[ElProlactin]

> and China is not threatening to invade the EU or Canada. They are the lesser of two evils at this point.

They don't need to. They can undermine the West economically and politically.

The US has been a much more violent imperial power but America's wars don't even scratch the surface of what it has done overseas through economic might and covert action.

[js8]

You don't know what you're talking about. Russians occupied my country, killed almost no one, and yet it was far worse than all the economic damage caused by Western neoliberalism.

US imperialism has been a blight to the world, outright killing millions. Modern China did nothing on that scale.

[ElProlactin]

I think you misread my comment.

> ...but America's wars don't even scratch the surface of what it has done overseas through economic might and covert action.

"What IT has done overseas" refers to the US.

But as for China, the Great Leap Forward is considered the largest man-made famine in history, causing somewhere between 15 and 55 million deaths. The Cultural Revolution resulted in the destruction of irreplicable artifacts and historical sites.

Like the US, China has been involved in sowing discord and destruction in other countries. What the US did in Cambodia was an absolute travesty. But China was Pol Pot's primary backer, having provided around $1 billion in economic and military aid to the Khmer Rouge. So it's not like China was an idle witness to what happened in Indochina last century.

We can argue all day about the greater and lesser of two evils but my point remains: powerful countries can cause significant harm to the world without invading other countries.

[hbd-investor]

You do realize that your quoted figure of 15 and 55 million deaths, came from looking at population figures and assuming that everybody Pre great famine would have the exact same number of children and those children will have the exact same number of children as the starting point.

And is just pure nonsense, might as well claim that the US killed 548 million people, because in 1957 the US population was 172 million and had a TFR of 3.62 , assuming that trend held we would be at 720 million in 2026

[js8]

Yes, I did interpret "it" as referring to China, not US, in that sense I misread it.

I agree that Great Famine was horrible.

My main point was, I would take economic control over tanks and bombs (and actually dead people) any day. (Which was kind of the point of EHS, even in it's most neoliberal incarnation.)

[ElProlactin]

> My main point was, I would take economic control over tanks and bombs...

The problem is that most of the time, economic war ends with tanks and bombs.

[js8]

That's not true, and anyway it's quite simplistic view of history.

[71bw]

And yet it is China who has, for the last 40+ years, successfully used the "start cheap, destroy competition, rise prices" tactic.

[Hikikomori]

Why are you complaining, thats just the free market doing its thing.