Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

1. China has a totalitarian ruling system. They intend to realize George Orwell's 1984.

2. Present-day China essentially has no ethics. Take the US in comparison. No matter how perverse the people in power become and even if they do messed up things, the US has some founding morals and principles they do not forget. China, in comparison, systematically rooted out these values since the Great Leap Forward. The happenings at Hong Kong and Xinjiang epitomize that.

I do think China's expansionist policy bodes poorly for all of humanity.

1. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-spy-w...

China is also the top source of plastic in the ocean.

Tangent but: the way China turned out has IMHO been the major factor in the collapse of the post cold war neoliberal narrative in the West. The idea was that freedom and prosperity are a reinforcing cycle has been disproven. China shows that at least the business parts of capitalism work just fine without human rights and that therefore prosperity and totalitarianism are compatible.

The collapse of that narrative has in turn unleashed a revival of hard right fascist and hard left socialist ideology in the West.

With advancements in technology (particularly machine learning), I'd say more like a cross between 1984 and Minority Report. E.g. https://mashable.com/2017/07/24/china-ai-crime-minority-repo...

It doesn't get much worse than thought-pre-crime.

With the recent "trade war" and whatnot the stage has been set pretty well for a US intervention.

It is domestic enemies of the public. People with money and power, who are happy to push the rest of us under the proverbial bus, in order to acquire more money, and more power.

They have, historically, caused incalculable misery the world over, democracies have, historically, not had a great track record in dealing with them, and they have, and will continue to have a lot more impact over my life than China ever will.

Unsurprisingly, it is in their interest to point fingers at foreign boogiemen.

If you disagree, please consider enumerating the ways in which China has been a threat to your, or your fellow citizens' prosperity, life, or limb. Then consider enumerating the actual threats to prosperity, life, and limb that you and your neighbours have to deal with in your lives - or have had to deal with in the recent past.

It's not a faux dictatorship, it's the real deal.

But, the idea of the US “stomping out” the PRC (or even somehow “just” rejecting it from Hong Kong) and installing its own preferred government is downright insane.

The only success story seems to be South Korea, but I would argue they wanted democracy and fought alongside the US for it.

The problem was less with democracy and more with trying to impose a common state on a set of opposed communities that had previously only been “united” in the sense that the one the US was least friendly toward was effectively oppressing the others, and even that might have been successful has the US had needed its own past occupation experience and preserved and reformed state security institutions rather than disbanding them with no transition plan, leading to an internal war before the US even got started with establishing democracy.

Not, to be sure, that that makes the idea of the US trying to impose democracy in all or any part of the territory of the PRC even remotely sane.

But it's not "insane", because we have precedent for it: it's exactly what happened in WWII: the world's largest economies and industrial powers going into an all-out war, culminating in nuclear attack, and resulting in the deaths of tens of millions. It's happened before, and so it could certainly happen again.

I'm not super knowledgeable on the topic, but although the new governments didn't really work out, didn't the mass murders and other atrocities stop with the removal of the old dictator? Those countries may not be "stable" (yet), but is the situation really worse that it was?

Wars of aggression against two neighboring countries (Vietnam and India) in the past 50 years, active territorial disputes with basically every other significant country nearby. The creation of client states like which are then used to undermine stability (North Korea), or to undermine international organizations (Cambodia and ASEAN).

maybe, but climate change is around number 20 in that list for me.

Also, according to this, China's per capita emissions are half that of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

Lets break it down - tens or possibly hundreds of millions of people would die - there would be almost a 100% chance of a hot ww3 but this time with hydrogen bombs, there is a good chance if this happens all life will be wiped off the face of the Earth - starvation on a massive scale, modern society with its on demand supply chains would suffer greatly in a new world war - automated drones targeting people

Uh, no.

The US overt, initial war aim would be an existential threat to the Chinese regime, and China is a nuclear power with intercontinental delivery capability. It would see multiple times more total casualties than WWII, and that's just be on the first day that China was convinced that the US was serious about the effort.

Source? I lived in China and didn't ever feel like I was in a place without ethics. Different ethics, sure, but it really looks to me like you simply don't know or understand China.

The Great Leap Forward had nothing to do with routing out values, it was about hyper-fast industrialization, and it failed.

There are real problems with modern China, and, separately, with the CCP, for example a lack of separation of powers and a lack of rule of law. But your statements look much more like fear of the other and demonization of what you don't understand that well reasoned arguments.

If you live in China, you'll experience some things that are much better than they are in western countries. I'm not saying there's any comparison really, but the fact is that the reality is far more complex than you're making it out to be.

I'd imagine that mostly look like sowing internal discord within the CCP. The party already has a lot of corruption, so most likely many senior officials could be blackmailed and manipulated. The long-term goal would be to weaken the resolve and coherence of the CCP to the point that a non-violent democratic revolution could take place.

NYC, LA, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Huston, Dallas are all potential targets if the US declares war. Most of the US army would be going to war with no home to go back to.

I disagree with that point.

- collapse of bird, insect, reptile populations over all the developed world due to pesticide use, habitat loss, etc.

- decline of natural environment, waters, forests, etc.

- loss of linguistic/cultural diversity around the world

- decline of institutions and social cohesion in my immediate neighborhood

- society-wide addictive tendencies

- the commercialization of more and more aspects of human life

- ...

The basic rundown is that a country sets up international financing institutions, then loans money for infrastructure projects to less developed countries. This is supposed to be spent to hire engineering and construction companies from the lending country, with the promise that your companies will help up-skill the host countries favored companies, which may or may not happen.

The effect of this is that you basically use someone else's money to build up companies and build expertise that you can continue to sell around the world.

Its an obviously great business practice, but very prone to corruption, and ineffective at creating real economic growth in the host country (which is go-to cover story for why its not imperial aggression). The Belt and Road Initiative is basically just this exact strategy writ large.

Was Saddam torturing a limited amount of dissidents and his sons raping and murdering people as they pleased better or worse than ISIS ruling significant parts of the middle east? Was Gaddafi better or worse than Libya in civil war, slave markets being revived etc? Was life under Assad better or worse than civil war in Syria?

Even with bloodthirsty dictators, there's usually a way to make it worse, and NATO/US is pretty good at finding it.

Excuse my french, but what the fuck are you talking about?

How about imprisoning and torturing US citizens without due process in the name of a nebulous war that only gets worse the more we fight it?

What about all the puppet governments we've set up so that our corporate overlords can make a quick buck at the expense of some country who's resources we want to plunder?

The US is an empire. Not based on governmental control, but based on financial control. The difference between surveillance in the US and surveillance in China is that we've managed to keep our surveillance largely in the private sector; but that doesn't mean 1984 doesn't already exist here! In fact, you carry 1984 with you in your pocket everywhere you go!

I'm not saying I'd rather live in China than the US, but putting the US on some high moral pedestal is extremely ignorant of all the terrible things we've done as a country.

The quality of the high speed rail system barely needs mention, and while the hospital system has some pretty glaring faults the cost of care was low and it was easy and affordable to get medical care. Think of this: when I got an X-ray in China I payed upfront and the radiologist _gave me the x-ray_ so I could bring it to more than one doctor if I wanted a second opinion. The transparency there was refreshing.

Again, there are plenty of brutal negatives, but I just want to show that there are some good things that don't get press.

[0] https://www.treehugger.com/infrastructure/lucky-knot-bridge-...

[1] https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/03/zaha-hadid-architects-chan...

Of course there are outliers but it seems clear that "I'm not going to be alive when the shit hits the fan" does a lot to assuage existential anxieties related to climate change.

It took the US around 200 years to fully live up to those founding morals and principles.

The PRC is a relatively young country. Only 70 years as of today. Give them a hundred more years and perhaps it’ll change drastically.

Maybe he said something like "it looks like benevolent, because they use finance instead of guns" or that compared to using military force it's relatively benevolent, but after watching some of his talks, I highly doubt he'd call it a generous ethical policy.

I suspect the lifestyle of an average 20-year-old today puts much more burden on the environment/climate than the lifestyle of their parents in their twenties.

ADD: The amount of time each spends _talking_ about climate change is a different matter of course.

I'm not saying China is better, but the fraction of control the average US citizen can exercise over the government in the defined political process is much, much smaller than `1 / 330,000,000`...

But people in the US can remove legislatures and the top executive(the President). Do people in China have that option?

Advancement within a totalitarian group or party depends largely on a willingness to do immoral things. The principle that the end justifies the means, which in individualist ethics is regarded as the denial of all morals, in collectivist ethics becomes necessarily the supreme rule. There is literally nothing which the consistent collectivist must not be prepared to do if it serves ‘the good of the whole’, because that is to him the only criterion of what ought to be done.

This quote is from the condensed edition, because my paper copy is at home: https://fee.org/resources/the-road-to-serfdom-condensed-edit...

Do you have a response to this?

In the US you can always get your medical records just by asking for them and you can always get a second opinion.

Earth has known far more extreme climate in the past than even the +4 degrees that we could reach because of human CO2 emissions. Some species may disappear from some parts of the globe, but for sure new ones would emerge thanks to increased temperatures in colder places.

However, never has a single specie had such a huge direct mechanical impact on the habitat of all the other species all around the world.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/voter-suppress...

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/worst-voter-suppression-w...

With that in mind, on the balance of it, America is overwhelmingly a rule of law jurisdiction, and the PRC is not. There's definitely magnitudes here.

My point is neither side is all good or all bad, and looking at it that way is harmful to the discourse.

2) Getting a second opinion in the US is generally easy - I would guess China has cheaper healthcare however

Do you doubt that climate change will displace 100s of millions and destroy many large and distinct cultures (e.g. island states) at current emission rates?

China is not famous for the quality of it's high speed tail system. China is famous for two things:

1) throwing huge amounts of money/resources to build their high-speed railway network

2) stealing intelectual property from manufacturers of high-speed railway rolling stock, whether through industrial espionage or hijacking production processes after enticing European companies with contracts to build European rolling stock designs in China.

Also, China's high-speed railway is also infamous for their accidents, particularly by the inhumane way that chinese officials decided to cover them up (i.e., burry wreckage next to crash sites without recovering dead bodies)

How much you want to bet that in 2020, for the umpteenth time in a row, we get a choice between two billion-dollar-funded candidates who are absolutely not going to buck their sponsors, ever? Taste the freedom.

I view Chinese people individually, and on the whole, as very humanistic. The real question is what would China look like if its system represented the sentiment of its people?

I think they like private property, inheritance not being taxed, and in general focusing on their own lives without interruption.

Like anywhere else, many Chinese people enjoy civil engagement.

If China broke up into multiple countries and had a union to reduce redundancy/inefficiencies in common areas, that'd be a huge improvement.

This also preserves Chinese culture/customs on a more granular basis.

Case in point: the freedom to openly criticize or even outright mock/ridicule a politician is demonstrably far stronger in the US - and historically has always been - than it is or has ever been in the PRC.

CO2 is fertilizing plant life on the earth. And satellite data confirms this: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

Since plant life is thriving, so too will overall animal life. Although extinction will continue to occur just as it always has throughout the history of the planet.

The fact that we have the illusion of choice between candidates who will all do mostly the same things, and won't affect the bureaucracy that much anyways, doesn't make us meaningfully more free.

"But my candidate had a great take on the bathroom bill controversy!", as we continue bombing weddings in afghanistan, imprisoning more people than China (!!!), etc..

China/<Country's name> == The government of China/<The government of Country>

and

The Chinese == The inhabitants of China

Yellow man's burden?

We should consider instead the current consumption habits of both cohorts for an appropriate comparison.

> I am unsure about what exactly you are complaining about.

I wasn't. I was refuting common propaganda about the wonders of the United States. How can we fix any of our problems if we don't admit to ourselves that they exist?

American CO2 emissions per capita reached their highest level in the 1970s and declined later:

https://knoema.com/atlas/United-States-of-America/CO2-emissi...

Emissions per GDP is probably the best we have as GDP is a decent proxy for productivity, making it a real measure of efficiency. If the goal is to actually reduce emissions the goal must be to reduce CO2 emitted per unit of productivity, so you want to emulate the wealthier nations that have low CO2/GDP scores. That means emulating policies like renewable energy, efficiency standards, well designed cities, etc.

China is (last I looked) the least efficient large economy in terms of pollution per GDP. The USA is toward the middle of the pack.

Unit 731 was ethical because Tuskegee.

The Opium Wars were ethical because the CCP does nothing to stop the flow of fentanyl overseas.

All of these are as ridiculous as what your comment implies, they're also equally relevant.

No, it's not.

> China/<Country's name> == The government of China/<The government of Country>

> and

> The Chinese == The inhabitants of China

I've had some rather deep political conversations with a few Chinese people, and it's my understanding that education there doesn't stress the distinction between the Chinese nation and the Chinese government. So, using the word "China" to condemn the government can will often be interpreted as condemning the nation and does encourages ordinary Chinese to stand by their government, right or wrong. Don't do that.

If you want to condemn the Chinese government, name the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) in your condemnations, for clarity's sake.

Remember, the US's nuclear arsenal is far, far larger than China's. Such a conflict would be devastating to the US (and to many other places due to fallout), but China would cease to exist.

Where did the CCP get all the doctors and nurses who carry out the vivisections and transplantations?

I don't want to engage in what I call the "calculus of evil".

I wonder how many Americans would fly to China to get organs to save their lives knowing where the organs come from.

Not to mention some 50M+ Chinese that don't live in China.

> Overseas Chinese (traditional Chinese: 海外華人/海外中國人; simplified Chinese: 海外华人/海外中国人; pinyin: Hǎiwài Huárén/Hǎiwài Zhōngguórén) are people of ethnic Chinese birth or descent who reside outside the territories of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Although a vast majority are Han Chinese, the group represents virtually all ethnic groups in China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Chinese

Chinese culture is much bigger, older, and grander than the CCP.

> Remember, the US's nuclear arsenal is far, far larger than China's. Such a conflict would be devastating to the US (and to many other places due to fallout), but China would cease to exist.

And if the US's war aim was to liberate the Chinese people from dictatorship, it would have failed miserably in that case, having destroyed them instead.

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036122/

https://science.gu.se/english/News/News_detail/increased-car...

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of...

The proposal was that the US would attempt to invade, decapitate, and replace the Chinese regime; the idea of Chinese nuclear action was as a response to that.

So the Army would already be involved, and US nuclear annihilation of China would be nuking our own army.

If the yields and plant mass overall increase by more than 14%, then perhaps the trade-off is worth it. And this is perhaps why commercial greenhouse growers pump CO2 into them up to 1200PPM.

At any rate it does seem like an interesting question. What sort of species will thrive in a high CO2 environment? I do have faith in plants and their ability to adapt to such conditions, as it was the conditions they thrived under in the Mesozoic and beyond.

At any rate, thank you for the interesting studies.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2486...

https://academic.oup.com/treephys/article-abstract/14/7-8-9/...

It's scary that many actually believe this and thus self-fulfill their prophecy because they don't get involved and don't vote.

To further amplify this detrimental affect, there are state-sponsored trolls/propagandists actively driving this wedge and these narratives online to attack our Democracy from within.

Didn't mean to make it sound so harsh, "dishonest" wasn't meant to be a reflection of your intention. I chose the wrong word.

I've been involved. Will continue to be. It's still the truth.

Ask yourself, how come when America's chief global rival does bad things, it's cause for condemnation, but America must be protected from criticism?

Nobody cares about Yemen but everyone is very sure Hezbollah are bad guys?

Our system of control is so much more effective than state censorship. And the trains don't even run on time.

Also, my responses were a reality check in the face of the propaganda you're speaking of. The "the US is the most free and moral country!" folks are getting a much bigger dose of force-fed freedom than anybody else.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation#Next_gla...

> The state of various species is always in flux.

You asked for instances of climate change causing an extinction, this is your response to me fulfilling your request?

And don't forget in your other conversation about CO2 and plants about the increased temperatures predicted under climate change: "the diverse impacts of higher temperatures on other metabolic processes are likely to feed back on carbon metabolism in ways that we do not currently appreciate."

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.15283

I can probably give out examples of "unethical" behavior for every government on this planet, and then no one will be ethical any more. What then?

This is as expansionist as the American Civil War... I.e. it's not expansionist but really a 'domestic' matter.

There is big amount of propaganda from Western media on this topic as well: If Taiwan had been in a position to fight the communists to retake the mainland the US would have supplied help and call this 'liberation' of the mainland. But of course any plan of the communists to complete the takeover of the country by getting their hands on Taiwan is labelled 'expansionist' and 'a threat to security and stability'.

Same old games...

The Chinese government, the CCP and everything they stand for regarding liberty and freedom of thought and expression is against the fundamental values of the West. The ideas are not equal in value. China is wrong. Oppression of thought is wrong. Incarceration without trial is wrong.

The US and other countries don't get it right all the time, but at least our citizens have the expectation of rights the Chinese can only dream of.

Moreover, even if we accept that China is evil and wrong, some of the best 'friends' of the West are at least as evil and wrong, if not more, as China, which should really finish off this line of argumentation.

This is self-interest among states, standard geopolitics, there is not right or wrong, including when it comes to determining the US' foreign policy.

That's the story of every country's industrial development since the British industrial revolution. Bread comes first, clean water and air come second. For rich western countries to forget that and demand that China and India put environment ahead of pulling people out of poverty is myopic at best and, realistically, highly hypocritical.