[CBarkleyU]

The West was greedy and saw a trillion dollar opportunity in welcoming China into the WTO in 2000 and gave China massive leeway (this is my opinion, and probably not a majority opinion).

In my opinion (only speaking for Germany, as I follow mostly the politics here) nobody was very keen on asking questions and making demand when the Chinese were producing our shit for pennies on the dollar but buying our premium Mercedes Benz S Classes Long Lines (and similar high technology products) by the millions.

Who would've thunk that the turntables would've, well turned...

I'm not blaming China for this btw, they played their hand very well

[mrjin]

There would no problems at all if China continues to make shirts, shoes etc...

But China started to make some high end stuff, such as Computers, and it did those so well that it could probably render US competitors irrelevant in the next a couple of decades. So all drama started.

[_chu1]

No, it hasn't. Never seen anything relatively nice from a Chinese company, even when it's another one of their piles of manure with a different name like OnePlus.

[chaos_emergent]

In consumer drones, DJI is the undisputed champion.

In consumer 3D printers, Bambu has revolutionized the market.

[squarefoot]

Don't mistake the crap they make without any quality control then sell on Aliexpress by shady shops with the serious stuff their industry is perfectly capable of design and produce. Now we could debate that millions of people buying the former contributed also to the latter, that is probably the case, but one sure fact is that they can make extremely advanced stuff at very convenient prices. Denying that because of one's nationalistic views won't change anything, unfortunately. We need to understand how to counter that in a positive way, that is, being better, not blocking their products. Now, how do you develop an industry compared to the Chinese without transforming workers into underpaid drones with no civil liberties? That's likely the one question no western politician would like to hear, because they'd have no answer.

[Clubber]

I think the hopes were that China, once prospering in the global marketplace as a big player, would turn democratic. Over the last decade or two, we've come to realize the opposite has happened and the Western powers are adjusting.

Of course Western companies have made a lot of money off China with cheap labor and massive marketplace, so it wasn't entirely an altruistic endeavour.

[licebmi__at__]

Western powers still make deals with authoritarian/non-democratic states. At this point is naive to think that the grievances with china are because “they are not democratic”.

[Clubber]

>At this point is naive to think that the grievances with china are because “they are not democratic”.

No, the kid gloves are off because "they are not democratic." It's like being nice to the weird kid in school and the weird kid steals your lunch. No more being nice to the weird kid.

Also, consider if they were democratic, we might not be having the grievances we are currently having.

[Reki]

So how do you explain our relashionship with countries like Saudi Arabia? Because forget the bully, thats like being friends with the school shooter.

[Clubber]

What does that have to do with anything I said? Do you think we ally with countries for moral reasons? We allied with Stalin after he invaded Poland with Germany earlier in the same war.

[red-iron-pine]

that school shooter is rich af, and as much as everyone hates them, can lever that over the whole school.

[SR2Z]

Because geopolitics is a game where ALL the players are sociopaths and Saudi Arabia is basically too small for their government's admitted craziness to even register.

[licebmi__at__]

Let’s be real. The kid gloves would be off for any country, democratic or otherwise, that tries to compete on economic throughput and global influence with the US.

Unless you’re trying to argue that the rapid economic growth happened because they are not democratic, the idea that democracy has any relevance on US relations is laughable propaganda.

If the countries were really school kids, then I might accommodate for the idea that the school bully actually believes that he’s no longer nice to the weird kid because he’s weird. But even if some US citizens are childish, countries are not school kids.

[Clubber]

I think if you look past the last few news cycles and back into the 70s and especially the 90s, you'll better understand what our strategy with China has been.

>I think the hopes were that China, once prospering in the global marketplace as a big player, would turn democratic. Over the last decade or two, we've come to realize the opposite has happened and the Western powers are adjusting.

Which part of that do you disagree with?

[licebmi__at__]

I guess I disagree with everything. But mostly I disagree that anyone serious actually thought that entering on a global marketplace would turn any kind of nation democratic... but I mean people at the top can have any kind of ideologies, I shouldn't consider impossible that somebody actually bought the magical markets propaganda.

[derelicta]

China is already democratic tho. They have workers congress on the national level, plenty of people's assemblies on the provencial and city level. They also have consultative assemblies for business issues.

Citizens are very satisfied of their government, despite some of its excesses, unlike so called western democratic governments.

Their material condititons are as good as in Europe, at least for most folks.

Just because you do not directly elect the president of your government doesn't make you less democratic. Switzerland doesn't elect its government by universal suffrage, neither does the UK, or the EU. Their democratic model is just different.