I basically agree regarding the economy, but also China is afraid of the internet (yes I know getting a VPN is easy for the upper and educated middle classes, but the fear speaks for itself here). America is in its Qing dynasty stage but a country that throws people in jail for having the wrong religion or too much religious belief cannot really claim superiority here in any metric besides economic and manufacturing strength.
I am pretty hopeful about China to be honest, more than I am about my native USA. One society is growing less paranoid while the other is growing more paranoid, and our country would be much better off if people stopped trying to compare us to a 2000 year old Italian empire and instead studied how the world’s most powerful and advanced country for the first half of the last millennium lost its place in the world because it closed itself off (in short, American classrooms need to teach Chinese history)
The way I see it, it is China that is getting closed off (by the US), while the US itself remains (bar relatively low tarifs) largely open with most/all developed countries. There's a reason China hates the bans.
The NSA so far has found letting Americans fill their individual datasets more useful than blocking access, but there have been sites either highjacked by acts of Congress or taken over by the USA which the NSA has actually said isn't helpful to their spying on Americans. Canada is too weak to have a DSA, rather it is a supplier of raw data to the USA, and thus blocks access to many sites in Russia, Belarus, and China sites, and of course the EU may be larger, but it seems even weaker in Internet services than Canada so does much the same. That's also because the elites are fully captured.
Yeah, outright ban is stupid, it would be much better to require local manufacturing, and aim to achieve tech transfer like the Chinese so brilliantly did. But it would take smart engineers in the US to learn in the chinese-owned factories, and current admin doesn't think that will work - they may well be right.
No surprise. "China" is good at all the stuff "America" imagines it owns, and in so many cases, China is better. That's a fact.
"One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive."
― Hannah Arendt
IOW, don't explain business or economics with facts. Invent an entity that's responsible for what people don't like to obscure one's own inability to compete effectively.
I basically agree regarding the economy, but also China is afraid of the internet (yes I know getting a VPN is easy for the upper and educated middle classes, but the fear speaks for itself here). America is in its Qing dynasty stage but a country that throws people in jail for having the wrong religion or too much religious belief cannot really claim superiority here in any metric besides economic and manufacturing strength.
True. Different forms of paranoia in different vectors.
I am pretty hopeful about China to be honest, more than I am about my native USA. One society is growing less paranoid while the other is growing more paranoid, and our country would be much better off if people stopped trying to compare us to a 2000 year old Italian empire and instead studied how the world’s most powerful and advanced country for the first half of the last millennium lost its place in the world because it closed itself off (in short, American classrooms need to teach Chinese history)
The way I see it, it is China that is getting closed off (by the US), while the US itself remains (bar relatively low tarifs) largely open with most/all developed countries. There's a reason China hates the bans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SG-d3SvOQY
"After a decade of high tariffs and trade curbs to push manufacturing out of China, firms are going back.
The Trump Administration is again hiking tariffs on countries and products from everywhere, instead of merely targeting Chinese industry.
The math that may have encouraged businesses to shift supply chains away from China, now works instead to reverse those moves."
The NSA so far has found letting Americans fill their individual datasets more useful than blocking access, but there have been sites either highjacked by acts of Congress or taken over by the USA which the NSA has actually said isn't helpful to their spying on Americans. Canada is too weak to have a DSA, rather it is a supplier of raw data to the USA, and thus blocks access to many sites in Russia, Belarus, and China sites, and of course the EU may be larger, but it seems even weaker in Internet services than Canada so does much the same. That's also because the elites are fully captured.
(Edit: for a second, I thought you meant the USA when it comes to religions persecution, ala anti-Zionist… but anyway, it isn’t always as free as you may think, ask the The Branch Davidians, if the survivors now free to speak openly. https://thelegalguide.org/illegal-religious-practices-united-states-what-is-prohibited/
That loss of confidence and fear of being challenged successfully are key. America is in so many ways fighting itself, not China, not the world.
Yeah, outright ban is stupid, it would be much better to require local manufacturing, and aim to achieve tech transfer like the Chinese so brilliantly did. But it would take smart engineers in the US to learn in the chinese-owned factories, and current admin doesn't think that will work - they may well be right.
No surprise. "China" is good at all the stuff "America" imagines it owns, and in so many cases, China is better. That's a fact.
"One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive."
― Hannah Arendt
IOW, don't explain business or economics with facts. Invent an entity that's responsible for what people don't like to obscure one's own inability to compete effectively.