| > 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. |
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.