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China

(drewdevault.com)
847 points kick | 1 comments | 20 Nov 19 15:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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sneilan1[dead post] ◴[20 Nov 19 16:13 UTC] No.21585119[source]▶
The conversation about China has shifted from being relatively peaceful during the Obama years to war like today.

The author of this article doesn’t understand how the presidential bully pulpit slowly changes the national conversation to war.

Not to say that China isn’t violating human rights. They are. But we, the Americans, are the ones who started this fight by goading them on.

Also: the crux of the argument in this article is “trade is bad for the little guy because our jobs are gone” which is one of the memes our political establishment is using to get us interested in war.

Dear author, can you go deeper into why trade is bad for anyone other than the 1%? Something beyond a ramble and some half baked repetitions of what we hear every day?

1. mdorazio ◴[20 Nov 19 16:33 UTC] No.21585351[source]▶
China goaded itself on. It's really a "boiling a frog" situation if you look at it historically. China's abuses of human rights, intellectual property, dissident repression, history whitewashing, etc. have slowly ramped up over the course of decades. Then Xi came to power, declared himself de facto dictator for life, turned the Nationalism dial to 11, and refused to take US demands for trade fairness seriously.

Yes, the current presidency is partly to blame, but don't pretend that it's the only, or even primary cause of the current narrative.