Chinese imperialism and future Australian sovereignty

[Jezza]

[pietillidie]

[pietillidie]

[Pi]

At the moment for all practical purposes the CCP is China and it permeates every aspect of life and business in and outside the country; having done business with Chinese companies I can safely say there is no escape from it.

The rest of the world and mostly the surrounding Asian countries have wised up to the intentions of the CCP and are taking measures to protect their own interests and that means containing PLA operations. It also means disengaging from business with Chinese companies from manufacturing everything from cheap chairs to pharmaceutical supplies.

As to China succeeding and its 1.4 billion people succeeding; well it doesn’t long term while the CCP is in charge. As to what happens internally in China that’s anyone s guess; but there won’t be an Iraq type invasion, just containment and continued disconnection. There is a lot going on inside China we don’t get to see or more accurately is not reported in 'headlines'.

[pietillidie]

^The issue is not whether anyone likes the bellicose Xi turn or the nationalist nonsense driving it. The Xi turn only justifies countermeasures, not 'once for all time' conclusions driven by our usual drooling fist wavers who know so little about the world they thought Donald Trump we be a great pick for the role of the world's most powerful person.

As many have pointed out, it's not as if nations are queuing up to befriend China, so there are natural limits on its power. Not to mention Xi and his particular wing of the CCP are not China, and the CCP in turn is not China, its own fantasies notwithstanding. Regimes come and go, and even when you dislike them, there are far more and far less intelligent ways of engaging them.

Frankly, I'm tired of having to play antagonist on these things. I keep hoping people will grow up, but alas not to be. I am in fact all for necessary countermeasures. But the collapse of proactive efforts around those, and the reactionary fist waving led by failed American imperialists, worries me greatly.

Tell us more about your business dealings in China. I think you've mentioned them before. I know a little about Chinese business through the experience of Korean companies setting up shop going back a couple of decades.

[David]

The central problem with the above is that China is not a democracy, and Xi and the party he runs, unlike Trump and the current Republican administration, aren't going anywhere. The trouble with dictatorships is that you don't just get unaccountable authoritarians, but unaccountable authoritarians who are able to – and are usually disposed to – maintain their own power and self-interest at any cost. Given its high level of internal control, one suspects that China's power structures are in fact considerably more stable than that of many other dictatorships and pseudo-democracies.

Not saying that internal shifts might not at some point dethrone him (which is what we're all, albeit with little basis for optimism, hoping happens in Russia, North Korea, Syria and Iran too), but short of some kind of crisis, the CCP will remain China – not just a small aspect of it, but the central driver of its internal direction, international relations and power projection – for all intents and purposes for the foreseeable future, for better or for worse.

[Pi]

[pietillidie]

[pietillidie]

[David]

Fair enough, re: Korea – it does seem reasonable to presume that most dictatorships have use-by dates (especially in a world in which multiparty democracy is commonplace and normalised), and we would do well to scrutinise what happened in Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and elsewhere to make that possible. But whether in China’s case that’s 5 years (Trump’s maximum reign, incidentally), 25 years, 50 years away (or more) seems difficult to tell at this stage, and once you get into the bigger time spans it starts to become academic for the purposes of a discussion like this.

What seems apparent to me in any case is that Xi is in a relatively strong position compared to other world leaders, and that there is little in the way of a visible or permitted internal democratisation movement – as we’ve discussed before, there doesn’t even seem to be much of an appetite for it among the general populace. The social credit system and existing authoritarian control of speech, gatherings and public dissent seem to make any kind of popular resistance near-impossible, so I’m not seeing many other options available for democratisation other than a military coup (which hardly seems likely) or a voluntary glasnost, and I think Xi has signposted pretty clearly that he has little interest in the latter. Given all that, would you agree that stability seems the most likely outcome in the medium term?

[pietillidie]

^Are you honestly saying you haven't noticed an escalation of Chinese rhetoric and a co-opting and mirroring of the language of Trump and friends? Go back and sample the rhetoric when time permits. I'll see if there are any discourse analysis studies on it, but I think if you look back what I'm saying will be borne out.

Pick up any text on Chinese discourse and this style of puerile rhetoric will be viewed as shameful, so I have strong doubts it's endemic, and even less so in the halls of diplomacy. The belief that braggadocio is part of Western success is widely held in Asia, so that might be part of it ('they keep beating us at the global PR game; perhaps we should use their approach?'), but it looks more like an organised plan to me.

Let's also not forget the roots of the present dispute can be found in Bush's 'containment' policies, which went unscrutinised due to his multiple other disasters. China warned about this for years in a diplomatic tone, and it fuelled great resentment and indeed was central to the rise of Xi and his party wing.

Back then, in the face of 'the dirty Chinese are taking our jobs' racist insult, Chinese diplomacy used mutual benefit and even charm (see this comment from someone at the time from a quick Google: https://apjjf.org/-Michael-T--Klare/1589/article.pdf ). Are you sure you can't remember this period before the bellicosity?

My take is that a tit-for-tat PR strategy was deployed at some point. Not only has the mirroring in the language caught my eye on many occasions, but you can't really be blamed for doing something that Trump does on a daily basis. It might even be a well-known strategy in China now when engaged in confrontation with Westerners who take for granted their English language advantage (more self-entitlement). Whatever the case, no doubt Bush, Trump and similar nationalists were a PR godsend for Xi and his merry band, allowing him to play to a more extreme audience like Trump.

The switch to utilising (near) bilinguals with a comprehension of Western rhetoric in social media comms became obvious at one point. I don't have a date as it has all blurred together over time, but I remember noticing it at some point.

To be fair, China has always been more rhetorically muscular than, say, Korea and Japan, but it has never been overtly puerile and shameful like Trump and friends. Hence, my assumption is that it has taken up this approach as a controlled PR strategy. The US election frightens me on this front because the usual nutters will drive the conversation to the extreme right, forcing US moderates to join them in the loony bin, and by extension drive China's internal discussion to extreme right.

As I say, bellicose hyperbole that ratchets up war and conflict is the hidden crime that precedes the later destruction. And Trump has been allowed to spout rubbish unrestrained like a thoughtless mental case from day one, building on the rhetorical failures of the Bush neocons who poisoned the international waters before him.

People who care about the world and don't want an even bigger disaster than Iraq hung around their necks ought to be far more prudent than they're being. The cowardly avoidance of the insult 'appeaser', as if that's the only moral insight people have gleaned from history, is an extraordinarily poor and indeed pathetically ironic reason for starting Vietnams and Iraqs, or indeed a new Cold War.

[pietillidie]

The NY Times gets to the nub of the problem: not matter how right opposition to China's actions in the South China Sea might be (something upon which everyone agrees), a sane and successful deterrent depends on consensus building. All the bluster and hysteria in the world won't change that.

However, the bind is that Trump and crazies have spent their time destroying international alliances and lack the credibility to create consensus and build the necessary alliances.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/opinion/pompeo-south-china-sea.html

Not to mention, with innumerable breaches of international law in its pocket, the US already struggles on the credibility front.

This type of scenario is exactly why you don't want Trumps wandering about wrecking global alliances and pissing everybody off, and why you need a leader with the discipline to bank credibility for times such as this.

[stui magpie]

Xi is not just reflecting Trump, that's unhinged.

Xi is pushing the Chinese agenda and that includes being disproportionately aggressive and intolerant toward any viewpoint that criticises them.

If anything has triggered them it's criticism over the coronavirus, which has just dragged into the public existing concerns like cyber espionage, Huwawai, human rights abuse.

I'm not sure if it's out of Sun Tzu's playbook or George Washington or an American sporting coach, but after decades of keeping their head down, China is now under attack on numerous fronts and are using the "Attack is the best form of defence" response and lashing out big time.

The trick of trying to control the message both inwardly and outwardly reminds me of a scene from Lord of the rings, which didn't end well for the guy trying to pull it off.

[Tannin]

[pietillidie]