stui magpie wrote:PTiddy,
I'm not quoting or responding bit by bit to that massive post, I'm leaving it there for others if they want to.
The exception I'll make is about nationalism and how people have been treated.
Facts are the CCP have treated their own people worse than other countries ever did and still allow them to slave in factories for foreign profit when they could have easily enforced a minimum wage,
I've been hearing for years people banging on about how Australia's future is China. People also assumed that as they modernised they would become more liberal and less authoritarian.
We'll they've proved that ain't happening. Them throwing the toys out of the cot is mainly for the benefit of their own people who they can feed their controlled media that they are standing up strongly for themselves, cos every chinese person, even the lowest Coolie as the saying goes, truly believes they are superior in every sense to all other peoples.
I have no massive interest in the overall trade discussion, my point is that China is clearly demonstrating they aren't anyone's ally. They don't want allies they want vassals. If we allow our economy to be dependent on them, we're up that fecal creek in a leaking canoe and no paddles.
The saying was Australia's future is in Asia, not just China; I'm not sure which tabloid changed the equation, but you're wrong if you think the rest of Asia doesn't have plans of its own. Ask Indians, Koreans, Japanese and Russians what they think and you might get some different perspectives on the region from neighbouring countries no less. (Let's not forget the rather recent 'the Muslims are taking over' panic, spread by the usual suspects, which failed to calculate that most of the world is not in fact Muslim, just as it is not in fact Chinese).
And when Anglo-America was developing, it treated its own people just as badly. Go do some reading on Anglo-American industrial slums. And we won't even start with indigenous peoples. You're selectively picking out things that prop up the panic thesis because you're reading too much media nonsense. Development is ugly and always has been. You know that as well as I do. I'm not saying I like it, but you don't get to use that argument without a heavy rider, including reference to, say, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria or Brazil's extremely ugly industrial development. Again, South Korea was no picture in this regard and was probably far worse than you imagine.
We also still don't have anywhere near enough information on China. You'd have said South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s was a democratic basket case, and it was a very easy country to read relative to China. And I could list as many egregious actions from South Korean dictators relative to scale and level of development. It's miles too complex to think media tanties by one regime at one point gives you all the information you need to know as to whether things are fundamentally shifting.
Think about it: hundreds of millions of people moving out of poverty; millions of competing businesses; enormous people movement; massive national exchange; massive numbers of global transactions daily; massive information exchange. The party control will already be imaginary, and its current PR won't hold. These things can change pretty quickly.
Also, the world is a very hostile place at the moment led by a flailing United States which is provoking all kinds of destabilisation. China needs world leaders who can see beyond cheap votes and have a firm yet inclusive view of the international order. The rest of the world is chaotic because of Anglo-America's disgraceful past two decades; that there are no competent Anglo-American parties to engage China is hardly their fault.
That doesn't mean I don't believe in sensible economic policy and defence, BTW; I'm no fan of any country. How many posts have I made on the menace of mining and fossil fuels arguing instead for the broadening of Australia's industrial portfolio? It was all pissing in the wind when the cheap money was coming in and fat heads and thugs with no great a skill than wrangling land titles in sleazy deals were wandering around the country pontificating on the economy and interfering in legislation and elections while people drank it up like lap dogs.
My favourite saying is 'nations are idiots'. That includes China, but at the moment it very much also includes Anglo-America. And don't forget, China is the developing country here with the infinitely harder task. What's Anglo-America's excuse? Judge carefully, is what I'd say, and work hard to encourage things in a productive direction rather than resigning to a bad hunch about history, which really is buying into the worst racist Chinese 'fate' and 'destiny' propaganda ('Manifest Destiny', anyone?).
The risks are there, to be sure, but one thing's pretty obvious: hundreds of millions of Chinese folks don't deserve to stay in dire poverty to make us sleep easier at night because the Anglosphere has grown accustomed to undeserved control of everything, even as it makes undisciplined, idiotic decisions like Brexit and Trump, or has handed over its political system and industrial policy to corrupt mining companies.
