we had the information we did even a few weeks later).
Lockdowns happened to be extremely effective at preventing COVID, but that was a pleasant after the fact surprise. However their original justification was always “flattening the curve”.
Falun Gong is a cult — the Moonies with Chinese characteristics. The fact that the author of this article and its associated book doesn't acknowledge this tells you all you need to know about this analysis.
Hitler planned for conquest of Europe. Xi is seeking to gain the territories disputed with its neighbors due to treaties signed with KMT officials instead of with CCP officials. The threat to liberal democracies is not remotely the same.
>Falun Gong is a cult — the Moonies with Chinese characteristics. The fact that the author of this article and its associated book doesn't acknowledge this tells you all you need to know about this analysis.
First, one piece of opinion in a larger body of text doesn't tell you "all you need to know" about the rest of it. Much of the other arguments might be very good even if a few are wrong. What a silly notion to say otherwise.
Secondly, whether Falun Gong was cult-like or not doesn't change the fact that China brutally repressed a religious movement of tens of millions of members that didn't engage in terrorism, violence or forcibly integrate new members. This repression coupled with so many of China's other repressions of different groups and minorities makes it absurd to blame a religious group for being crushed ruthlessly, instead of the obvious giant state and police apparatus doing the crushing.
> First, one piece of opinion in a larger body of text doesn't tell you "all you need to know" about the rest of it.
It certainly does when Falun Gong and the Moonies are purveyors of far right propaganda, which the author subscribes to.
> Secondly, whether Falun Gong was cult-like or not doesn't change the fact that China brutally repressed a religious movement of tens of millions of members that didn't engage in terrorism, violence or forcibly integrate new members.
As far as China's repression of Falun Gong, I wholeheartedly disagree with its methods, but as Falun Gong was and remains an anti-CCP entity, the repression of that organization is entirely understandable.
Biden, a Catholic, is allowed to have beliefs different from the Pope's. Members of Falun Gong believe that the leader is a supernatural being who can read their minds.
Biden comes into this because he is Catholic and clearly does not have to do what the Pope tells him to do, nor does the Pope try to tell him what to do. This is not possible in Falun Gong, the Unification Church, and other cults.
> In that sense, in contrast to the Nazis’ militaristic imperialism, the CCP has resurrected a more ancient form of imperialism in which they’ve bought and groomed foreign elites to be more loyal to them than to their own people.
Loyalty to one's own people, or that there even is such a thing as "own people", and not just random individuals that happen to share passports, is rather taboo in the West, isn't it?
Loyalty is complicated. GK Chesterton (who was not left leaning) said "my country right or wrong is like my mother drunk or sober"
It would be hard to espouse loyalty to America as a Japanese origin US citizen locked up in ww2 because of assumptions about loyalty. Somehow they did. Admirable.
The modern day pledge of allegiance was confected to reassert religions role in the state (against the express wishes of the constitution drafters) as if loyalty could be measured by willingness to recite a pledge under threats implicit or explicit.
The entire existence of the modern US polity is founded on a rejection of one kind of loyalty and replacement with another. Loyal british retreated to Halifax. They continued to trade with their southern neighbours.
What loyalty the black panthers owed was unclear.
Leo Amery M.P. (and a privy counsellor, thats loyalty) disowned his son who joined the nazi forces. He was executed at wars end 7 months after the victory in Europe.
Your comments are about what loyalty the people owe to their government, but I was talking about the reverse - the loyalty a government owes to its people.
E.g. your example of the Black Panthers - they may not have been loyal to the US government, but they were unapologetically loyal to what they considered 'their people' - African-Americans.
Recently China seemed to realize its “wolf warrior” aggressive stance towards the world simply was leading to well armed and prepared adversaries, so the CCP stopped being so aggressive in its diplomatic stance.
The most disturbing part of all this is that at least here in Australia, much of society seems to have bought the new narrative that China was never a threat and indeed it was our own government at the time (now voted out) that caused the degraded relationship with China.
People seem to believe that China has gone back to being non threatening, non aggressive. They seem happy to believe that China’s clearly stated intent to control the world is no longer its goal.
It looks to me like China had a short period where it showed its true hand, and realizing its error, had gone back to hiding its true ambitions behind a friendly smile. This will lull countries like Australia into a false sense of security and does not bode well for the future, in which China has realized it must carry out its plans with surprise rather than telegraphing hostility early.
Our politicians are all too willing to back down and stop becoming prepared.
It’s extremely unfortunate that in Australia there are many people who equate being defensively ready with warmongering. I’m no hawk but I sure do believe we should defend our sovereignty and be ready well in advance to do so. We are far, far from able to defend ourselves right now.