(because a lack of government transparency and occasional corruption is totally worse than butchering millions of Indians and imprisoning Japanese people, yo)
:?
Are you seriously going to compare the entirety of the history of the US to your apparently limited understanding of China's recent issues?
I think he's arguing that lack of government transparency and corruption - e.g. current issues of U.S. government, are not as bad as it's past issues - in other words, genocide and unlawful imprisonment.
Hence, United States are getting better, not worse.
Yeah, but it's such a meaningless metric. In fact, it's more than meaningless, it's actually counterproductive to properly evaluating a nation. I can't imagine why anyone would willingly use it.
It means that the United States is never 'getting worse' until it does something more fuckawful than the trail of tears. What the fuck good is THAT as a metric?
I mean, obviously the US wasn't 'getting worse' when it decided to inter all the Japanese-Americans in world war 2. After all, it wasn't worse than the trail of tears..
Also, the economy? Well, there hasn't been a recession lately. Don't worry about it. You can tell, because things aren't as bad as they were at the height of the great depression.
Also, the health care situation in America? Totally hasn't been getting worse lately. You can tell, because 200 years ago? People died all the time from stupid shit. It's nowhere near that bad now, even if half of bankruptcies are due to health issues.
They were only claiming that an extensive new suburb of Zhengzhou contains virtually no residents, not that the entire city of Zhengzhou was newly manufactured and vacant. That aside...
...in that its a free market economy in a country run by a single authoritarian economy and not just a straight up command economy that is extremely inefficient in allocating capital and determining market demand and supply.
What does this mean? Specifically, what is "a free market economy in a country run by a single authoritarian economy"? I've never heard an economy meaningfully described with those terms.
Is it a free market where the government reserves the right to exercise command of the economy when they see fit, or what?
Woops, meant to write "government." Pretty much the government is communist in the sense that they are the single party and have the final say in all decisions with regards to foreign policy and any domestic issues. The Chinese economy however is just like any other capitalist country however maybe without the same level of property and copyright protection yet, more government regulations and lower institutional quality compared to the US's SEC and other regulatory agencies.
The intro to that documentary is misleading though since they say "It's estimated that 10 new cities are being built every year" and "These are satellite images of one of China's newest cities." Again, its not out of place to see developments like this be relatively vacant at the beginning.
Thanks for the clarification.
And fair enough, they weren't exactly focusing on intellectual honesty in that piece.
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I think the more relevant point is that anyone who thinks the US's record on human rights or anything like that is getting WORSE is smoking some fine shit. The US is getting BETTER on that front. It's just we all hear more about it.
Clearly, I can't see how an opposing viewpoint can even be held.
Within a single lifetime the US has gone from debt bondage slavery, women lacking the right to vote, and child labor to a presidential election where the two lead candidates were black and a woman. That's fucking staggering compared to other historical examples, and despite the problems, gay marriage will almost certainly be realized within the next 20 years. Current issues aside, the conservatives are not going to successfully keep the US forward social momentum hitched.
Yes things like waterboarding happen, but much worse was happening 30 years ago in secret. The fact that we know about shit like this is a massive step forward.
And fair enough, they weren't exactly focusing on intellectual honesty in that piece.
Yeah, most documentaries or news pieces on China are either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic to try and make them more interesting and get ratings. If its not "Oh no, the sleeping Dragon has awoken and is taking over the world" its "China's economy is on the road to collapse."
(because a lack of government transparency and occasional corruption is totally worse than butchering millions of Indians and imprisoning Japanese people, yo)
:?
Are you seriously going to compare the entirety of the history of the US to your apparently limited understanding of China's recent issues?
I think he's arguing that lack of government transparency and corruption - e.g. current issues of U.S. government, are not as bad as it's past issues - in other words, genocide and unlawful imprisonment.
Hence, United States are getting better, not worse.
Yeah, but it's such a meaningless metric. In fact, it's more than meaningless, it's actually counterproductive to properly evaluating a nation. I can't imagine why anyone would willingly use it.
It means that the United States is never 'getting worse' until it does something more fuckawful than the trail of tears. What the fuck good is THAT as a metric?
I mean, obviously the US wasn't 'getting worse' when it decided to inter all the Japanese-Americans in world war 2. After all, it wasn't worse than the trail of tears..
Also, the economy? Well, there hasn't been a recession lately. Don't worry about it. You can tell, because things aren't as bad as they were at the height of the great depression.
Also, the health care situation in America? Totally hasn't been getting worse lately. You can tell, because 200 years ago? People died all the time from stupid shit. It's nowhere near that bad now, even if half of bankruptcies are due to health issues.
It's not a meaningless metric at all. It doesn't mean you can't bitch about the US not getting better faster though. And you won't see anyone argue with that. No one has said any different.
But the point is, you can't claim the US is sliding towards oppression or some bullshit like that. Because it's not.
I'm not saying the US is doing that. I said the opposite a page earlier.
But yes, it seems totally meaningless to say the US is still getting better just because the average quality of human rights in the US, starting from the trail of tears, is still higher than it is if you include the trail of tears.
There's so much awful crap the US could start to do before it got to the point of being as bad as the trail of tears. Would you really argue that 'well, on average it's still better than counting the trail of tears, so it's getting better!' ? Because no one wants to get anywhere near living in a country like the US at the time of the trail of tears.
If the US started regressing in civil rights, but hadn't yet reached the point predating the civil rights movement, would you argue that it's just not 'getting better fast enough?'
It seems as a minimum you'd be better off calculating how the US has done on human rights issues in ten year (or pick x number) time spans and graphing that out. Not 180 year timespans.
I'm not saying the US is doing that. I said the opposite a page earlier.
But yes, it seems totally meaningless to say the US is still getting better just because the average quality of human rights in the US, starting from the trail of tears, is still higher than it is if you include the trail of tears.
There's so much awful crap the US could start to do before it got to the point of being as bad as the trail of tears. Would you really argue that 'well, on average it's still better than counting the trail of tears, so it's getting better!' ? Because no one wants to get anywhere near living in a country like the US at the time of the trail of tears.
If the US started regressing in civil rights, but never reached the point predating the civil rights movement, would you argue that it's just not 'getting better fast enough?'
It seems as a minimum you'd be better off calculating how the US has done on human rights issues in ten year (or pick x number) time spans and graphing that out. Not 180 year timespans.
See, again your problem is you are looking at this on a huge time frame and assuming the rest of us are too. No one has said anything of the sort. Well, except you for some goosey reason.
I'm not talking "better then the trail of tears". I'm talking "better then even just 20 years ago". If the US starts regressing, point it out. But so far, on even like a time scale of a decade, the US has only been getting better.
You're free to believe that our human rights record isn't perfect and that perhaps we even do things that are bad, but to believe we're getting worse, you somehow have to believe that we've found a way to top the Trail of Tears.
You're free to believe that our human rights record isn't perfect and that perhaps we even do things that are bad, but to believe we're getting worse, you somehow have to believe that we've found a way to top the Trail of Tears.
What, did I hallucinate this?
No, you hallucinated the part where that was the ONLY comparison being made. And apparently hallucinated away all the other posts comparing it to much more recent events, including the one only 2 below your first statement on the matter.
I honestly am not following you at all, here. I don't mean to sound snarky, I think we're just not at all on the same page, or something. I was agreeing with Quid in regards to SammyF and President Rex, both of whom brought up the trail of tears.
You mean the intervention no one outside the CIS countries knows about? Not an exaggeration, I have not encountered a single American textbook that has ever mentioned this--and the situation isn't much better in other countries, from what I've heard. I'd love to be wrong.
It was touched on in 11th grade US History for me, although I can't recall if it was actually textbook-based or not. The teacher seemed to like Soviet/Russian history, so it could have easily just been him.
As for the rest of your post. I would agree; a US policy that's improving doesn't negate the argument of whether China or the US would be a better superpower (one could easily argue that China's record has an improving trend in the last decades as well). It's also possible to argue that the United States' prestige and influence abroad is decreasing compared to other potential superpowers.
But to argue that the United States is somehow becoming worse in its conduct abroad seems short-sighted, misinformed or politically biased.
(because a lack of government transparency and occasional corruption is totally worse than butchering millions of Indians and imprisoning Japanese people, yo)
:?
Are you seriously going to compare the entirety of the history of the US to your apparently limited understanding of China's recent issues?
I think he's arguing that lack of government transparency and corruption - e.g. current issues of U.S. government, are not as bad as it's past issues - in other words, genocide and unlawful imprisonment.
Hence, United States are getting better, not worse.
Yes, this. Or at the very least, the US is not getting appreciably worse.
As for Ego:
It may be important to note that my 2nd post may have contextualized my 1st post a bit more.
But yes, it seems totally meaningless to say the US is still getting better just because the average quality of human rights in the US, starting from the trail of tears, is still higher than it is if you include the trail of tears.
Where else are you going to get a metric if you don't refer to what a country has done in the past? This seems to argue that comparing our current situation to the past is meaningless. Unless you're Plato and plan on manifesting a hypothetical country all you can do is either compare a current country to its past, or to another country. And when you're speaking of whether something is getting better or worse it only makes sense to talk of an individual country's own past.
This also assumes that improvement is only attained when the situation is better than the baseline, which is also a misrepresentation of the argument.
There's so much awful crap the US could start to do before it got to the point of being as bad as the trail of tears. Would you really argue that 'well, on average it's still better than counting the trail of tears, so it's getting better!' ? Because no one wants to get anywhere near living in a country like the US at the time of the trail of tears.
It's not "we're getting better unless we're as bad as this past event." It's a trend of slow improvement over centuries, but that doesn't mean you discount intermittent points of improvement or setback. On the other hand, this also doesn't mean that the short-term trend is always improving, either.
...So I guess, no, I wouldn't argue, " on average it's still better than counting the trail of tears so it's getting better."
The US, and indeed the world, is moving slowly toward a more progressive view. There are some instances of minor or major backward movement, and the future contains significant risk, but overall, things continue to move forward. Two steps forward one step back is still progress.
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Please re-read the red text, then re-read the italicized subset of text, then re-read the bold subset of the subset of text. Do you still want to make the assertion that you are asserting with that line?
I'm not contesting your people's support of their government or even the effectiveness of your government's policies versus someone else's government's policies, but that line coupled with one from earlier where you specifically said "white people think this about my Country" has me questioning your motivation for your extremely spirited defense of policies and practices that can be argued by some to be worrisome.
I'm not sure I completely understand what you are trying to say. Are you calling me a Chinese nationalist? Because I've lived in Canada for 17 years. I'm pretty sure that I didn't call it "my" country, although maybe I shouldn't have used the term "white" people. But if you mean that I am culturally biased well I think having been born in China, living in Canada most of my life, visiting about 10 states in the US and 15 other countries I have probably a better perspective on the world than the average person.
I think you are probably misinterpreting what I mean by that one line. I'm not asserting that the idea of democracy is a solely American/Western concept that is forced upon other people. It's more that a lot of people probably think all countries that are not democracies must by nature be extremely discontent with their government and the only thing keeping them from overthrowing it is because of oppression. I mean if you look at a place like Singapore it is hugely authoritarian but there is not significant civil unrest. Its that the principles such as rights of self determination, democracy and freedom from government intervention are core, core American values more so than many other first world nations even. Americans get scared at the idea of universal healthcare and anything that could be viewed as "socialist" much more than Canadians or Swedes or British would be.
I'm also not necessarily "defending" the policies and practices of "my" country. I'm trying to explain an extremely complex and complicated country and culture that I think a lot of people have a misinformed view on. Yes, I think China should be a democracy. But the key is that this must happen gradually. Right now there is a choice between instability that could severely hamper economic growth or lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and having to live with the fact that some are undoubtedly getting stepped on. Neither choice is ideal but I think maintaining the status quo is currently the best realistic option. China is a huge country with a ton of social, demographic and economic issues it has to deal with on its way to becoming an industrialized country. If we were to look at a country with similar problems like India I would argue that China's government has allowed it to increase overall civilian welfare more than India's has. The morality of this is what is questioned but I think the actual pay offs are clear cut. Chinese society will become more and more free and the general populace will desire more and more of a say once standard of living rises and an increasing number of basic needs are met. We saw the same kind of transitions in countries like South Korea and Taiwan. The difference here is that instead of dealing with small countries with 50 million and 20 million people we are talking about a place where that number is a rounding error in census reports.
No I was not calling you a Chinese Nationalist, by "you" and "your people" I mean the 86% of Chinese people from the poll. My contention (the thing I find false about that particular statement) is demonstrated with the following analogy: Gouda is definitely the only cheese that North Americans eat.
This is demonstratively false because there exists a North American person who has or will at some point in his/her life consumed cheese that is not Gouda. That person is me (I ate mozzarella just yesterday).
It is definitely an intrinsic American/Western belief that all people around the world strive for a democracy but that desire is perhaps a bit more muted among the Chinese.
This is demonstratively false because there exists an American/Western person who does not believe that every person around the world should strive for a democracy. That person is me.
In both of these sentences there is one and only one interpretation because they clearly make a definitive statement without uncertainty. In this case, that statement can be restated as "Because a person is American/Western that person believes every person around the world should strive for democracy, by the very nature of their being."
Had you written "Many American/Westerners believe that all people..." or even "A significant majority of American/Westerners believe..." there would have been room for other interpretations though in the later case I'd probably want to see citations.
It seems like you were ascribing some sort of political context to my contention-- which I suspect aligns with your "Americans need the whole world to be democratic whether they actually want democracy or not" mentality. I can assure you, my contention was solely on the patently false statement which I did not expect to have to break down this thoroughly.
You mean the intervention no one outside the CIS countries knows about? Not an exaggeration, I have not encountered a single American textbook that has ever mentioned this--and the situation isn't much better in other countries, from what I've heard. I'd love to be wrong.
New Zealand high school history class had a fair bit about it in the Russian revolution section. What really annoys me about the "hurr communist economies are all doomed to failure, just look at the USSR" thing is they are one of the worst examples to use for it: They were barely industrialized (and by classical marxism, not ready for revolution), in the middle of world war 1, the most deadly war in history when the revolution occurred, then got invaded by nearly every major power, then took the brunt of Germany's efforts in WW2 and had to move a huge amount of industrial capability back past the urals to keep it safe. When you compare that to the US's situation in the same timeframe, the great depression is pretty much the only close to equivalent event.
Q11a How do you think people in other countries of the world feel about China? Is China generally like [sic] or disliked?
Generally liked: 77
Generally disliked: 10
Don't Know/Refuse to answer: 13
And so on. Actually, I recommend downloading the PDF and browsing through page 38 onward, which has the individual questions and the percentage of responses.
Random opinion: these attitudes seem very similar to 1950s-era US to me.
Do you know if they have this question for the US instead of china? Would be interested in that.
One should be wary of applying the entire study's results to all of China. Not only was it taken just before the Olympics (although there was also an regional disaster from an earthquake that year, too), but it does not fully represent the Chinese population.
I would guess that both the Olympics and a big earthquake would make the people of China more positive in their views of China.
Furthermore, some basic responses show a lack of international knowledge (or a lack of empathy) representative of a misinformed or misguided public (although to be fair China also registered highest in "least individualistic" in Pew's 24-nation study). As examples:
Only 3% of Chinese think their economy is hurting other countries. This is very different from how Americans currently view the effects of their nation's economy -- 61% say the U.S. is having a negative impact on other countries.
Free markets are important to the Chinese, but so, too, is the environment. Eight-in-ten Chinese agree that protecting the environment should be given priority, even if it leads to slower economic growth and some loss of jobs (17% disagree).
(Maybe no one is telling them how dumping factory waste in their rivers is causing a bunch of disease and turning rivers into toxic sludge?)
Q11a How do you think people in other countries of the world feel about China? Is China generally like [sic] or disliked?
Generally liked: 77
Generally disliked: 10
Don't Know/Refuse to answer: 13
And so on. Actually, I recommend downloading the PDF and browsing through page 38 onward, which has the individual questions and the percentage of responses.
Random opinion: these attitudes seem very similar to 1950s-era US to me.
1) Isn't a lot of the world dependent on cheap Chinese labour? In that sense, the Chinese economy is rather helping than hurting the world. Labour is still cheap in China.
2) Environment is regarded quite high, especially in urban areas. There have been a lot of discontet with the numerous food scandals (milk powder, pork, red-dyed chili and so forth), and there is a lot of discontet with pollution scandals. That environmental scandals occurs does not mean that people approve of it.
3) Why would anyone generally dislike China? Friendly people, rich culture, great food, beautiful nature. The current administration do bad things, true, but there have been large improvements over the last 10-20 years. I generally love Chine, even though some stuff is bad (the CP being the big thing here). I also generally love US, even though some stuff is bad over there.
No I was not calling you a Chinese Nationalist, by "you" and "your people" I mean the 86% of Chinese people from the poll. My contention (the thing I find false about that particular statement) is demonstrated with the following analogy: Gouda is definitely the only cheese that North Americans eat.
This is demonstratively false because there exists a North American person who has or will at some point in his/her life consumed cheese that is not Gouda. That person is me (I ate mozzarella just yesterday).
It is definitely an intrinsic American/Western belief that all people around the world strive for a democracy but that desire is perhaps a bit more muted among the Chinese.
This is demonstratively false because there exists an American/Western person who does not believe that every person around the world should strive for a democracy. That person is me.
In both of these sentences there is one and only one interpretation because they clearly make a definitive statement without uncertainty. In this case, that statement can be restated as "Because a person is American/Western that person believes every person around the world should strive for democracy, by the very nature of their being."
Had you written "Many American/Westerners believe that all people..." or even "A significant majority of American/Westerners believe..." there would have been room for other interpretations though in the later case I'd probably want to see citations.
It seems like you were ascribing some sort of political context to my contention-- which I suspect aligns with your "Americans need the whole world to be democratic whether they actually want democracy or not" mentality. I can assure you, my contention was solely on the patently false statement which I did not expect to have to break down this thoroughly.
Seems like just an argument of semantics to me where you're saying what I wrote has to be interpreted literally as all Americans/Westerners believe this without exception. I would think that people generally wouldn't just interpret things worded like this in such a fundamental and literal sense. So yeah, I would agree that obviously not all Americans/Westerners would have the same view. However, I don't think you can't question that one of the ideologies of US governments has been trying to spread democracy kind of like how the USSR used to hold onto a belief of a world revolution.
But if that is really the only thing you wanted a talk about why did you write:
I'm not contesting your people's support of their government or even the effectiveness of your government's policies versus someone else's government's policies, but that line coupled with one from earlier where you specifically said "white people think this about my Country" has me questioning your motivation for your extremely spirited defense of policies and practices that can be argued by some to be worrisome.
It just seemed to me that you were calling me a nationalist or something. What would be my "motivations?" Am I like a government spokesman or something? I don't understand. But honestly, I am not really interested in these kind of debates where we look at every little piece of what people write because it loses sight of the main discussion that is going on.
And fair enough, they weren't exactly focusing on intellectual honesty in that piece.
Yeah, most documentaries or news pieces on China are either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic to try and make them more interesting and get ratings. If its not "Oh no, the sleeping Dragon has awoken and is taking over the world" its "China's economy is on the road to collapse."
I read an article a while back that made an argument in the middle. That is, China's structural problems will not be resolved any time soon, but it won't collapse into a Mad Max like hell. The article argued that China would end up like a big Mexico: pretty dysfunctiona and corruptl, but stable enough to keep itself together.
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The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations; it's perfectly willing to come in and fill any voids created by ideologically-motivated EU withdrawals from Iran (which is part of the reason the EU won't take as hard a stance on Iran as we'd like them to); and on my recent visit to Pakistan, I saw that the Chinese were flooding yet another market with their cheap plastic goods. I was at lecture a couple months back by Ahmed Kamal, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.N., who said that the beauty of Pakistan's relationship with China is that "the Chinese don't try to change us or our country."
This is all as compared to the U.S., whose aid definitely comes with ideological strings attached. I guess, when you're desperate to feed a billion people who've just recently stumbled out of abject poverty, you're not as ideologically demanding of your international partners.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
And fair enough, they weren't exactly focusing on intellectual honesty in that piece.
Yeah, most documentaries or news pieces on China are either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic to try and make them more interesting and get ratings. If its not "Oh no, the sleeping Dragon has awoken and is taking over the world" its "China's economy is on the road to collapse."
I read an article a while back that made an argument in the middle. That is, China's structural problems will not be resolved any time soon, but it won't collapse into a Mad Max like hell. The article argued that China would end up like a big Mexico: pretty dysfunctiona and corruptl, but stable enough to keep itself together.
Eh, I think the government is too strong for that level to happen, but I think I see what you mean.
I guess, when you're desperate to feed a billion people who've just recently stumbled out of abject poverty, you're not as ideologically demanding of your international partners.
You have to wonder how ideologically demanding they would be either way. Their-hands off approach is working as far as ingratiating themselves to African leaders at the cost of actual humanitarian efforts to improve the quality of life on the continent.
Senegal's president:
Today, it is very clear that Europe is close to losing the battle of competition in Africa to China.
Mozambique's Director of Promotional Investment:
China treats us like a peer. They have a culture of respect for other people. They don't interfere, they don't invade countries. Americans? They don't even know where Mozambique is. And you [Americans] are trying to export morals which even in your own country didn't work.
Botswana's president:
I find that the Chinese treat us as equals; the West treats us as former subjects.
Nigeria's president at a banquet for China's President Hu Jintao:
This is the century for China to lead the world. And when you are leading the world, we want to be very close behind you.
Great deal for those in charge that don't mind selling away their people's livelihood for the sake of individual success, not so great for the indigenous population that's becoming increasingly resentful of the Chinese exploiting their resources and driving local companies out of business by flooding their markets with cheap goods.
The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
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The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
This is like a mini Cold War, in terms of destitute third world nations caught in a tug-of-war between global powers and their respective ideologies. The U.S. on the one hand, with modest amounts of aid that comes with (generally speaking) benign or positive demands, like liberalizing markets or building schools or whatever; China on the other, with not necessarily aid but lots of investment (to better mobilize indigenous resources and/or create new markets for Chinese manufacturing) and zero demands. It'll be interesting to see which side wins out in the long run.
The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
This is like a mini Cold War, in terms of destitute third world nations caught in a tug-of-war between global powers and their respective ideologies. The U.S. on the one hand, with modest amounts of aid that comes with (generally speaking) benign or positive demands, like liberalizing markets or building schools or whatever; China on the other, with not necessarily aid but lots of investment (to better mobilize indigenous resources and/or create new markets for Chinese manufacturing) and zero demands. It'll be interesting to see which side wins out in the long run.
And a Sudanese peasant doesn't care whether the oil company drilling for oil and dumping sludge in his swamps is part of a western multinational or a Chinese-backed consortium. All he knows is that them oil workers make fine hostages. Same with the Nigerian delta guys.
The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
I think we're up to neo-neo-colonialism at this point. It's not as if decolonization meant that the West stopped meddling in the internal affairs of African (or Asian, etc) nations or stopped supporting brutal, dictatorial regimes. On the contrary.
Their-hands off approach is working as far as ingratiating themselves to African leaders at the cost of actual humanitarian efforts to improve the quality of life on the continent.
Please, spare me the bullshit white man's burden line about how the West has a moral obligation to make sure that Africans govern themselves 'properly.'
We've had close to a century of directed European rule in Africa, followed by a fifty year period of 'independence' and Western development. In large measure, it hasn't worked -- Africa is still mired in poverty despite its natural endowments, sub-Saharan Africa has been torn apart by genocide, civil wars, and foreign interventions and they remain on the outside and disadvantaged on just about every major economic agreement made in during this period.
There is no doubt that many of the ills that Africa faces today are a direct consequence of colonialism and its experience, and there are compelling arguments that those former colonial masters have some sort of obligations to their former subjects, but continuing on the path that the West has beaten for the last number of decades is folly. China, despite all of its domestic political and legal deficiencies, is not subject to the same legacy of colonialism that European nations are, and it does not overtly attempt to advance a stridently ideological agenda (as the USSR did and the West continues to do). The 'prosperity before justice' approach hasn't really been tried in Africa yet. China is evidence that at the very least, the considerable prosperity can be achieved in a relatively short period of time. That prosperity can do much to alleviate the widespread poverty that consumes much of Africa.
What's wrong with giving their approach a try? From an African perspective, why would anyone refuse development without ideological controls?
Because development isn't a monolithic process, and all development is most certainly not of equal quality?
You're going to have to be more precise in your African perspective, though. Are we talking from the point of view of an African despot, or an impoverished African whose government actively persecutes them?
The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
The 50 Zambians who used to work in the local mine but now can't because the Chinese companies bring in Chinese for low level positions might differ in opinion.
Also your making an error with all "development" being equal that's exactly the same stuff the western colonialists did - the location of mineral resources and African populations don't necessarily correlate, roads from the ports to the mines can go past bugger all farmers. A massive isolated interstate straight as an arrow from LA to Wyoming would hardly help the US as a whole, but that's the main kind of thing the Chinese are building.
To be clear, I didn't make any value judgments about whether or not "Chinese development" is any better or worse than "American/Western development" -- though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pretty biased towards aid programs with progressive humanitarian strings attached. I can't speak to the exact impact of Chinese commercial development of African infrastructure on typical Africans; all I really have to go by is a survey that NPR aired a segment about that claimed most Africans viewed Chinese companies relatively favorably.
I'm reading The Post-American World right now, and Fareed Zakaria basically attributes China's agnostic foreign policy to Confucianism, and specifically to China's (and India's) lack of a Protestant proselytizing tradition. I feel like that oversimplifies the matter, though. Sure, that might be a contributory factor, but I feel like the U.S.'s more demanding foreign policy owes more to our understanding of the role and expectations of the last superpower in a unipolar (or more accurately, 'many + 1') global power hierarchy; China and India feel they're not necessarily in a position to make demands of other nations because they're still relatively poor, developing nations.
The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
The road isn't being built in a way that is designed to help that Zambian get his crops to market. Maybe he'll get lucky, and the road will end up going where he needs it to go. Or, maybe, the pollution from the Chinese-run mine or oil field will pollute his fields so he can't grow crops. And the Chinese company running the mine will have no problems with shooting the Zambians working there if they ask for such outrageous benefits as "hard hats" and "not getting crushed in preventable mine accidents."
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The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
The road isn't being built in a way that is designed to help that Zambian get his crops to market. Maybe he'll get lucky, and the road will end up going where he needs it to go. Or, maybe, the pollution from the Chinese-run mine or oil field will pollute his fields so he can't grow crops. And the Chinese company running the mine will have no problems with shooting the Zambians working there if they ask for such outrageous benefits as "hard hats" and "not getting crushed in preventable mine accidents."
I admit that this is a pretty best-case scenario that I've put forward.
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No I was not calling you a Chinese Nationalist, by "you" and "your people" I mean the 86% of Chinese people from the poll. My contention (the thing I find false about that particular statement) is demonstrated with the following analogy: Gouda is definitely the only cheese that North Americans eat.
This is demonstratively false because there exists a North American person who has or will at some point in his/her life consumed cheese that is not Gouda. That person is me (I ate mozzarella just yesterday).
It is definitely an intrinsic American/Western belief that all people around the world strive for a democracy but that desire is perhaps a bit more muted among the Chinese.
This is demonstratively false because there exists an American/Western person who does not believe that every person around the world should strive for a democracy. That person is me.
In both of these sentences there is one and only one interpretation because they clearly make a definitive statement without uncertainty. In this case, that statement can be restated as "Because a person is American/Western that person believes every person around the world should strive for democracy, by the very nature of their being."
Had you written "Many American/Westerners believe that all people..." or even "A significant majority of American/Westerners believe..." there would have been room for other interpretations though in the later case I'd probably want to see citations.
It seems like you were ascribing some sort of political context to my contention-- which I suspect aligns with your "Americans need the whole world to be democratic whether they actually want democracy or not" mentality. I can assure you, my contention was solely on the patently false statement which I did not expect to have to break down this thoroughly.
Seems like just an argument of semantics to me where you're saying what I wrote has to be interpreted literally as all Americans/Westerners believe this without exception. I would think that people generally wouldn't just interpret things worded like this in such a fundamental and literal sense. So yeah, I would agree that obviously not all Americans/Westerners would have the same view. However, I don't think you can't question that one of the ideologies of US governments has been trying to spread democracy kind of like how the USSR used to hold onto a belief of a world revolution.
which is why I said my sole issue was with the semantics. The sentence was constructed in such a way that the only possible interpretation implies the fact that all westerners believe democracy is the only good system, which is incorrect. Literal semantics are kind of a bid deal when you can only take the arrangement of words at face value. If you want people to read "all" and "every" as "many" and "some" then use "many" and "some" instead.
But if that is really the only thing you wanted a talk about why did you write:
I'm not contesting your people's support of their government or even the effectiveness of your government's policies versus someone else's government's policies, but that line coupled with one from earlier where you specifically said "white people think this about my Country" has me questioning your motivation for your extremely spirited defense of policies and practices that can be argued by some to be worrisome.
It just seemed to me that you were calling me a nationalist or something. What would be my "motivations?" Am I like a government spokesman or something? I don't understand. But honestly, I am not really interested in these kind of debates where we look at every little piece of what people write because it loses sight of the main discussion that is going on.
The generalizations were the things I was contending, the rest was probing into the topic to try to understand your viewpoint more completely.
Given both the sweeping generalization of westerners and the sweeping generalization of white people I assumed your motivation was based on exactly the same kind of government and cultural conditioning that you're arguing the westerners and whites have against the Chinese, which is a double standard. Again, this is where semantics are a big deal-- had your generalizations been clarified I would not have assumed (incorrectly) that you were condemning the west but praising the east for the same action.
It's ironic in a sad kind of way that all the hand-wringing in the OP boils down to Americans wanting China to stop acting more American than America. Rapidly expanding military-industrial complex? Check. Exploitative neoliberal economic policies in Africa? Check. Addiction to nonrenewable fuels? Check. Too bad the OP didn't go for the hat trick and remind us about their corrupt, inhumane prison-industrial complex.
And?
I mean seriously, as a non-American, who would you rather have as your belligerent military and economic super-power?
Cause I'd pick the US over China any day of the week.
I'd rather live in the US than in China. That's domestic policy (and also Mexican food).
But if I didn't live in the US or China, I'd be a lot more wary of the US' foreign policy than China's. A LOT. And the respective domestic policies of the US and China wouldn't really concern me too much in comparison to their foreign policies. Hell, you think some Afghani shepherd who just watched a Predator kill his wife and kids cares whether a guy in Nebraska has the right to a jury trial?
In fact, I'm sure what, if any, relevance a nation's domestic policy has on their actions in the foreign policy sphere seeing as how often domestic-oriented talk about "principles" and "rights" end up as nothing more than blown smoke used to cover the advance of more tangible interests.
So with that in mind, I'd ask:
- How many countries has China invaded in the last 10 years?
- How many countries has China bombed in the last 20 years?
- How many coups has China organized and/or backed, how many Shahs and Pinochets and Duvaliers and Habrés and Mobutus and Brancos and Bautistas has China imposed on other nations?
Now if you want to give me Sweden as the dominant global power, fine. It ain't Sweden who's spent the last decade warmongering, or the last 60 installing murderers as heads of state for fun and profit.
tl;dr - China's domestic policies are a problem for people in China. What relevance does that have to China becoming a global military power? China's foreign policies in that scenario are more important than its domestic ones. And in terms of one's foreign policies causing death and destruction around the world, China compares favorably to the US.
When you ask "where in history has this ever happened" and I give you two examples, it's not really a dodge. But whatever.
I asked where 2 armies made something better and you gave me a list of an army beating on a weaker opponent. Do you think Vietnam would have been better with China going whole hog in there too?
Cuba had relative peace during the Cold War because the Soviets stuck up for them. Otherwise the US would have kept invading and funding coups until they finally overthrew Castro. It's what the we did everywhere the Commies didn't step in to seriously oppose us, such as in Chile and Iran.
Heck, it's what we're still doing today in Libya, and what we're mopping up after in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq was a result of no one standing up to the US invasion plan. And the international community allowing the US to do whatever the hell it wants in Iraq hasn't made the place any more peaceful than it was in 2000.
The idea that the playground will be more peaceful if one bully is allowed to run amok unopposed, beating up whoever he wants whenever he wants, makes no sense to me. Someone equally as powerful is needed to keep that bully in check. Either that or all the kids need to gang up against the bully.
Yeah, that worked out great with the whole "Cold War" thing.
Jesus, it's like you people haven't even glanced at a history, let alone read one.
The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
The one interesting quality I find in China's foreign policy (read: its international politico-economic policy) is that it's embarking on lots of no-strings-attached investment abroad. It's developing Africa without making human rights demands on its host nations
I think "development" is too optimistic a word for what China is doing.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
The 50 Zambians who used to work in the local mine but now can't because the Chinese companies bring in Chinese for low level positions might differ in opinion.
Also your making an error with all "development" being equal that's exactly the same stuff the western colonialists did - the location of mineral resources and African populations don't necessarily correlate, roads from the ports to the mines can go past bugger all farmers. A massive isolated interstate straight as an arrow from LA to Wyoming would hardly help the US as a whole, but that's the main kind of thing the Chinese are building.
They are, in fact, doing exactly what the colonial powers did before. (Building only enough infrastructure to rape the land)
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It means that the United States is never 'getting worse' until it does something more fuckawful than the trail of tears. What the fuck good is THAT as a metric?
I mean, obviously the US wasn't 'getting worse' when it decided to inter all the Japanese-Americans in world war 2. After all, it wasn't worse than the trail of tears..
Also, the economy? Well, there hasn't been a recession lately. Don't worry about it. You can tell, because things aren't as bad as they were at the height of the great depression.
Also, the health care situation in America? Totally hasn't been getting worse lately. You can tell, because 200 years ago? People died all the time from stupid shit. It's nowhere near that bad now, even if half of bankruptcies are due to health issues.
Thanks for the clarification.
And fair enough, they weren't exactly focusing on intellectual honesty in that piece.
Clearly, I can't see how an opposing viewpoint can even be held.
Within a single lifetime the US has gone from debt bondage slavery, women lacking the right to vote, and child labor to a presidential election where the two lead candidates were black and a woman. That's fucking staggering compared to other historical examples, and despite the problems, gay marriage will almost certainly be realized within the next 20 years. Current issues aside, the conservatives are not going to successfully keep the US forward social momentum hitched.
Yes things like waterboarding happen, but much worse was happening 30 years ago in secret. The fact that we know about shit like this is a massive step forward.
Yeah, most documentaries or news pieces on China are either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic to try and make them more interesting and get ratings. If its not "Oh no, the sleeping Dragon has awoken and is taking over the world" its "China's economy is on the road to collapse."
It's not a meaningless metric at all. It doesn't mean you can't bitch about the US not getting better faster though. And you won't see anyone argue with that. No one has said any different.
But the point is, you can't claim the US is sliding towards oppression or some bullshit like that. Because it's not.
But yes, it seems totally meaningless to say the US is still getting better just because the average quality of human rights in the US, starting from the trail of tears, is still higher than it is if you include the trail of tears.
There's so much awful crap the US could start to do before it got to the point of being as bad as the trail of tears. Would you really argue that 'well, on average it's still better than counting the trail of tears, so it's getting better!' ? Because no one wants to get anywhere near living in a country like the US at the time of the trail of tears.
If the US started regressing in civil rights, but hadn't yet reached the point predating the civil rights movement, would you argue that it's just not 'getting better fast enough?'
It seems as a minimum you'd be better off calculating how the US has done on human rights issues in ten year (or pick x number) time spans and graphing that out. Not 180 year timespans.
See, again your problem is you are looking at this on a huge time frame and assuming the rest of us are too. No one has said anything of the sort. Well, except you for some goosey reason.
I'm not talking "better then the trail of tears". I'm talking "better then even just 20 years ago". If the US starts regressing, point it out. But so far, on even like a time scale of a decade, the US has only been getting better.
What, did I hallucinate this?
No, you hallucinated the part where that was the ONLY comparison being made. And apparently hallucinated away all the other posts comparing it to much more recent events, including the one only 2 below your first statement on the matter.
First sentence of my first statement on the matter:
first post below mine
second post below mine
I honestly am not following you at all, here. I don't mean to sound snarky, I think we're just not at all on the same page, or something. I was agreeing with Quid in regards to SammyF and President Rex, both of whom brought up the trail of tears.
It was touched on in 11th grade US History for me, although I can't recall if it was actually textbook-based or not. The teacher seemed to like Soviet/Russian history, so it could have easily just been him.
As for the rest of your post. I would agree; a US policy that's improving doesn't negate the argument of whether China or the US would be a better superpower (one could easily argue that China's record has an improving trend in the last decades as well). It's also possible to argue that the United States' prestige and influence abroad is decreasing compared to other potential superpowers.
But to argue that the United States is somehow becoming worse in its conduct abroad seems short-sighted, misinformed or politically biased.
Yes, this. Or at the very least, the US is not getting appreciably worse.
As for Ego:
It may be important to note that my 2nd post may have contextualized my 1st post a bit more.
Where else are you going to get a metric if you don't refer to what a country has done in the past? This seems to argue that comparing our current situation to the past is meaningless. Unless you're Plato and plan on manifesting a hypothetical country all you can do is either compare a current country to its past, or to another country. And when you're speaking of whether something is getting better or worse it only makes sense to talk of an individual country's own past.
This also assumes that improvement is only attained when the situation is better than the baseline, which is also a misrepresentation of the argument.
It's not "we're getting better unless we're as bad as this past event." It's a trend of slow improvement over centuries, but that doesn't mean you discount intermittent points of improvement or setback. On the other hand, this also doesn't mean that the short-term trend is always improving, either.
...So I guess, no, I wouldn't argue, " on average it's still better than counting the trail of tears so it's getting better."
No I was not calling you a Chinese Nationalist, by "you" and "your people" I mean the 86% of Chinese people from the poll. My contention (the thing I find false about that particular statement) is demonstrated with the following analogy:
Gouda is definitely the only cheese that North Americans eat.
This is demonstratively false because there exists a North American person who has or will at some point in his/her life consumed cheese that is not Gouda. That person is me (I ate mozzarella just yesterday).
It is definitely an intrinsic American/Western belief that all people around the world strive for a democracy but that desire is perhaps a bit more muted among the Chinese.
This is demonstratively false because there exists an American/Western person who does not believe that every person around the world should strive for a democracy. That person is me.
In both of these sentences there is one and only one interpretation because they clearly make a definitive statement without uncertainty. In this case, that statement can be restated as "Because a person is American/Western that person believes every person around the world should strive for democracy, by the very nature of their being."
Had you written "Many American/Westerners believe that all people..." or even "A significant majority of American/Westerners believe..." there would have been room for other interpretations though in the later case I'd probably want to see citations.
It seems like you were ascribing some sort of political context to my contention-- which I suspect aligns with your "Americans need the whole world to be democratic whether they actually want democracy or not" mentality. I can assure you, my contention was solely on the patently false statement which I did not expect to have to break down this thoroughly.
New Zealand high school history class had a fair bit about it in the Russian revolution section. What really annoys me about the "hurr communist economies are all doomed to failure, just look at the USSR" thing is they are one of the worst examples to use for it: They were barely industrialized (and by classical marxism, not ready for revolution), in the middle of world war 1, the most deadly war in history when the revolution occurred, then got invaded by nearly every major power, then took the brunt of Germany's efforts in WW2 and had to move a huge amount of industrial capability back past the urals to keep it safe. When you compare that to the US's situation in the same timeframe, the great depression is pretty much the only close to equivalent event.
Do you know if they have this question for the US instead of china? Would be interested in that.
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I would guess that both the Olympics and a big earthquake would make the people of China more positive in their views of China.
1) Isn't a lot of the world dependent on cheap Chinese labour? In that sense, the Chinese economy is rather helping than hurting the world. Labour is still cheap in China.
2) Environment is regarded quite high, especially in urban areas. There have been a lot of discontet with the numerous food scandals (milk powder, pork, red-dyed chili and so forth), and there is a lot of discontet with pollution scandals. That environmental scandals occurs does not mean that people approve of it.
3) Why would anyone generally dislike China? Friendly people, rich culture, great food, beautiful nature. The current administration do bad things, true, but there have been large improvements over the last 10-20 years. I generally love Chine, even though some stuff is bad (the CP being the big thing here). I also generally love US, even though some stuff is bad over there.
Seems like just an argument of semantics to me where you're saying what I wrote has to be interpreted literally as all Americans/Westerners believe this without exception. I would think that people generally wouldn't just interpret things worded like this in such a fundamental and literal sense. So yeah, I would agree that obviously not all Americans/Westerners would have the same view. However, I don't think you can't question that one of the ideologies of US governments has been trying to spread democracy kind of like how the USSR used to hold onto a belief of a world revolution.
But if that is really the only thing you wanted a talk about why did you write:
It just seemed to me that you were calling me a nationalist or something. What would be my "motivations?" Am I like a government spokesman or something? I don't understand. But honestly, I am not really interested in these kind of debates where we look at every little piece of what people write because it loses sight of the main discussion that is going on.
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This is all as compared to the U.S., whose aid definitely comes with ideological strings attached. I guess, when you're desperate to feed a billion people who've just recently stumbled out of abject poverty, you're not as ideologically demanding of your international partners.
Eh, I think the government is too strong for that level to happen, but I think I see what you mean.
You have to wonder how ideologically demanding they would be either way. Their-hands off approach is working as far as ingratiating themselves to African leaders at the cost of actual humanitarian efforts to improve the quality of life on the continent.
Senegal's president:
Mozambique's Director of Promotional Investment:
Botswana's president:
Nigeria's president at a banquet for China's President Hu Jintao:
Great deal for those in charge that don't mind selling away their people's livelihood for the sake of individual success, not so great for the indigenous population that's becoming increasingly resentful of the Chinese exploiting their resources and driving local companies out of business by flooding their markets with cheap goods.
Global financial crisis if I had to guess. Certainly wasn't due to ethical investment practices or Fair Trade.
All of the money China is investing in Africa is meant to do two things (a) make it easier for China to extract African resources and (b) keep the local kleptocracies in Africa fat and happy. The end result is a symbiotic relationship between African elites and China that tends to screw over regular Africans.
It's neo-colonialism, really.
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A Zambian living on less than a dollar a day doesn't care if the new road near his village was built with the best intentions or the worst -- all he knows is that he now has a way to get his crops to market much more easily than he did before. Development is development.
This is like a mini Cold War, in terms of destitute third world nations caught in a tug-of-war between global powers and their respective ideologies. The U.S. on the one hand, with modest amounts of aid that comes with (generally speaking) benign or positive demands, like liberalizing markets or building schools or whatever; China on the other, with not necessarily aid but lots of investment (to better mobilize indigenous resources and/or create new markets for Chinese manufacturing) and zero demands. It'll be interesting to see which side wins out in the long run.
And a Sudanese peasant doesn't care whether the oil company drilling for oil and dumping sludge in his swamps is part of a western multinational or a Chinese-backed consortium. All he knows is that them oil workers make fine hostages. Same with the Nigerian delta guys.
I think we're up to neo-neo-colonialism at this point. It's not as if decolonization meant that the West stopped meddling in the internal affairs of African (or Asian, etc) nations or stopped supporting brutal, dictatorial regimes. On the contrary.
Please, spare me the bullshit white man's burden line about how the West has a moral obligation to make sure that Africans govern themselves 'properly.'
We've had close to a century of directed European rule in Africa, followed by a fifty year period of 'independence' and Western development. In large measure, it hasn't worked -- Africa is still mired in poverty despite its natural endowments, sub-Saharan Africa has been torn apart by genocide, civil wars, and foreign interventions and they remain on the outside and disadvantaged on just about every major economic agreement made in during this period.
There is no doubt that many of the ills that Africa faces today are a direct consequence of colonialism and its experience, and there are compelling arguments that those former colonial masters have some sort of obligations to their former subjects, but continuing on the path that the West has beaten for the last number of decades is folly. China, despite all of its domestic political and legal deficiencies, is not subject to the same legacy of colonialism that European nations are, and it does not overtly attempt to advance a stridently ideological agenda (as the USSR did and the West continues to do). The 'prosperity before justice' approach hasn't really been tried in Africa yet. China is evidence that at the very least, the considerable prosperity can be achieved in a relatively short period of time. That prosperity can do much to alleviate the widespread poverty that consumes much of Africa.
What's wrong with giving their approach a try? From an African perspective, why would anyone refuse development without ideological controls?
You're going to have to be more precise in your African perspective, though. Are we talking from the point of view of an African despot, or an impoverished African whose government actively persecutes them?
The 50 Zambians who used to work in the local mine but now can't because the Chinese companies bring in Chinese for low level positions might differ in opinion.
Also your making an error with all "development" being equal that's exactly the same stuff the western colonialists did - the location of mineral resources and African populations don't necessarily correlate, roads from the ports to the mines can go past bugger all farmers. A massive isolated interstate straight as an arrow from LA to Wyoming would hardly help the US as a whole, but that's the main kind of thing the Chinese are building.
Let's not lie and claim that they are any worse then Western companies either, though.
At a minimum, Western companies are governed by laws that prevent them from engaging in corruption or bribery.
The companies may not be any better (corporations are amoral, after all) but the framework in which they operate is at least mildly more "fair."
At least in theory, yes. Outside of US jurisdiction, US companies do tend to be a little more... adventurous.
I'm reading The Post-American World right now, and Fareed Zakaria basically attributes China's agnostic foreign policy to Confucianism, and specifically to China's (and India's) lack of a Protestant proselytizing tradition. I feel like that oversimplifies the matter, though. Sure, that might be a contributory factor, but I feel like the U.S.'s more demanding foreign policy owes more to our understanding of the role and expectations of the last superpower in a unipolar (or more accurately, 'many + 1') global power hierarchy; China and India feel they're not necessarily in a position to make demands of other nations because they're still relatively poor, developing nations.
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I admit that this is a pretty best-case scenario that I've put forward.
which is why I said my sole issue was with the semantics. The sentence was constructed in such a way that the only possible interpretation implies the fact that all westerners believe democracy is the only good system, which is incorrect. Literal semantics are kind of a bid deal when you can only take the arrangement of words at face value. If you want people to read "all" and "every" as "many" and "some" then use "many" and "some" instead.
The generalizations were the things I was contending, the rest was probing into the topic to try to understand your viewpoint more completely.
Given both the sweeping generalization of westerners and the sweeping generalization of white people I assumed your motivation was based on exactly the same kind of government and cultural conditioning that you're arguing the westerners and whites have against the Chinese, which is a double standard. Again, this is where semantics are a big deal-- had your generalizations been clarified I would not have assumed (incorrectly) that you were condemning the west but praising the east for the same action.
I'd rather live in the US than in China. That's domestic policy (and also Mexican food).
But if I didn't live in the US or China, I'd be a lot more wary of the US' foreign policy than China's. A LOT. And the respective domestic policies of the US and China wouldn't really concern me too much in comparison to their foreign policies. Hell, you think some Afghani shepherd who just watched a Predator kill his wife and kids cares whether a guy in Nebraska has the right to a jury trial?
In fact, I'm sure what, if any, relevance a nation's domestic policy has on their actions in the foreign policy sphere seeing as how often domestic-oriented talk about "principles" and "rights" end up as nothing more than blown smoke used to cover the advance of more tangible interests.
So with that in mind, I'd ask:
- How many countries has China invaded in the last 10 years?
- How many countries has China bombed in the last 20 years?
- How many coups has China organized and/or backed, how many Shahs and Pinochets and Duvaliers and Habrés and Mobutus and Brancos and Bautistas has China imposed on other nations?
Now if you want to give me Sweden as the dominant global power, fine. It ain't Sweden who's spent the last decade warmongering, or the last 60 installing murderers as heads of state for fun and profit.
tl;dr - China's domestic policies are a problem for people in China. What relevance does that have to China becoming a global military power? China's foreign policies in that scenario are more important than its domestic ones. And in terms of one's foreign policies causing death and destruction around the world, China compares favorably to the US.
The USSR wasn't a true counter-balance for the vast majority of the Cold War, outside of deterring a nuclear exchange. In most of the proxy wars they talked a lot and did nothing. Cuba was one place where they actually planted their feet and stood up to the US, chest to chest. Result: the US quit trying to invade Cuba, and decades of peace between 2 enemies only 90 miles apart.
They are, in fact, doing exactly what the colonial powers did before. (Building only enough infrastructure to rape the land)
It didn't do anything to help Africa then either.