#%&*@ The Chinese Communist Party
Question : Does China want to go to war with the U.S . ?
If we listen to the right, the commie horde we know as Red China is frothing at the mouth over the idea of getting into a shooting war with the United States.
To what end?
Back in the old days there was some utility to invading another country (if you were expansionist) but in the atomic bomb world that is no longer the case. Since WWII there has never been a military conflict between two nuclear powers. Yet we are supposed to believe China will instigate one now, and is in fact itching to.
All this stuff about our national honor being dragged through the mud by this spy satellite - please. This is a sideshow embraced by people who want to be entertained by military responses. And there are a lot of people with that point of view.
Then there is conservative outrage and paranoia about "China". Why now? A couple reasons - one, our most recent constant enemy, radical Islam, has faded considerably from the national consciousness, and some people are unfulfilled unless they have a threat at the "doorstep" to fret over and plan against. Secondly, and just as important, it is a weapon ( a popgun imo) that the right can try and use in the "culture" wars. They are dementedly obsessed about marxism, socialism, and communism, (hello John Birch) and the Chinese are the most visible and powerful communist entity presently anywhere in the world. A conservative was on tv this morning talking about "the Chinese Communist Party" being responsible for the balloon. He could have just said "China", but then there would be no dogwhistle.
The cold war may be coming back, complete with a new McCarthyism.
They didnt care about the planned overthrow of the US government in Jan 2021, but they care so much about a surveillance balloon.
What do "they" have to do with this international story?
Various intelligence agencies, the FBI, Homeland Security. and the Capitol Police said there was no "planned overthrow" of the US government on J6.
That's why there was no beef up of security at the Capitol Bldg.
Most rational people don't think there is much difference between Communist China or Communist Russia.
Both of these dictatorial governments are our adversaries, and not our friends
There was no planned overthrow of the US government on Jan 2021. [ deleted ]
As for the surveillance balloon. It never should have been allowed into US air space, period, end of fucking story. The fact that it made it all the way across the country is a national embarrassment. Either the military fucked up and didn't detect it; or Brandon fucked up (what else is new?) by not ordering downed soon enough. Wonder how many of Hunter's butt ugly paintings the Chinese will need to buy this time to pay off "the Big Guy"?
We all know how much loves the one party rule of the CCP; and are desperate to get it here. But try to keep the worship in perspective when it threatens the national security of this country.
You dont get it. The attempt to overthrow the government was Donald Trump's plan. The rioters were means to an end.
Semantics! I guess since the government on January 6th was still Trump's government a dishonest argument could be made that Trump's Insurrection was merely to keep the same government in power and to merely stop the transfer of power to Biden's control. In either case, there was an illegal conspiracy to violently attack Congress that successfully delayed the business of Congress fircing the US House and Senate to suspend their constitutionally mandated duties and flee into underground bunkers until peace was restored. It was a national disgrace and people died as a result of it. Many have already been convicted or plead guilty to participating in this conspiracy but justice will not be done until those who planned it and instigated it are punished! That means Trump and Guiliani and the Pillow Guy and the rest of Trump's inner circle. Justice delayed is justice denied. Indictments must come!
Thank you for confirming once again that after 2 full years that Biden and his DOJ are completely incompetent, You should send Mitch McConnel a thank you card for keeping that worthless piece of crap Garland off the supreme court, with all this evidence not one indictment of anybody in the Trump administration. How fucking worthless can someone be?
I agree. Garland needs to indict the MFs!
The US has never prosecuted a former President for crimes committed while in office and I understand the reticence to do so, but Trump is running again and his danger to our Republic is self evident...
Is there any atrocity or violation of international law that China could engage in that would make it okay in your eyes for Americans to criticize it?
Or is the only appropriate discussion point "orange man bad? "
I have no problem with criticizing or opposing China. I have a problem with obsession and dishonesty. No one cares about the "Chinese Communist Party", they care about the "Democratic Communist Party."
The Democratic Commie Party is an even bigger threat to our national security and our democracy than the Chi-comms
lol.
Thanks for proving my point.
Thanks for proving my point.
You had a point? What was it?
The story is very much a coat of many colors. And, apparently, the press hasn't figured out how to use the story for political advantage although the commercial appeal is obvious.
Naturally Republicans are going to respond because the balloon floated over the middle of the country. The balloon could only pose a threat to sparsely populated, rural sections of the country. Democrats don't care about the middle of the country. Democrats are only concerned about big cities and ocean front property. The balloon posed no threat to Democrats' blue islands so this is a non-story in Democrat circles.
Why focus attention on the CCCP? The obvious thing to be done by the Chinese government would have been to identify who launched the balloon, where the balloon was launched, and why the balloon was launched. But that's not how the CCCP does things. The CCCP is a political party and political parties, in general, cannot tolerate any notion of fallibility or inability to control everything. Political parties must always be correct and in control. The political parties in the United States are no different. Since the United States has two political parties there is always a ready made scapegoat. The CCCP does not have that luxury.
The US military is in desperate need of public relations stories, too. Recruitment has dropped precipitously. There's just too many private sector jobs and the military can't compete on wages and benefits. Plus the military doesn't have a lot of patriotic fodder to boast about, either. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal was a high profile failure. The military can't hide that it's high tech prowess hasn't intimidated Putin and Russia. The quagmire in Ukraine has placed the military supply chain under a lot of stress and it's uncertain that the supply chain can recover any time soon. The fighting in Ukraine has revealed that European weapon systems can compete with anything in the US arsenal which threatens the US standing as an arms merchant.
What have we learned? The middle of the country is of paramount strategic importance to the United States. No one was overly concerned when the balloon floated over Alaska; the alarms were only raised when the balloon was over the middle of the country. The US military doesn't have the capability to defend the United States from low tech threats. Smaller, less technically advanced adversaries now know how to threaten the United States. The military has told the public that shooting down the balloon increases the risk so more firepower isn't a solution.
China is interesting. I don’t think they are actively seeking confrontation with the US. Sure our relationship is contentious, but I don’t think anyone wants it to come to blows since everyone anticipates getting as good as they give. That would devastate both nations, for basically no real gain.
and of course we are so tied together economically that a war would be an economic catastrophe for both.
Imo if China attacks Taiwan our best bet is not to defend Taiwan directly but target food and oil carrying vessels to China.
in other words you favor economic or political sanctions ...
As for US involvement and the level of said involvement , that will be dictated by agreements agreed to by both taiwans and the us government .
those agreements are no different than those agreements made in NATO and NATO aligned countries with the responsibilities that are incurred when those agreements were made .
China can’t feed or fuel itself
and that is a position that they have found themselves in many times throughout history even a couple time in the last century , yet here they are , still with us .
how are those economic and political sanctions working out for one of Chinas satellites, North Korea? i would suspect that any of the such would likely have the same effect . Nk is the same , they cant feed or fuel themselves , where NK is micro scale China would be macro scale , and dollars to doughnuts ,with as large an area as China has , they will end up feeding themselves, maybe not to current standards , right now its just cheaper to import .
ok....
okay.
Where there is a will, there is a way....
I beg to differ. If it has to, it CAN feed itself.
...and how do you intend to stop grains and oil/gas coming from Russia, which Russia has in abundance and is being limited by the west from selling it?
IIRC, growing enough food has never been a problem. But in periods of chaos, transportation from farm to consumers has sometimes been rough.
By "chaos" do you mean because of extreme weather, or earthquakes, or what? A very important aspect of the eradication of extreme poverty was to create access to remote areas, like good roads. I once posted an article about that on the Discovery Group, indicating what a tremendous difference that made.
China is old. Much of its history has been marked by political and social turmoil. How many dynasties?
That kind of chaos.
Why would China want a war with the US? They might lose, while just keepin' on keepin' on will get them the win. The Party ensures that the countries ressources are used in a coordinated manner, while America's ressources are used in the interest of each company, completely dispersed.
Good point. Central Planning worked wonders for the economic powerhouses that are the USSR, Cuba etc..
USA during WWII.
So the US could, of course, do the same thing if it wanted to and much more easily than it did during WWII.
If central planning gives a country such an advantage, why have all the countries that embraced it fallen short?
You've been very helpful in my self-improvement efforts. One of the things I've decided is most important for my welfare is not to let anyone manipulate me. Manipulating people is your purpose here on NT, so here's no possibility of conversation between us.
I sincerely hope you have a nice life, Sean.
ditto
Because the USA is the primary power standing in China's way preventing their expansionist goals.
Expansionist goals? OMG, yet another fiction. And you think they would start a war in order to achieve that? If they start a war with the USA it will lead to the end of the world and then NOBODY is "Number One" and surely China is not so stupid as to want that to happen.
What did China look like on a map a thousand years ago? Roughly the same as today. China may replace the US as principal proprietor, but hey! That's capitalism for you!
The Great Wall was to keep barbarians out.
Does that encourage innovation?
Sure. If the party asks for innovation, it gets it.
That didn't work out well for China or Russia in the 20th century, they fell far behind the free world technologically. China has now become very rich manufacturing goods based on designs and R&D from outside China. Ther greatest talent is reverse engineering, show me a motorcycle or lawn & garden engine they make that isn't a copy of a honda or other non-Chinese make. I could spend weeks on amazon or ebay looking at Chinese copies of products of every type imaginable designed in the free world. These days China Gov invests lots of money in certain industries but heavy handed bureaucracies usually aren't very good at fostering creativity and innovation.
Copying is also how Japan and Korea started. The stuff you see on Amazon was probably inspired by Western stuff - we're the commercial target, after all - but surely designed in China.
What "heavy-handed bureaucracy" are you talking about? I don't think China works that way.
Far right ideologue Tom Cotton was on the Sunday Morning Fox show this morning and used the phrase "Chinese communists" four times in a short interview, at one point saying it twice within 30 seconds.
They are obsessed with "communism".
if the Nazi party still ruled Germany, how often would you point that out when criticizing Germany?
Communism killed over 100 million of their own people in the 20th Century.
Yes. And died. Communism no longer exists. Russia is crony capitalism. China is managed capitalism.
I think that using the word "killed" is intentionally incendiary. Incompetent management led to the death of many, as did famine.
The People still lack the ability to fire leadership. In Russia and China the kind of dissent required to build an effective opposition party is not only frowned upon but is punished. The single party Communist system of government doesn't like to admit when it's wrong so it doubles down on it's bad policies and the people suffer the consequences (it likes to be told it's wrong even less). Unfortunately the same conditions that caused so many deaths in the last century still exist. All it takes is for El Presidente for life to attack his neighbors or use the totalitarian centralized government power to implement a new strategy to revolutionize society and people start suffering and dying left and right all over again.
Who's been telling you those things? Sure, there are some things that I don't like, but wow, I can't fathom the unbelievable extremes that you're telling me. I've been living here for 16 1/2 years and know what I'm talking about and some of the wild stories that people who have probably never stepped a foot in this country have concocted absolutely amaze me.
The people have to be damned unhappy to want to change the government, but guess what zuksam, the people are not so unhappy as to want to emulate your Jan6. Hey, in your country about half the people are unhappy no matter WHICH party controls the nation. You can tell that just from the articles and comments on this site. Contrary to what a certain member who's never been to China says, they are NOT oppressed (or I would have known that myself). They were unhappy about the zero Covid policy and they demonstrated, and the government listened to what they said and did what the protesters wanted and cancelled that policy. Thanks to the demonstrators I got infected and at my age there was a good chance I could have died. Personally, I was quite happy with the zero Covid policy.
How much has an average American's purchasing power gone up over the last fifty years?
How much has an average Chinese's purchasing power gone up over the last fifty years?
End of story.
End of Story...
I'm sure the tens of millions killed by the CCP would disagree with you, but what's a little genocide among communists, right?
And as for your "purchasing power" test, that might the most transparently stupid thing we've seen today.
China has a lower per capita income than Botswana. When you are at the bottom, small gains are easy to come by. But you are still at the bottom.
So you were lying all the times all the times you said it was popular because Chinese care about the greater health of their community.
Have a great life, Sean.
You too Bob. Forgive me if I haven't quite reached the level of enlightenment that allows one to cavalierly discount the murder of tens of millions in pursuit of a little increased purchasing power. I guess I don't worship money sufficiently.
So you'll have to indulge me and my humanist impulses to speak in opposition to genocide, mass murder on a scale never approached in history and those sort of things. 100 million murdered is just a rounding error or something like that, I'm sure.
I don't intend to reply to obsessive fixated repeatedly vicious ignorant comments so if you don't mind Bob I would like to point out through you that the continuous raising of history in a way that is half wrong anyway in order to demonize another nation when the history of one's own nation is not exactly squeaky clean is something that it seems both of us are shaking our heads at.
And with respect to YOUR comment, a nation that has been praised by the UN for doing the greatest job in the whole world of eradicating abject poverty, making sure that every person has AT LEAST training in being productive, a decent roof over their head, good and adequate food on the table, free education for their kids up to high school graduation and proper health care with the best and latest equipment, and a fast-growing middle class (which is presently about a third of the population) and a lot of successful business owners, developers, millionaires and billionaires cannot be compared with Botswana. The fact that both wages and expenses are lower than in America does NOT mean that the Chinese citizens can't afford everything that Americans can.
And, in reply to another stupid comment posted by someone whose comments indicate a complete lack of knowledge I NEVER SAID THE ZERO COVID POLICY WAS POPULAR, I SAID IT WAS ADHERED TO BECAUSE THE CHINESE PEOPLE ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THEIR FAMILIES AND LOVED ONES AND THE COMMUNITY THAN AMERICANS WERE. I put that in capital letters, shouting, because I'm tired of being labeled and accused of saying things I didn't say. I am starting to consider all the false accusations that are directed at me is a form of harassment, and there is a way to deal with that.
It's painful. They get wrong the few facts they've collected. Then they draw the wrong conclusions.
But there's a logic. These people start with a TRUTH: "China BAD", and then they backfill with cherry-picked facts and wonky reasoning.
Correcting their errors is futile because they know "China BAD".
Outrageous. China good.
I know Bob. It must be tough that some people use sources other than literal Chinese propaganda produced by the CCP itself to support an argument. I apologize for bringing up uncomfortable facts that don't fit your partisan narrative.
ey know "China BAD".
Only if you think the murder of millions, genocide, concentration camps, forced sterilization, lack of basic human rights etc are bad things.
Have a great life, Sean
I hope you do Bob.
Yet STILL spouting the lies told by super-Christian rabid anti-Communist dedicated to blackening China's reputation Adrian Zenz. It's the never-ending story.
Sure, this Zenz, who is only famous in CCP propaganda, controls the UN, the BBC and every independent news agency and investigative reporter and organizations like Amnesty International.
[deleted]
Recruit them into your zen-training.