Official China Discussion Thread

Okay before someone else jumps in here I think you misunderstood what I meant by “refusal to agree to proposals”, i mean something like China proposing Australia sell it coal for cheep and China will sell something to Australia for cheep. Would you view an Australian government saying no to what as an act of confrontation?

I’ll get to the rest of your post, but I want to get that point in quickly.

Yeah, I edited my post. I thought you meant categorically refusing to deal with them, proposals should be judged on a case by case basis.

But isn’t that the stick? Didn’t you just say you support carrot and stick?

It would certainly empower nationalists, but depending on the issue so would not confronting China, hell there’s also the risk of empowering other nationalists, if nations in East Asia feel they are being left to the wolves by the west they are liable to also see a surge in nationalism.

Why is that a risk? What’s special about China that means any confrontation will harm action on climate change? There are lots of countries in the world, lots of polluters, should Brazil not be confronted because we need it to protect the Amazon? Should the US not be confronted because it’s a major economy? Russia? India? The EU?

Also I’d again ask when do you believe it is appropriate to confront China? When it’s making climate change worse? If it conducts genocide? When it abuses human rights? When it carries out military action against other nations? If it engages in regime change in other nations? If it attempts to annex another nation? When it harms global health?

That’s not a rhetorical list, I’m genuinely trying to understand what you consider worth trading or impossible to prevent (and not worthy of rhetoric only action) for improved relations with China and thus potential better actions from it on climate change.

Edited by Silasw on May 22nd 2020 at 4:02:16 PM

When I say I oppose confrontation I'm talking specifically about aggressive action, responding to Chinese confrontational behavior is just rationality.

If they menace Taiwan then moving a carrier group isn't confrontation, it's just protecting our ally.

It's a risk because if we're fighting then we cannot effectively work together to fight Climate Change. China is special because they're the world's largest economy and a powerful nation in their own right, we can't just coerce them and we need to work with them to effectively fight Climate Change.

If they invade others then that's something that should be responded to forcefully, capitulating and letting them take Taiwan doesn't do anything to make a better world.

If they're trying to exterminate an ethnic group then apply economic sanctions would be necessary, military action is out of the question (they have nukes). Anything less than full-on death camps is not worth sacrificing anti-Climate Change cooperation for.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 12:01:20 PM

The fun thing is that literally nobody argued against actions against China, just about just doing things without involving China like...normal countries do

When we're talking about fighting Climate Change, or Covid-19, or literally any other global threat "doing things without China" is just as bad as fighting them.

Even if we're talking about countries that just are...trading each other?

Or do literally everything has to be about ensuring the CCP is happy and don't blow the world as a kneejerk reaction?

Edited by KazuyaProta on May 22nd 2020 at 2:12:21 PM

Ah, you're referring to the economic decoupling discussion.

I understand now.

I wouldn't say that's productive. It's one thing to pressure them on things like intellectual property laws to try to get a fairer trade outcome, that's rational and I support it. But the problem is when we're talking about things which are designed to be punitive, like trade wars or completely severing economic ties.

That makes cooperation more difficult, encourages escalation, and hurts us economically. No matter how I look at it, it doesn't pass a cost/benefit analysis.

Edit: The CCP isn't going to blow up the world, that isn't accurate.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 12:22:03 PM

It was a matter of speech. I meant stuff as them Invading Taiwan, Genociding some ethnic group or going either full Hitler or Mao Reborn, the "Worst Case Scenarios" basically

I see.

Well yes, if they went full crazy then we should do what we can to oppose them.

That’s the big clarification I was looking for.

How do India, the US and the EU not also fit that concept? They’re all major world economies and powerful military players. The only difference is that they’re marginally less sensitive and are democracies.

This is where I get stuck, because events don’t happen in a vacuum, if you take a conciliatory stance with China on an issue then that has an impact on how other countries act.

You made the point that if China feels it is being treated unfairly then the natural instinct is to empower nationalists, isn’t that also a risk for how countries or groups respond to China when it acts to harm people/the world? If Democrats are seen as weak on China it may well harm them come November, I’d argue that 4 more years of Trump is much more harmful for the environment than the CCP being a bit miffed at the US.

I feel like this whole debate rests on the flawed premise that China sees climate action and other articles of good behaviour as something transactional in nature.

China is a grown-up country, led by adults who know what they're doing. If pragmatic considerations aren't enough to get them on board with climate action, then you're not going to get them to eat your green policies by sneaking them in an appeasement sandwich. There's nothing stopping a country of China's stature from cutting back on the human rights abuses while also, I don't know, giving Yingli Solar their twentieth bailout or something. And if we're going to have it join the most important fight of our time, then we should expect a certain level of trustworthiness and commitment to humanitarian principles from them, at least.

This whole pandemic already gave us a look into what uncontested CCP "leadership" on the global stage looks like. More sabre-rattling over Taiwan and the larger West Pacific. Increasing state repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Expulsion of foreign journalists. Inter-governmental organisations like the WHO defanged and forced to hold back their own responses to placate China's establishment. Xenophobic propaganda at home blaming foreigners for the crisis. Defective aid shipments cynically trumped up while the struggling recipients are left with the attached strings. If China's leaders can't first prove themselves committed to basic human decency at home, then whatever "cooperation" we can expect from them on climate change is going to look a lot like that.

I do think that principled engagement is necessary. You don't want the bottom to fall out of China's relationship with liberal democratic blocs because it's a necessary harness to keep it from lapsing to its leaders' worst instincts - case in point: the usually combative Chinese MFA establishment was quick to apologise to African countries over the racist incidents in Guangzhou because it actually valued its relationship with them. That means engaging in good faith, without pandering to the racists and xenophobes at home.

But the point of doing that is so that China's populace and leadership both know that you mean what you say and say what you mean when you engage them on issues like human rights and the environment. And you can't get a bad-faith actor to meaningfully commit unless you let it know what's on the line if it crosses the line. If trade, travel and tech transfer are the carrot, then you'll still need the stick.

Targeted sanctions along the lines of Magnitsky legislations are one way to do that. China's ruling class wants personal access to the West. Trade wars are just numbers with people attached; when you can't flaunt your fuerdai wealth by parading Ferraris through your private US college campus because daddy got sanctioned for sending people to concentration camps, you know shit is getting real. If you want China in the team, then you'll need a way to make sure that it plays by the rules, same as everyone else. Sanctioning complicit companies is another way - if China can weaponise market access to push its interests abroad, there's no reason other countries can't do it on human rights grounds.

You wouldn't let any US administration off the hook for its own concentration camps just because you need its cooperation on climate change. No reason why we should hold China to different standards.

And finally, because I can't stress this enough: you can't separate climate action from basic human decency. A lot of the destruction that China's ruling class is wreaking on the environment worldwide comes from the same place as its racist, totalitarian and neo-imperialist urges. Chinese dam projects along the Mekong are exposing the downstream Southeast Asian nations to unprecedented drought, effectively turning them into hostages. The cotton industry in Xinjiang, already marred by slave labour, is also actively contributing to desertification and soil acidification in the region; on top of that, it's also redirecting significant volumes of water from the Ili and Irtysh Rivers, which as you might've guessed is the exact same move that led to the drying up of the Aral Sea a good way to its west. China's security apparatus in Xinjiang sentenced to death the leading Uyghur geographer Tashpolat Tiyip, who worked on arid ecosystems ecology, on trumped-up separatism charges. And even when the Chinese government nominally commits to environmental protection, it messes it up with its own totalitarian streak: the eviction of Amdo Tibetan nomads for the formation of the Sanjiangyuan nature reserve cleared the way for illegal miners to encroach on their native lands, dealing untold damage to the land.

If human rights abuses are already profitable and politically acceptable, then what's stopping China's leaders from throwing some environmental destruction into the process? There's obviously a lot of room for cooperation in green tech, manufacturing and many other fields. But working together doesn't mean letting your partner off the hook for being an abusive piece of shit. It means calling them out on what they're doing wrong and making sure that they commit to being a team player every step of the way. That's what principled engagement should look like. And that's what we'll need to do if we're going to slow down climate change in any meaningful way.

It could not have been said any better.

Neither do I, neither do I

I do not focus on the US or EU because most people here do not consider cooperating with them to be morally suspect. So there isn't any point in mentioning them.

If the option is between taking an idiotic "tough on China" position or losing to Trump then obviously the former is better but I don't see any evidence that it truly is. Not to mention that the entire reason Republicans are blaming China is to distract from their negligence, surrendering to their rhetoric just gives them the advantage they want.

You make a compelling argument.

I don't object to a carrot and stick approach, but that's the thing. It has to have carrot and stick, just using the stick shouldn't be the preferred option. And that's the feeling I get from how the topic is often discussed.

I don't fault anyone for disliking the PRC but there definitely is an adversarial preference amongst many posters in this thread, and elsewhere. And that's antithetical to productive opposition to Climate Change.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on May 22nd 2020 at 6:45:21 AM

Republicans have being against China since way before the Covid crisis

Because many of them have felt the negative consecuences of the rise of the PCR and obviously, that makes us cynic about it. Many years of working together and what happened? Did they become a democracy? Oh no, they just became a funtional dictatorship with global power...yaay?

Certainly true, but the Pandemic has given them new fire to focus on China. Because doing anything else risks people examining their irresponsibility.

I am certainly sympathetic, but it's important for us all to keep in mind that the alternative to working with them is not anything good. Just chaos and suffering.

There is nothing wrong with being angry at the Chinese government, but we must keep the bigger picture in mind as well.

We do keep the big picture in mind. That is why all the bullshit the CCP pulls is troubling. Eagle’s post already spelled out why.

You cannot trust an authoritarian regime to do the right thing.

The issue is that, as Eagle said, a Victorious China has a chance to do harm to their neightbors that, in some cases as expulsing nomads to mine lands or drying rivers from their borders, turn the discussion of China vs Climate Change into a "I don't care who wins, I am screwed anyway".

I don't think that anyone argues to invade China, I think that even the biggest China Hawks here like me just want to do stuff as support Hong Kong and put sanctions to the Uyghur situation in Xijiang given the stuff as the forced sterylizations.

Yeah, I don't see how a dominant China would handle Climate Change in anything resembling competency.

Edited by KazuyaProta on May 22nd 2020 at 9:15:50 AM

even if the republican are doing this to deflect(which is true in most case) is true china misteps have cause much of this problem and they have trying to deflect their guilt every step of the way, we cant allow to do that.

Basically he's saying that there simply isn't a lesser evil in this situation, between the GOP and the CCP.

The GOP can actually be removed from power in November by a fully viable opposition party, one that's actually interested in implementing climate change controls.

But hey, I suppose one could argue that having an indefinitely ruling party with absolute unquestioned and undisputed power is what the world needs for there to be law, order, stability, safety, and environmental protection.

Said indefinitely ruling party also just tanked the global stock markets in the last 48 hours because it insists on fully eroding a crucial treaty signed with the UK. Just the perfect partner to sign agreements with.

Yeah, even I don't think that's true, that isn't a praise to the GOP.

And is not like criticizing the CCP means the GOP gets more votes, that's nonsense. If anything, leaving the GOP as the only guys opossing the CCP would made them for popular as the CCP continues rising and causing troubles for other countries.

Edited by KazuyaProta on May 22nd 2020 at 10:58:19 AM

Furthermore, it's no secret that Trump admires Xi and hence why the buffoon's been oddly silent on Hong Kong and the CCP, outside of his public deflecting. He was reportedly hesitant to sign the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act despite actual bipartisan support.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on May 22nd 2020 at 9:22:10 AM

Remember that Trump seems to admire authoritarians. Hence his tendency to compliment them. Xi Jinping, Putin, Kim Jong Un...