Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027

A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a democratic China would be any different when it comes to their claims to the world. They'd want to expand just as they want to expand now. Just look at the various western colonial empires of history. Many of them were democracies in some form or fashion.

Any long term resolution to the conflict has to involve the realization that China has had 100 bad years and now has a giant comeback. And that the US has had 60 good years but now large parts of it decline.

Maybe the long term resolution involves recognizing that even if China is totalitarian, it's only within it's own borders. Unlike the cold war days, there's no race to convert countries to Communism or Democracy. China's main mode of interaction with other countries is through trade, it doesn't play the game of political/ideological proselytism. If democracy loses ground around the world, that's due more to it's own failings than a concerted push by China to replace it with totalitarianism. Spend more time and funds fixing the economic inequalities plaguing democratic society than wasting it on ineffective bogeymen like confronting China half a world away.

> Maybe the long term resolution involves recognizing that even if China is totalitarian, it's only within it's own borders.

If it was not for china North Korea and possibly Pakistan would not have had nuclear weapons now. So no, it is not just in it's own borders.

> A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a democratic China would be any different when it comes to their claims to the world.

I wonder about this. Why does totalitarianism in a sovereign nation need to be fought? For those of us considering a democratic China...why do we think the country would fare better as a democracy? The Chinese civilisation is goes back thousands of years. Could the system they have now be the cumulative effect of all they have gone through to date? In other words it has evolved and generally serves its people. It may evolve into something else (possibly resembling Western democracies) but it may not. I don't particularly think it has to.

Source?

What is the solution for totalitarianism? Destruction of the country, plunging millions into poverty, for it to be replaced by a sham democracy where all the levers of power are behind US interests? How did that work out in Iraq?

If you want China to stop being totalitarian, then you should wait until most Chinese citizens decide that they don't approve of the ruling party, and then let them decide what to replace it with. You cannot force democracy.

If you see your neighbour kick their dog (or even child) would you stand idly by and say "well, it seems to work for them" or would you take action?

Yeah, I'm sure the CCP is going to let the citizens decide...

The idea is that if Chinese citizens are going to want democracy, they will have to take it. There is no way anyone else can give it to them. Least of any the US, and possibly the worst way to get a Marxist-Leninist state (this time, four times the size of the USSR!) to relinquish power is to create economic isolation in the midst of an upcoming crisis of capitalism as we have already cut off a sizeable chunk of the world.

In any case, you can rest assured that if the Chinese have to choose between Yeltsin and the CCP, they will choose the latter 100% of the times. Democracy cannot be forced.