I wanted to see what other 'dopers feel about recent events happening that revolve around China, and see if anyone else is thinking that there has been a shift in attitude towards China…or if this is basically me being in a bubble wrt what I read and watch that focuses on China. Sort of the white van is always at the corner, because you only really notice it when it is there.
So, what I see is countries standing up to China recently. Specifically, I see the shift away from Chinese companies for 5G as particularly significant. Also, you have several countries that seem to be willing to brave the backlash of Beijing, like Australia who didn’t back down when China threatened their vital trade, despite the fact that they could have. Canada as well didn’t bow to pressure (ongoing) from Beijing. It’s all well and good when the US does this, as we are in a position to do so, but when I see other countries do it, to me, that’s significant. The UK and France are also looking like they are rethinking things like 5G, as well as Malaysia and several others. And the world doesn’t seem to be really coming around to the China Saved Everyone(tm…arrbtCCP) theme either, with several looking more closely at things like trade and CCP money being used to buy up their flagged companies during the crisis. Many countries seem to be looking more closely at India as a possible new partner.
But maybe this is me being in a total information bubble, and the reality is really the opposite. I admit that in the last few years, but even more so in the last few months I HAVE been focused a lot on China, and, sadly, to get anything more than, to me, sunshine up my ass, I’ve turned to less mainstream sites that are very critical of the CCP. I’ve seen a few discussions on this board where I’ve said I see a change but others don’t, so figured I’d ask here and see what my fellow 'dopers think is happening. IS there a shift in attitude towards the CCP? Is it too early to tell? Is it mainly the US for our own political reasons and our President? Nothing to see here? I’m curious.
It’s not clear exactly what timeframe you have in mind for this supposed paradigm shift, but I think US policy wrt China was and is a significant factor in other countries decisions to push back. People will always be interested in China because let’s face it, China is big in terms of population, area, resources, and depending on the politics even economic opportunity. I think the 2016 American election (and the American change in attitude) precipitated an important change in Chinese international relations, as did the death of Kim Jong-Il in 2011. Hong Kong and Taiwan have always been ticking time bombs, it’s just that the former seems to have detonated sooner. There may or may not be a paradigm shift due to the fact that COVID-19 originated in China, and there was a bit of a wake up call when everyone who outsources to China realizes how vulnerable and dependent they are, but I think it’s too soon to tell what will come of that.
I don’t think the 5G issue is so much a paradigm shift as much as it is that this particular technology has national security implications, and therefore you involve a whole 'nother crowd which normally stays on the military side of things. It’s kind of stupid from a national security perspective to let a clandestine state like China operate your telecomunications, and for all the progress China has made with their own domestic corporations, they have not yet proved to the outside world that companies like Huawei are independent of the CCP.
With things like electronic components and knock-off appliances and cheap plastics, there’s no reason for national security interests to come into play aside from the general, “don’t become overdependent in key industries like steel”. Nobody wants to end up being bullied over key resources like Japan/oil in the '30s. But when it comes to telecommunications, that’s a big red flag. Hence the pushback now.
IMO, China overplayed the “let’s get aggressive” card, trying to claim large chunks of international waters, building a toy aircraft carrier, threatening Hong Kong, threatening Taiwan, etc. They talked loudly…and carried a small stick.
(Hong Kong, alas, is probably doomed. That’s a fight China can win.)
I think that paradigm shift started during the late 1970s, and became prominent a decade later. Meanwhile, besides standing up to China more also did the opposite:
I was thinking about starting a new thread, but instead I think I’ll just piggyback off of ralfy’s convenient bump of this thread.
What are people thoughts about the significance (if any) of Biden’s comments regarding China and Taiwan at the townhall. His statements that the US would defend Taiwan if it were attacked contradicts our longstanding policy of deliberate strategic ambiguity on the matter, and were immediately walked back by a white house spokesman. The purpose of this policy (based on my feeble understanding of it) is that it prevents either side from taking aggressive action (i.e. military action by China, with knowledge that the US would stay out to avoid war or claims of independence by Taiwan with the knowledge that the US would defend them), while also allowing China to maintain the fiction that we accept their stance that Taiwan is really part of China and will someday we reunited.
As I see it there are 4 possible reasons for his statements (with my POOMA estimations of their relative likelihood.)
A) Just another Biden Gaff (35%): He was speaking off the cuff without thinking too much about the implications of what he was saying, and was rescued by other members of his administration before his ill chosen words caused an diplomatic incident.
B) The statement was on purpose but purely for Domestic consumption (35%): Biden knows that right wing media would have a field day if he ever gave any sign of weakness in the direction of China, so he avoids a dangerous sound bite and leaves it up to his staff to smooth things over outside the US
C) This actually represents a change in policy (5%). Biden is through playing lets pretend with China. Taiwan is its own soverign state separate from China and is an ally of the US. As such we will not stand for aggressive actions by China.
D) 5 dimensional chess (25%): Since China has been making some aggressive moves in Taiwan’s direction of late, the status quo is in more danger from China than Taiwan. By making an statement in full support of defense of Taiwan, which is then walked back, Biden maintains the official claim of ambiguity, but also sends a message, to China that the ambiguity has a strong lean against them.
the way China tries to intimidate developed western nations like Australia, how badly they handled the virus, and their use of high tech surveillance and social credits is probably driving people away.
Whether there is an actual change or not, the media reports I’ve been reading this year have consistently said that China’s leadership is changing their rule in significant ways, making it far more authoritarian and warlike. Heck, even John Oilver devoted his show this week to Taiwan.
For the past 20 years, people have talked about China’s growing instability in ways that are very similar to talking about tech stocks’ unbelievable numbers. Tesla’s valuation just went over $1 trillion. That’s insane, it can’t be justified, it can’t be continued, there must be a crash. Yet the entire growth of the Nasdaq is from the same five stocks, now maybe six, year after year.
I think China’s leadership is terrified of internal fissures as its growing middle class is hitting the same plateau as found in other countries. Nationalism is always a hit, everywhere at every time, it seems.
Forgot all about this thread. For my part, I see that we are coming up on a real fork in the road choice. On the one hand, I’m encouraged by countries like Lithuania and recently the Czech Republic who have openly been in talks with Taiwan despite pressure and threats from Beijing. Australia is also continuing to push back, again despite threats, pressure, and economic impact. On the other hand, the US seems to be attempting to soften its stance and try and reconcile with China. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the tariffs start to come off between the US and China soon…though, on the other side, we still seem to be taking a tough stance on other issues. Which way things will fall out is up in the air right now…it could go either way.
But I’m still convinced that there has been a paradigm shift in relation to how countries (and companies) are looking at China today…and certainly how the CCP views its relationship with the rest of the world and sees close contact as a threat. Despite companies like Blackrock saying BUY BUY BUY!, a lot of companies are growing increasingly wary of investing in China, and you are starting to see companies pulling out of manufacturing in China and moving to other parts of South East Asia or India instead.
All that said, I definitely am in a bubble, since I read and watch videos constantly on China and the CCP, and talk about this stuff to my son and his partner and family all the time. I have a dozen or so China-related channels on my YouTube playlist and have links to maybe half a dozen China and South East Asia news outlets that I go through quite a bit. I follow what’s going on in China a lot more than I do in the US or Europe these days.
ADV China perhaps? Their perspective seems to be that the change is coming mostly from within. More authoritarianism and control, less openness, more hostility to foreigners. Of course there’s back-and-forth, but it seems like they’re doubling down on a China-first policy that shuts out foreigners, which exacerbates their already shaky manufacturing partnerships. Maybe they see the writing on the wall of foreign companies getting fed up with all the bribery, theft, and cheating going on, so they’re turning inwards to focus on their domestic markets. It almost comes across as a period of openness that was intended to bring in foreign investment and grow their economy only as long as needed to become self-sustaining, after which point the doors would be closed again.
I don’t really consider them ‘news’, per se…really, I like both of their channels but more for a westerners eye view of living in China, though I understand that both of them have moved themselves and their families out of China at this point. With the collapse of the education and tutoring sectors wrt westerners and the general rise in hostility towards foreigners I think it was a good move.
For YouTube channels, I generally go to China in Focus - NTD as an overview of China news, though I have a half dozen or a dozen or so that I subscribe to and keep an eye on. I used to get the Apple Daily out of Hong Kong, but as that has been basically put out of business by the CCP I’ve turned to a few other papers that aren’t as good.
Don’t answer if you don’t want to, but it there a personal reason for your interest in China, or is it just something that you just something in your the news that you find is particularly important.
No worries, I haven’t made any big secret of it. My son’s partner and his family are from southern China. Some of their family still lives in Hong Kong in fact. I started to get interested in China and more focused about 5 or so years ago when they were dating and they were telling me about China. It was a real eye opener, since I always thought (based on the western media portrayal of China) that China was pretty good, just like other countries, capitalist, progressive, etc etc. It was a shock to see how badly things had been distorted and my conceptions of what was going on had been manipulated…both by the CCP but by our own media as well. I had a hard time getting real news about China, since a lot of the stuff either required a knowledge of written Chinese (you had to be able to follow Chinese social media to really understand, but a lot of it is written on sand, so to speak, because the CCP can basically have any post or info deleted or changed at their whim) or know what were good sources and what were bad ones.
Anyway, that’s it. I used to use this board as a sanity and reality check, but I found this board wasn’t reliable on this subject either, so just come here to have interesting discussions. This was an old thread, and I had forgotten about it, but saw it pop up with the new system for the boards software.