What you are saying MIGHT be true. The average citizen is not the problem. It’s the government that you can not trust.
I kind of wanted to avoid commenting further on this kind of subject, because in my experience, you rarely change opinions online and it tends to just lead to a further polarization of positions. But I want to reply to the above and
@John A. who tagged me directly.
Firstly, for context. I was born in China, but emigrated to the UK as a child and grew up there and lived there for most of my life. I will return to the UK as soon as the pandemic calms down there and I can find a job to return to. I am a British citizen educated in the UK, I've even studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at university. So John, I'm not some naive fool who thinks the world runs on hope and love. Nor am I brainwashed a China-man who loves the CCP and hates "freedom".
With that said, I just want to point out a few basic facts:
- The USA is the world's most powerful country by far. Its military spending famously outmatches all her potential adversaries combined. This is despite the fact that it heads the most powerful alliance network in the world (NATO + others) and its direct neighbours are Canada and Mexico.
- In contrast, China neighbours 14 countries, including India, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia, which are all nuclear powers. It also suffered two centuries of foreign interference, invasion and imperialism prior to independence in 1949.
Can you blame the Chinese for being a little concerned about national security with that neighbourhood and that history? Next let's consider US attitude/behaviour to China
before Trump.
Can you imagine if China had the audacity to establish military bases in Cuba and declare the Gulf of Mexico to be "an area of core strategic importance"? The USA would literally threaten nuclear war to prevent it. We know this because that's basically what nearly caused WWIII in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And yet that's exactly what Hilary Clinton announced with regards to the
Western Pacific, in Obama's famous "Pivot to Asia". Excuse me, but which US State is in the
Western Pacific that it should be considered a core strategic interest for "American security"?
In short, China is surrounded by openly hostile or potentially dangerous countries, and American military basis from Afghanistan in the West, to Japan in the East. China has no foreign military bases except a recently established base in Djibouti, Horn of Africa, where
of course, the USA also has a base. Objectively speaking, who is a greater threat to whom?
"Ah, but the USA is a free democracy, China is a communist dictatorship, you can't trust them commies!" You might argue.
There's a lot wrong with that statement and I don't want to write an even longer essay explaining it. But let's just say the US is not innocent even in its behaviour towards supposed friends and allies.
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Again, remember this occurred in the Obama administration, a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize! lol
"The average citizen is not the problem. It’s the government that you can not trust."
@Platinum 4 ever Maybe you are able to make a rational distinction between the government and the people. But let's be real here. Human beings are emotional creatures and group animals.
Most people respond to emotive statements like those Trump has repeated for 4 years. The justified and rational caution about the rise of China has morphed into full-blown xenophobia and discrimination.
I have a rather rare perspective given my background. Let's just say that when I went to Beijing 12/13 years ago, the locals loved foreigners, especially Americans. Everything Western was considered cool, advanced and just better than local things. Frankly, they trusted CNN and Obama more than Chinese media, which everyone knew was filtered through a pro-Party lense. I got free upgrades at my Beijing hotel just because I was a British citizen.
Now? Years of ceaseless China-bashing has finally done what all the decades of communist propaganda has failed to achieve. They have rallied around the Party because the country and its people feel under attack by a hypocritical West. I wouldn't say that Chinese people are unfriendly to Westerners now, but they are more guarded and certainly do not blindly worship great America anymore. If Chinese attitudes continue to harden towards nationalism and resentment towards the West, then I fear the 21st century will not be a peaceful one.
The cynics might point to Thucydides' Trap and claim that conflict was inevitable. But I don't think it was... and the fact that we are blindly drifting into it is a terrible and tragic course of events that I can only hope can still be reversed. For all our sakes.