In a statement, Access Now says it was “told that diplomats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person.”
Xi’s $0.50 Army is fast approaching.
LOL!
Nah, I’m tough, I can handle it. (Just sometimes wish we could downvote in here.😉)
most instances have downvoting
some instances such as lemmy.blahaj.zone disable downvotes
the ability to downvote and see downvotes is a good thing and i will die on this hill
I like some apps like voyager let you see only up, sum of up and down, or split. The combined one is pretty good to ignore the one or two down but still see when something is massively down.
“Paywall” stopped by pressing ESC:
RightsCon, the world’s largest digital rights conference, was canceled this year due to pressure from the Chinese government, according to the nonprofit organization that organizes the annual event. In a statement, Access Now says it was “told that diplomats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person.” The Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, and the United States Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. When WIRED called the Zambian embassy in Washington, a member of the staff answered the phone and transferred the call to another staff member who then picked up for several seconds before hanging up. A follow-up call went unanswered. Access Now says it was told “informally from multiple sources” that “in order for RightsCon to continue, we would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation.” RightsCon 2026 was set to feature several panels on China’s international influence, including about how Beijing exports digital authoritarianism and spreads disinformation in regions like Africa, as well as discussions on Chinese cyberattacks and the global spread of its censorship and surveillance technologies. Arzu Geybulla, the co-executive director of Access Now, tells WIRED that “multiple pieces of information we received indicated that foreign interference by the People’s Republic of China played a role in the abrupt disruption of RightsCon 2026.” A week before the conference was scheduled to take place in Lusaka, Zambia, the Zambian government abruptly announced that it would be postponed to an unspecified date. In a statement on April 28, the country’s minister of technology and science, Felix Mutati, said that certain “speakers and participants remain subject to pending administrative and security clearances.” The following day, Thabo Kawana, Zambia’s minister for information and media added that the “postponement was necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure of critical information relating to key thematic issues proposed for discussion during the Summit." On April 27, two days before the Zambian government’s announcement, Access Now “became aware that the in-person participation of people from Taiwan had caught the attention of the Government of the People’s Republic of China. In turn, Chinese authorities were, apparently, trying to influence the Zambian government’s approach to Taiwanese participants’ movement across the border,” says Geybulla. “Soon after, the Zambian government publicly referred to ‘diplomatic protocols’ and ‘pending administrative and security clearances’ of participants as reasons for their disrupting RightsCon.” Open Culture Foundation, a Taiwanese nonprofit organization that was scheduled to attend RightsCon this year, says that it was warned by Access Now that Taiwanese citizens may have problems entering Zambia due to possible concerns from the Chinese Embassy. They were told to pause their travel plans while the host coordinated with Zambian officials. Nikki Gladstone, RightsCon director at Access Now, confirmed to WIRED that the organization had been in contact with Taiwanese participants about potential issues traveling to Zambia. “Given the potential access issues this would present to that community, many of whom were set to begin traveling imminently, we felt a duty to inform our registered Taiwanese participants of this development while we sought more details and information,” says Gladstone. “We said we would be hesitant to recommend travel until there was more clarity.” An employee of another human rights organization, who asked not to be named for security reasons, tells WIRED that after RightsCon was officially postponed, they were told by one of their grant funders that the Chinese government had been pressuring the Zambian government for days over the presence of a Taiwanese delegation at the conference. Political tensions appear to have potentially disrupted another adjacent human rights event slated to take place in Zambia this month. World Press Freedom Day, an annual conference hosted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, was supposed to coincide with RightsCon in Lusaka. Most of the events have been moved to Paris or online, according to UNESCO’s website. Since 2011, RightsCon has brought together thousands of people working to address issues like censorship, surveillance, and human rights on the internet. Access Now was anticipating about 2,600 people to attend this year from more than 750 organizations, according to the organization’s website. Some of the world’s largest tech companies such as Meta, Microsoft, and Alphabet have sponsored RightsCon or sent employees to participate in it. Last year, Access Now hosted RightsCon in Taipei, Taiwan. But Geybulla says that this is the first time the conference organizers have faced blatant pressure from the Chinese government. “Wherever we host RightsCon, we undertake detailed and specific risk assessments appropriate to each context and to our community that include the threat of surveillance and reprisal. In the case of RightsCon 2025 hosted in Taipei, this included possible surveillance by the People’s Republic of China,” she says. “However, historically, we have not documented any significant or overt pressure on RightsCon from the People’s Republic of China.” “The international landscape has shifted enough that they can go after a 2,000-person conference and nobody’s gonna say anything about it,” says Samuel Chu, a human rights activist from Hong Kong who was sanctioned by China in 2021 and was planning to attend RightsCon this year. Zambia, unlike some of the countries where RightsCon was previously hosted, has deep political and economic ties to Beijing. China is Zambia’s largest creditor and Chinese firms have played a major role in local infrastructure projects. On April 23, less than a week before RightsCon was canceled, the Zambia Development Agency signed a $1.5 billion deal with a Chinese state-owned construction company to expand the country’s power capacity. The venue where RightsCon 2026 was supposed to take place, Mulungushi International Conference Center, underwent a major expansion in 2022 funded by a $30 million grant from the Chinese government. Alejandro Mayoral Baños, co-executive director of Access Now, says canceling RightsCon is a “calculated attempt to silence the global movement and hand the keys of the future to authoritarians. But let them be warned: We are not retreating. We are transforming.”
One hegemony replaced by another.
Ignore for a moment rather this is right or wrong (it’s wrong) but ignore that. THIS is a textbook example of Soft Power. The thing the Trump administration tanked by gutting USAID. The west is still playing old world outdated politics from last century and China is going to leave us and our allies in the dust because of it.
Trump gutting USAID alone isn’t the reason China has so much influence in Africa. The truth is that the West have been exploiting Africa in some way for centuries, and given how much we’ve propped up dictators and bankrupted entire nations, it’s no wonder they’d rather trust China.
Ignore for a moment rather this is right or wrong (it’s wrong) but ignore that. THIS is a textbook example of Soft Power. The thing the Trump administration tanked by gutting USAID.
You correctly pointed out an example of soft power and how it could be used for evil proposes. USAID also used soft power to the same ends. Therefore Trump did something positive by cutting it down.
This is such a privileged and ghoulish way to justify the deaths caused by the removal of that aid.
the deaths caused by the removal of that aid.
Such as?
You’ll have to provide a better source than just indignation.
It’s not like he did it, or has any effect on it. Trump and Musk gutted USAID because they though foreign aid was woke, either not realizing that it was a key pillar of US soft power, or also thinking that soft power is woke. In the short term this will kill a lot of people, but in the long term, USAID, being a means by which the US kept control over the global south, caused more harm than good.
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Let me put it this way: if I were the president of the United States I would increase foreign aid rather than gutting it, and the aid would primarily be for development so that in the future, they would not be reliant on foreign aid. This was not the purpose of USAID, all the good that it did was just a byproduct of keeping the developing world as dependent resource extraction colonies.
Allow me a metaphor. If you give a man a fish, he’ll be fed for a day; if you teach a man to fish, he’ll be full for his whole life. Obviously the just thing would be to give him enough fish to eat until he’s learned to fish, and then teach him to fish. USAID was more like giving the man a bare-minimum amount of fish to keep him from dying, but the fish is dosed with little bit of fentanyl to keep him dependent and compliant while you steal his stuff.
USAID was a trojan horse. The supposedly benevolent acts were always a cover for undermining governments the US is hostile to. USAID had a literacy program in Afghanistan in the 80s that promoted violent jihad, in order to undermine the Soviets and the Soviet-aligned government. They used an HIV prevention workshop in Cuba to organize anti-communist dissidents.
The fact that the USAID cuts have already killed hundreds of thousands of people is testament to the amount of dependence the US had nurtured. They prop up right wing kleptocratic governments that do nothing for the people, which keeps wages low and resources cheap, and made up some of the shortfall with aid since people who are dead of starvation or disease can’t extract resources. This was a trap.
The current crop of right wingers are too stupid to understand this and thought it was just woke liberals giving stuff away for free to be woke. Out of what they thought was merely an act of selfish cruelty (what they refer to as “based”), they are actually undermining the American empire. The proximate effect of this is in the literal sense mass murder (and if you combine this with the fact that they nurtured dependence on aid and then abruptly cut it off, could be argued to be genocide) and it should be punished accordingly. The ultimate effect, however, will be the liberation of the third world.
One can use power to do good, depends on the person who yields it.
Edit: corrected spelling mistake thanks @Muehe@lemmy.ml
I think you mean *wields.
Although *yields would also make sense in this particular context. :D
Do you truly believe that the United States used its power for good more than otherwise? More than China?
No I believe it can be used for good. US and China has both done more bad than good.
…is his substitute really better though?
China is going to leave us and our allies in the dust because of it.
and its good.
One china policy in action
For real, lived in China for 5 years, it’s the most racist country I’ve been to. They even discriminate people from where they’re from in the country, it’s nuts.
Can you imagine if the US started a legit government backed operation in 2026 called One US Policy and forced everyone be “white” Christians? And I don’t mean suggestions, they FORCED you to do it. It would be world news about how the US is racist and whateverist ect. China? Nah it’s cool they’re just “unifying”.
do you know Taiwan is a settler colonial state that massacred thousands of native Taiwanese people when KMT fled there after getting brutally mogged by Chairman Mao?
Also I dont think you know what one china policy is.
Can you imagine if the US started a legit government backed operation in 2026 called One US Policy and forced everyone be “white” Christians?
What are you talking about? The “One China Policy” refers to Taiwan, absolutely nothing to do with the multiple nationalities inside China.
You’re deranged if you think China is remotely as racist to its minorities as the US, country in which 20% of black men go through prison at some point in their lives and in which you have literal concentration camps for Latinos.
american concentrationcamps 😡
chinese concentrationcamps ☺️
American concentration camps with overwhelming video evidence of summary executions and independent journalistic reporting of mass-deportation of nationals 😌
Chinese reeducation camps whose entire conspiracy about human right abuses comes from a co-founder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Association and which have been closed since 2020 😡
they r both bad. its not that hard to comprehend brother
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They would both be bad if both were real, but one of them is manufactured by western imperialists and propagated by Zionist media, brother. If you actually cared as much about the Uyghur as you concern-troll to, you’d know that the reeducation facilities have been closed for six fucking years now.
The problem is that you don’t actually care about Uyghurs, you’re just using them as a convenient tool to China-bash provided to you courtesy of the CIA and Zionist media.
closed for six fucking years now
Is that cause they got the job done or…? 😂
Tell me you’ve never been to china without telling me you’ve never been to china.
From Wikipedia:
One China is a phrase with variant meanings, adopted by many states and other actors to describe their stance on the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) based on mainland China, and the Republic of China (ROC) based on the Taiwan Area. “One China” asserts that there is only one from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), despite the de facto division between the two rival governments from the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War
I’ve been to China, mind you. If you visit their national history museum next to Tian’anmen plaza, you’ll be surprised to find how fucking woke they are with the constant references to the different ethnicities of China and their history even in some exhibits that, for historical reasons, center around “core” China.
And with that, China essentially hold Africa hostage and would blackmail them to do whatever China wanted. But of course, they do it without bloodshed so tHeY aRE bETteR tHAn tHe wESt
China is just like the west.
Wait so is achieving the same result with bloodshed preferable?
You are saying China is equally bad as west when it comes to exploitation of global south and imperialism?
“Better” can be interpreted in more than one way. They’re better at exerting control without violently changing regimes. They’re better at establishing their own infrastructure and ingratiating themselves to the locals (or local governments). Now, I don’t know that everyone loves them there (I heard many side comments from locals about China) but it’s not like they’re scrambling for the Americans, British, or French to come back and overtly oppress them again.
exerting control … violently changing regimes
They don’t mix.
I mean literally yes.
And that make it ok?
It’s a low bar.
No, but it makes it better. To understand how much better, the closest comparison on the Western side would be Cuba.
What America does to Cuba is terrible though.
Better never meant good. It means less bad.
I know the lives of non-Westerners don’t matter to you but a lack of bloodshed kinda makes a world of difference, lol.
Yes because psychological abusive partner is way better than physically abusive parter.
I’m a non-westerner. Next you gonna tell me woman don’t exists on the internet.
More like we’re the abusive ex, complaining about the ex’s next partner. We raped and pillaged Africa for 500 years. Now China is treating them much better by comparison, and we’re shit talking from the sidelines freaking out because we are narcissists who can’t stand anyone being happy without us
They are supplying them with weapons to kill civilians. China is absolutely garbage just like the US or EU.
Treating better by comparison is NOT the same as treating well.
What is this “sins of our fathers” bullshit you’re spouting? It’s possible to condemn Western AND Chinese exploitation of Africa.
So anti-imperialism. Much proletariat.
As opposed to the 500 years of rape and pillaging by the European powers? Yes, unironically better. (Unless you’re a western chauvinist )
It’s about now, not about 20 generations ago.
what the OP said was happening barely 2 generations ago and neo colonialism through capital still goes on
It is still going on in Israel, Africa
“Now” still involves the ruthless exploitation of the global south by western capital
The CCP is so terrified of that little island.
I mean I’m no fan of the CCP either but there’s likely not much fear involved here. It’s basically an ego project, not unlike Cuba on the other side.
This is the second comment that I’ve seen where you compare to Cuba. Are you saying what China is doing is ok because America fucked over Cuba?
Nope. In my other comment I was saying that both are bad but America is worse; here I’m trying to say that both are ego projects, and therefore that the CCP’s treatment of Taiwan doesn’t imply fear any more than America’s treatment of Cuba does. No real relation between the two comments except using the same comparison of how either powerful empire treats its pet rebellious province. For the record I think mainland China should leave Taiwan the fuck alone.
China is doing nothing though? Like, the Zionist media have been hinting at China attacking Taiwan for the best part of 20 years, and China is still Taiwan’s biggest trading partner.
Please explain to us: what is China doing to Taiwan?
Very much unlike Cuba on the other side
While the US enacts an illegal embargo on Cuba with the explicit purpose of “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government” (look those words up on google), China is happily Taiwan’s biggest trading partner by a long shot.
You’re falling to anti-China propaganda of “both sides equally bad”.
China is literally Taiwan’s biggest partner…
Moreso, before the West brought back the issue in the mainstream, regular travel between China and Taiwan could be made relatively easily.
Anything unusual going on at the time of that pretty graph which might have an impact on global trade? In any case, this doesn’t seem relevant to why the CCP is quaking in their boots at tiny Taiwan and exerting the kind of pressure described in the article.
Anything unusual going on at the time of that pretty graph which might have an impact on global trade?
Why speculate? Come on, bring us more up-to-date data!
In any case, this doesn’t seem relevant to why the CCP is quaking in their boots at tiny Taiwan
No? Doesn’t seem relevant? That’s because you don’t understand “economic sanctions as political pressure”. The US and Europe murder half a million people yearly through economic blockades and sanctions with the explicit purpose of destabilizing “enemy” governments. If China desired to take over Taiwan, do you really believe they’d literally be its largest trading partner? First thing Europe did to Russia in 2022 was a list of economic sanctions, why doesn’t China do this?
Ofcourse the losers of civil war shouldnt get to hold a territory as hostage with american bases there lol
Not the island itself but what America/the West turned it into: an unsinkable aircraft carrier (quoting general MacArthur here). But the days of Western imperialism might just be over, or at least that seems to be the way things are going, so I assume that island and mainland China will be just fine in the near future.
That island contains the true government of China and the CCP will do whatever they can to hold onto power so I don’t think they’ll be fine until one destroys the other.
That island contains the true government of China
The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the sole ruling party of the country from 1928 to 1949 in Mainland China until its relocation to Taiwan, and in Taiwan ruled under martial law until 1987.
[…] As a result of the 28 February Incident in 1947, Taiwanese people endured what is called the “White Terror”, a KMT-led political repression that resulted in the death or disappearance of over 30,000 Taiwanese intellectuals, activists, and people suspected of opposition to the KMT
[…]The Blue Shirts Society, a ultranationalist paramilitary organization within the KMT that modeled itself after Mussolini’s blackshirts, was anti-foreign and anti-communist, and it stated that its agenda was to expel foreign (Japanese and Western) imperialists from China, crush Communism, and eliminate feudalism.[72] In addition to being anticommunist, some KMT members, like Chiang Kai-shek’s right-hand man Dai Li were anti-American, and wanted to expel American influence.[73] Close Sino-German ties also promoted cooperation between Nazi Germany and Nationalist government.[74] The Kuomintang sought to build a one-party ideological state in China, called Dang Guo, to solidify its rule and ideological supremacy
[…]The New Life Movement was a government-led civic movement in 1930s China initiated by Chiang Kai-shek to promote cultural reform and Neo-Confucian social morality and to ultimately unite China under a centralised ideology following the emergence of ideological challenges to the status quo. The Movement attempted to counter threats of Western and Japanese imperialism through a resurrection of traditional Chinese morality, which it held to be superior to modern Western values. As such the Movement was based upon Confucianism, mixed with Christianity, nationalism and authoritarianism that have some similarities to fascism.[76] It rejected individualism and liberalism, while also opposing socialism and communism. Some historians regard this movement as imitating Nazism and being a neo-nationalistic movement used to elevate Chiang’s control of everyday lives. Frederic Wakeman suggested that the New Life Movement was “Confucian fascism”
WHY ARE YOU SUPPORTING FASCISTS
liberls will obviously support fascist.
Its not true government, no one recognizes it and they lost the civil war fair and sqaure, its only matter of time when CPC reunifies China.
Stupid take. By this metric the true government of the US are the confederates.
Can you point to the region where the Confederate government retreated to after the American civil war and remains in power to this day?
Texas, Missouri, Mississippi…
I get what you’re implying but it’s not factually correct in this case. The Confederacy was dissolved after it lost the civil war, there’s no continuity with any of those state governments.
The heritage foundation would beg to disagree. De jure doesn’t align with de facto in this case.
Living in the Deep South: my ass. Even Operation Paperclip was modified off what the US did with the Confederate scum: placed them in government and other positions of power and influence.
Sherman should have burned it all and salted the earth, besides.
You think the Taiwan wants to keep slaves?
That’s a dumb take why would Taiwan want slaves?
Did you just get self-trolled?
Wow, this discussion went off the rails right quick. 😄😄
Don’t forget the US invades countries, steal their oil, kill their children, bring the world in the brink of bankruptcy. But no. China bad. How many countries has China invaded this decade vs that shining beacon of freedom and democracy?
Ask Vietnam or any of their SE Asian neighbors how peaceful China is. China murders quite a few VN civilians every year and destroys fishing and oil/mineral ships regularly.
if you’re going to be the best
be the best you can be
China can’t even kill the Uyghurs properly.
None of this involves the US I don’t know why you’re bringing it into this
“China bad” didn’t you hear them?
when China is called out, they have to call out the US. it’s like a law or something there.
But the article doesn’t have anything to do with the United States? On its surface your comment seems like whataboutism? Could you explain your position a little bit more?
At some point we’ll be talking about the US military actions to “protect Taiwan”. I just want you to remember this comment when that happens.
Like, whatever you think about China, it really doesn’t matter. These stories are only here to serve as a means to manufacture consent for US actions in the future.
It’s for more war. Just like Iran. Just keep that in mind as we push further into the next world war. No one writing articles like this cares about the “digital rights conference” and you don’t either.
If you cared about “digital rights” or any “rights” you’d be refusing to go to work until the genocidal pedophiles in your own government were brought to justice. You don’t care.
Looks at instance
.ml
Yeah checks out
$1.6 Billion of our tax dollars spent on an influence campaign. https://www.congress.gov/index.php/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7476/text But sure, its a .ml conspiracy /s
I sure hope you were paid to read that, because why else would you waste your time following a 700 page bill that hasn’t been passed yet? At a glance it isn’t about astroturfing, it’s about sanctioning and charging melign actors as criminals, plus a whole ton of stuff from monetary policy to IP protections. It’s basically outlining the entire geopolitical strategy towards China, which is probably why it’s spent over a year being bounced around 20 different subcommittees.
Idk where you got that price tag seeing as the link you provided contains no budgeting information, but you should ask your handler if that figure is for the entire bill, or for an “influence campaign” specifically. While you wait to hear back from them for that talking point, would you mind showing me where in the bill this influence campaign is outlined?
“Knowing your politics means you’re paid to do so”
Unfathomably uneducated take
That’s so true almighty knower of politics. Please show me where your knowledge comes from in the above link. You’ll find the document is organised into many numbered and lettered sections, so just let me know which section supports this guys unfounded assertion about a $1.6 billion budget for an “influence campaign”.
I’m not USian, I don’t give a shit about the authenticity, I’m just laughing at your attitude
See now that’s a lie, because you implied that guy knows his politics, which is a positive claim that turns on the authenticity of his claim. Now you’re running away from it because it’s increasingly clear he doesn’t know shit and you look like a sock for defending him.
Maybe you should change your original comment to “spreading lies about politics means you’re paid to do so” which isn’t really what I said either, but would at least be close enough to avoid looking completely illiterate.
Got owned
Looks at instance
.ml
Yeah checks out
I don’t think the “.ml so wrong” NPCs realize that their just doing free promotion for Marxist when that’s their only response to comments over and over. They’re not saying anything. They’re just relying on others, that already fall for Imperialist propaganda, to continue to believe lies.
It’s what prompted me to start reading here. And .ml is more informed than the biggest instances of Lemmy, combined.
liberals are fore front on manufacturing consent for that war, I am sure they will do anything to maintain their military base besides china.
Caring about stuff isn’t a binary, it doesn’t hinge on whatever insane purity test you think it does.
You can care about things. But, honestly, when you read an article do you never ask yourself “why am I reading about this and who wants me to think this important?”
Like, let’s not use China. A lot of people have a hard time with it. Take for example “trans woman in sports”. The conservative brain might be very concerned about this. Why? Do they play sports? Have they even met a trans person? No. But they are told that this is a very important thing. They convince themselves that it’s important to their lives.
Now, you (I hope) and I know these types of stories are just forms of manufacturing outrage to direct blame away from the real problems with American society.
That’s what I’m talking about in my initial comment. It’s just not Trans kids in sports. It’s some thing China is doing related to their relations with Taiwan.
Now, the problem is, you don’t think “why am I reading about this? Who wants me to care about this?”
You start asking yourself those questions when you read any articles about any of the US “enemies” in global politics. You’ll start to see the manufacturing of your concent for more war funding everywhere ; you’ll see it as obviously as the “trans kids in sports” is to you today.
I find this pearl clutching over manufactured consent highly obnoxious and borderline archaic. The days of top-down narratives fueled by restricted access are laughably simple compared to the fractured global media ecosystem of today.
Whatever opinions planted in the mind by manufactured consent are dwarfed a thousand-fold by internet echo chambers that owe no allegiance to the state. To be clear I do not think they cannot align with state interests, only that alignment is selfish, non-ubiquitous across vast swathes of the media landscape, and not the result of a power imbalance in favour of the state.
Unless you want to conflate the two in which case I would ask whether you think the .ml instance “manufactures consent” against support of western interests.
Ironically enough, China is one of the few places where manufactured consent is still able to be effective because of the authoritarian stranglehold they maintain on their media by banning access to outside sources and replacing them with state sanctioned alternatives. Same with Iran, Russia, North Korea, etc. It’s weird ml’s complain about manufactured consent while simping for countries that do it more than anywhere else.
They’re definitely gearing up for major anti-China action, but I doubt Trump or the oligarchs are that keen to fight a war they’ll lose even worse than the war with Iran. After that disaster, many of the US’s potential allies in a war over Taiwan will not be keen on sticking their neck out. Without their support, the US has little chance at stopping China. It’d be much more convenient for them if Taiwan surrenders to China and they can virtue signal about authoritarianism. They might even get the computer parts on backorder for a few years.
The only reason the US would go to war with China is if Trump really is that stupid. In that case, nobody but his cult will really be happy with the outcome.
Thanks for the reasonable response in an array of bad ones.
I’d say when I’m talking about war with China - I don’t believe that is going to happen under Trump. There are steps that need to occur before that. Especially in terms of forcing European support via a dependence on American controlled Oil.
So, I don’t really disagree with you on the short term. But, there is a reason for the US propaganda to alienate China. They need to maintain them as some evil power that must be stopped.
I don’t think the US is gonna be in any position to force European support via oil dependence. The harder they try to bully Europe, the more Europeans are gonna fall into China’s camp. This is especially true if China becomes a dominant provider of renewables; the Iran crisis alone has demonstrated the wisdom of diversifying one’s energy grid. Besides, Europe will want to become less reliant on oil if they want to be capable of opposing Russian conquest. Between the US and Russia both trying to carve out sections of their countries and spheres of influence, China is a safe and sane bet.
The days of US hegemony are well and truly over, and they will probably not be returning in our lifetimes. Multipolarity was inevitable even before Trump, something that Obama was keenly aware of and tried to navigate around. China was always gonna be a primary power, but thanks to Trump they are probably gonna be number one. They will never replace the US in every respect, but they will take their place as the system for the world to emulate. It will be an era of industrial capitalism and increased barriers to trade, where neoliberalism and the free exchange of goods are things of the past. There will be no more pretending that China is an underdog.
These stories are only here to serve as a means to manufacture consent for US actions in the future.
These stories are here to remind that there is an elephant in the room. Fortunately it’s only breathing loudly at the moment.
China has territorial ambitions regarding several neighbours (sea areas) and serious ambitions about Taiwan (taking it over) and unless the international community can help Taiwan and other countries achieve a peaceful co-existence with China (and this means backing them)…
(note: air raid simulations with 100+ aircraft testing Taiwan’s responses or naval blockade simulations with tens of warships around the island are not peaceful coexistence, and China has been running such exercises)
…then we better start learning how to make microchips in every country and obviously pay for that. Because if war happens, Taiwan will be in ruins and China under a boycott, possibly with a few strategic locations also in ruins - and the rest of the world in a severe economic crisis due to lack of microchips. There is also nonzero risk of China attempting to conquer Taiwan escalating to a bigger war between coalitions of countries, with all the possible consequences.
If someone is bullying someone else, the wider community wold be wise to intervene early and dissuade agression.
So yes, what we are seeing is a prelude, which will likely lead, if not dissuaded, to agression against Taiwan at some day in future. What the rest of the world thinks about on that day, is not yet determined. The US and Japan and South Korea have previously made fairly clear what they will think, but recently the US is running headless.
I think Europe’s best hope regarding Taiwan, is to establishing a EU-NATO partnership where Europe protects Taiwan, getting military chips in return. If Europe doesn’t do that, the only good alternative is to develop their own chip technology to at least equal China.
Another possibility is India protecting Taiwan. India isn’t friendly with China, and being able to have top-end technology would very much help India in the decades to come. There is much soft and practical power to having the chips.
Johnny Harris? Is that you? I hope the CIA is paying you at least.
Who is Johnny Harris? You can find me here. Once you figure out the agency who pays me, tell me too, I’ll go and cash in then. :)
In return for the quesiton, I will ask you - which news sources do you use?
Ah I get. Johnny Harris is a popular YouTuber that once worked with the CIA (obviously still does) that does a lot of “China is a concern” content. He’s a typical US imperialism supporting liberal. Basically says the exact type of shit from your first comment.
You know what the difference between a liberal and an anarchist is?
The former actually gets paid to spread CIA talking points about China. I guess you’re just the later. Sorry, I’m sure you understand why I would have been confused. It’s so hard to tell the difference between neocon liberals and “China is a threat” anarchist these days.
Reminder: every large centralized state - not just China - is a threat, especially if it has no democracy, an easy-to-manipulate democracy, or a democracy standing on its last legs.
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