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by JumpCrisscross 238 days ago
> Unlike the US, they don’t want to project their values across the globe

Tell that to Pakistan, Taiwan, Cambodia, Korea and checks notes Tibet.

5 comments

Don't forget most of Africa, where it's a lot of "Oh, so sorry you got in massive debt to us for that clean water system. You know, a nice Chinese naval base would look great right over there."
Or, "how about you let us exploit your natural resources from now on."
The CIA was operating for a long time in Tibet and got the Dalai Lama kicked out. Taiwan wouldn't even exist if it weren't backed by forgeign powers, namely the US and UK. The US dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia. The US has conducted thousands of drone strikes in Pakistan, and of course, they fought a war in Korea.
> CIA was operating for a long time in Tibet and got the Dalai Lama kicked out

Nobody contests that the U.S. projects power and culture globally.

> Taiwan wouldn't even exist if it weren't backed by forgeign powers, namely the US and UK

…this is true for most countries on the planet. Including the US and UK.

> US dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia. The US has conducted thousands of drone strikes in Pakistan, and of course, they fought a war in Korea

How is this relevant to whether China projects its culture?

China does not project it's power across the globe. You only listed countries China can literally spit on from within it's own borders.
> China does not project it's power across the globe. You only listed countries China can literally spit on from within it's own borders

China's projects power into the Red Sea and Central Asia, and is building bases to project further into the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Thailand, South Atlantic and Coral Sea. (Also ironic to reference Tibet and China's borders in the same sentence. In imperial terms, China, Indonesia, Libya and Russia stand alone in having annexed by force, since WWII, the sovereign land of other nations that weren't their colonisers.)

Examples of cultural projection outside Asia are rarer, given Chinese power projection as a whole is newer, but one would expect to see--as it's happened in its vicinity, as it happened in America's vicinity first--Chinese-language and cultural institutions following economic interests. (It's already happening, but not significantly enough yet to be of note. Most current objections from locals are around the migration and settlement of ethnic Chinese workers in their communities.)

I get what you are saying but this is still pretty local.
> this is still pretty local

America’s cultural projection was similarly local while the British Empire reined.

Vietnam?
Tell it to the countries that don't exist anymore ...

Hong Kong, Xinjang (yep, that was a country), and the very barely kind-of existing Tibet and Mongolia.

They have territorial disputes with their neighbors, that’s not the same as trying to project their cultural values globally.

What dispute do they have with Pakistan? You mean India?

Look into the various instructions they have in other countries, that's before we get to Belt & Road
> What dispute do they have with Pakistan

You’re the one who straw manned to territorial disputes!

Beijing culturally projects in Pakistan. Capitalism with Chinese characteristics, a growing prevalence of Mandarin being taught as a second language [1], requiring Islamabad embrace Beijing’s foreign policy, et cetera.

(To be clear, this seems fine. Both Pakistan and Russia have proven dangerously incompetent as fully sovereign states. Perhaps being under Beijing is more stable and prosperous.)

[1] https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202210/19/WS634f462aa310f...