Peaceful and Voluntary Exchange wrote:Punished UMN wrote:1) The PLAN is actually the largest and arguably most modern navy in the region.
2) The world needs the Chinese economy more than China needs ours. Without Chinese industry, many basic industries would collapse in even western countries.
3) With what? China is the world's largest industrial power, its industrial capacity is greater than all three countries combined, this isn't 1985 anymore.
4) Xi's policies are generally pretty popular.
Please do even a little research.
1) China can't even launch a fifth generation fighter off of one of their two first generation aircraft carriers. US warships pass between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland with impunity. Chinese technology is an inferior reproduction stolen and reverse engineered from Western sources.
2) There is absolute no industry that China exports that any Western nation (even 3rd World nations) can ramp up production in short order. Indeed, all of the industries China now exports good, the US was the leader decades ago. The notion that we would collapse from an inability to manufacture cheap goods is laughable.
3) China exports and manufacturers primarily cheap, low tech goods that benefit from cheap labor. If you want to hang your hat on toys and textiles, be my guest. Indeed, China can't even educate their own people, hence the need to send millions abroad for learning.
4) If Xi's was so popular, why the iron fist? When the strong arm tactics in Hong Kong, why the censorship of social media, why the concentration camps in Gobi?
Indeed, China spends considerable amount of time and effort trying to steal technology from the West. Advanced, free, and civilized societies don't invest in this kind of effort. If you steal technology instead of develop it, you will always be behind your competitor. It's laughable that the US went to the Moon decades ago and China is still struggling with a manned mission. Moreover, the life expectancy of totalitarian regimes is far less than free market, representative governments.
I look forward to seeing which of these facts you will strawman in your next post.
1) Neither do the other fleets in the region, carriers also aren't the only vessels, China has the most surface combatants of any nation. Moreover, they're building many air-bases in the South China Sea and more aircraft carriers. As for passing between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, yeah, they're allowed to do that, the US Navy would have transit rights through there under international law. On the technology area, you might want to check where American technology is built now. China leads the world in things like electronics now.
2) Even at the height of US industrial production, it was only ever a small fraction of Chinese production. China isn't just the largest industrial economy in the world, it's the largest industrial economy in history. These industries take time to build as well, you can't just flip a switch and quadruple your steel production.
3) It's not 1995, China makes most of your electronics, your construction materials, etc.
4) Hong Kong isn't a part of normal China, he's trying to bring them better into the fold. There's not really an iron fist in China-proper.
Also, as for your last point, US and Chinese life expectancies are pretty much the same. The US has a life expectancy lower than that of many developing nations.
Your points would have been true 25 or 30 years ago, but they aren't true today.
Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 3:27 am