The level of infiltration of the 50 cent army on YouTube is absurd. I don't know if you can post links in comments, but try this video on decoupling and read the comments:
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Why accuse China of nationalism? In the past they said "Good Christians" and today they say "Patriots". It's the same old trick
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The US started this trade war, and now it's starting to hurt the US economy. Can economists foresee the dark future that lies in store for the USA, if it should continue down this path of confrontation?
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I want can see as top dog by any other country except evil US empire.
```
My friend and I have been analyzing this trend for a long time. You can spot the 50 cent army on youtube on any video that has US and China in the title. The three go to arguments are
1) American imperialism in the middle east, as a counter to belt and road, hostile debt traps, or human rights violations
2) American prison population, as a counter to human rights violations
3) Referring to the past ie "china was the biggest economy for 2000 years" to explain why it will dominate America
I think saying that "they are both gunning to be #1" and "undermining other countries" is more of a projection than reality. Yanis Varoufakis, former Minister of Finance of Greece, who has participated in the Belt and Road Initiative, makes it quite clear that China is "non-interventionist to the point where we can't imagine it": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tJatdtv4jQ
The current trajectory of sinophobia based on incorrect, overblown and unrealistic readings of CCP, indeed does not have a happy ending. That's why the trajectory should be changed.
> the nationalism isn't just some reaction by their citizens to unfairness, it's 100% cultivated by their gov't on purpose.
I'm sorry, try talking to large number of mainland Chinese people first, they'll disagree with you. Blaming everything on "but Chinese people are brainwashed" is just an attempt to deny reality.
You have an extreme view of the CCP's brainwashing capabilities. If they're that good at brainwashing, they would have eradicated many more down-to-earth societal problems a long time ago, such as the societal disdain for vocational jobs. They've been trying to get rid of the social stigma of vocational schools for years now, in order to prevent the job market from being crowded out by too many university graduates, but they've only had limited success.
Try watching some actual Chinese propaganda for a while. You'll see that it's very primitive, not very convincing, and frankly quite bad. I don't know why everybody keeps thinking they're brainwashing masters without even having looked at all the materials.
China has been waging economic war against the US for decades, stealing IP, syphoning off wealth from the American middle class in order to attempt and establish their own. All while throwing people in political prisons, threatening the territorial integrity of their neighbors, putting the whole of Africa in debtor's prison, etc. And it's only just begun.
You are asking with a straight face why the above isn't looked upon in the same way as the actions of Phillipines, Nigeria or Germany? Seriously?
I think China has been playing us for years, and doing so masterfully. There's no _good_ reason for the US, with our economy and standing, to be ripping itself apart from within -- but, indeed we are.
Not only is China growing in power and influence, as you point out, it has been investing in American media and other industries. They're famous for playing their strategic game over a long span of time (the long game).
My pet theory is that Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the Left are thoroughly (and probably unwittingly) influenced by the infiltration, and are the medium for memes and messaging that divides us so much. It's as though we're about to re-fight the Civil War. China, the master that it is at cultural revolution and re-education, is playing a shrewd game.
I think they're about to beat us cold by causing us to implode from within. If so, it's beyond sad -- but in terms of military strategy, a brilliantly played hand by President Xi and the CCP.
Thank you for the links. I was unaware that the PRC’s Treasury holdings had been pared back so much.
I do think it’s interesting to note that both of the examples you used are the only two countries that the US military wouldn’t like to try its hand against. And there is a broader point there: my original point becomes less relevant the further that global US hegemony slips.
Marx wouldn’t approve of some sort of great leap 2.0. CCP sucks, but since World Wars, have you seen the list of countries the US alone has invaded or led coups in? Add in the rest of the west.
It doesn’t matter much what some state’s publicly stated stuff is. There’s no reason to believe any country blindly. Their actions speak louder.
Someone can be concerned about China's military & economic domination despite problems of USA.
Your comment engages in the "tu quoque" logical fallacy, also colloquially known as "Whataboutism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
> China economically overtaking the US are overblown.
They never really stood a chance. Militarily, economically, socially, culturally and spiritually they offer no better alternative to the American one. Similar to how "China owns US treasuries and can crash the US dollar" was the common trope until recently, the US called them out the trillion dollar loan to Qing dynasty which was transferred from KMT to CCP after Chiang Kai Shek's defeat (and really a symbol of CCP's legitimacy over Taipei), and China began buying more US treasuries to increase its US dollar dependence. Without HK, the yuan-hkd-usd peg is collapsing and CCP is running low on US dollars. Kyle Bass's interview with Guo Wengui explains this in detail [1]
I even had Chinese students condescendingly tell me that China is taking over and everybody will be speaking Chinese by 2020 back in 2005.
If Winnie the Pooh, censoring wikipedia, university students protesting over Tibet, Tianmen Square massacre, organ harvesting of Falun Gong (they are "scientology" so its okay they said) causes the security apparatus kick into high gear then you really are the complete opposite of anti-fragility which is what the US is.
US is anti-fragile, authoritarians are not because they are susceptible to even the smallest shock in the economy or the mindset of its citizens, so they use excessive violence and fear to maintain its power. They don't last at all.
It's more likely that people who made a lot of money working with/in China have an extremely skewed view of the world.
sure there is no one team america internally in America but externally there is an ever evolving war of multiple countries seeking more gain, through military, digital, and economic means. If you do not believe this, then you are naive. There are actual war battles being fought 24/7 sponsored by governments, land grabs, state sponsored cyber attacks from plenty of countries. So in the case of the Chinese government, where the current leadership has proven countless times they want to enact Mao's plans, it is in America's best interest to be wary of companies that are Chinese. How many times have our governments and corporations been hacking by Chinese backed agents to steal blueprints, plans, and valuable information. There is nothing childish about what is going on GLOBALLY. not everything revolves around internal America politics.
Exactly. There's a myopia here: people[1] prone to imagine global geopolitics as a zero sum war between superpowers imagine ever action by the superpower they're unfamiliar with as some kind of targetted attack.
But the PRC government doesn't see it like that. Historically, they are far, far more vulnerable to their own people than they are to the US, which at the end of the day just wants to buy cheap junk and sit around streaming movies.
So if I see the CCP moving against financial interests inside China, I'm going to assume that they view those financial interests as the threat they're trying to control.
[1] And there are a LOT of such people here on HN.
The US feels too incompetent to try to manipulate other countries and it feels more like they have a bad culture and they export it to European countries (where kids in half broken and sad schools dream of partying in cool fraternities).
China, on the other hand, sounds perfectly capable and willing of manipulating our society to make it weak and broken, while at the same time forbidding the same content in their land.
I'd argue it even predates tiktok and it could explain why media and politicians are so much worse than 30 years ago.
The other explanation is that we got complacent, and all great empires need generational weakness before collapsing.
Except it really isn't. US-led multinationals and their investors were all dead-ass certain that they were going to devour China economically, totally ignoring the culture has a track record of swallowing invading armies and ideologies whole that spans thousands of years.
Indeed. From the safety of their proverbial fortress city, they can undermine Western power and project their own in the resulting vacuum. A tried and true tactic adapted to modern instruments.
What I'm not sure about is why anyone is surprised. Especially in an age where everything is framed as a struggle for power, you would expect this to be the case, especially for an emerging superpower. Economics is here just war by other means, and consumerist lust for cheap goods the Trojan horse by which China will succeed.
My wife is Chinese and I do a lot of work related to US and China relations. Basically from what I know, China wants to be the best, jealously is very, very strong within the Chinese, if you are not number 1 then you are last. The CCP will do all it can to be number 1. For 50 years they have systematically provided the US with opportunities, enhanced our economy (on the surface), and done so much more. However, as the US is now seeing, it was all done for China and not for the US. Now the US has placed its self in China hands. We have become so dependent on China that the US has backed its self into a corner and has no clue how to get out. So China now is cracking its iron knuckles seeing how far it take advantage of the situation.
If the US speaks out, China pulls the plug on our Economy. If the US spies on them via technology, China uses its mass 25,000 military hackers to wreak havoc in cyber-security. With the debt we owe China, they keep waving it in our face, the US is helpless.
On the plus side, the Chinese people also are loosing faith in the party and have moved their money over seas, soon China's economy bubble will burst and the most of the US will be saved. New jobs will open, our debt to China will end, and all will be well. For those who make all their business importing from China, they will be the ones you will see on the streets if they don't stop and see the signs.
“ Today, at least 270 Chinese diplomats in 126 countries are active on Twitter and Facebook. Together with Chinese state media, they control 449 accounts on Twitter and Facebook, which posted nearly 950,000 times between June and February. These messages were liked over 350 million times and replied to and shared more than 27 million times, according to the Oxford Internet Institute and AP’s analysis.”
If the world’s democratic nations fail to react to China’s growing popularity, we’re going to see more and more of our countrymen slip into anti-enlightenment ways of thinking. This is ironic because enlightenment ideals would have assumed opening economic ties with China should have led to democratic ideals in China, but that didn’t pan out.
US military might isn’t going to draw down China’s anti-democratic interests. China’s economic power is actually beating our democratic ideals. Being anti-China isn’t going to help. The rise of China as the world’s greatest economic superpower seems inevitable. The best solution will be a global effort to stream South Park directly to the Chinese people. Laughing at the absurdity of the situation is the best way to promote anti-authoritarian thinking.
If the 50 cent bullet was the tool of coercion for the future the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. The Soviets lost not because they could not produce enough bullets, but because they could not keep up with the rapid advance of information technology, computer chips, processors, and supercomputers.
China leverages its vast market power to coerce American high tech companies to provide it with the latest technology if they want to conduct business in the People's Republic. China's power is market power, it is the power to request that Google censor news that is harmful to the Communist Party. It is the power to ask Hollywood studios not put the small flag of Taiwan on Tom Cruise's bomber jacket in the new Top Gun movie. The Chinese now have more supercomputers than the United States (188 to 122), and for a few years, they had the fastest supercomputer in the world. These computers allow nations to simulate everything from the weather to nuclear detonations.
At the end of the day, China understands better than anyone that control in the future is control over information, not tanks, aircraft carriers, or nuclear tipped ICBMs.
I mean.. are you really not aware that the US and China have an adversarial relationship? Both countries embedding spies, industrial espionage, trade wars, soft power projection, etc etc. Power is a zero-sum game.
The irony of your comment is that the threat of Chinese hegemony has increased several fold precisely because of the actions of the US military in response to 9/11, the effects of which are being felt nearly two decades on.
The US has wasted over a trillion dollars trying to police areas it had no business in being in. Meanwhile, China's military buildup went uncontested, and today the US is in a trade war of its own making, only now the shoe is on the other foot.
America's the one exporting agricultural produce and China's the one selling world-leading 5G and other advanced technologies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0
some comments from pro CCP:
``` decoupling is good, US collapses faster. ```
``` Why accuse China of nationalism? In the past they said "Good Christians" and today they say "Patriots". It's the same old trick ```
``` The US started this trade war, and now it's starting to hurt the US economy. Can economists foresee the dark future that lies in store for the USA, if it should continue down this path of confrontation? ```
``` I want can see as top dog by any other country except evil US empire. ```
My friend and I have been analyzing this trend for a long time. You can spot the 50 cent army on youtube on any video that has US and China in the title. The three go to arguments are
1) American imperialism in the middle east, as a counter to belt and road, hostile debt traps, or human rights violations
2) American prison population, as a counter to human rights violations
3) Referring to the past ie "china was the biggest economy for 2000 years" to explain why it will dominate America
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