China's Politics And Stuff

[the stinking enigma]

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Edited June 5, 2020 by the stinking enigma

[Max Power]

9 hours ago, Chinahand said:

China is flexing it's muscles and likely taking advantage of the West's self absorption in its failure to stop Coronavirus, something China is using to crow about the superiority of its political system.

Firstly it is ramming through a security law in Hong Kong bringing CCP ideas on sedition and dissent into the supposedly self governing territory. Link.

Secondly, moving troops into Ladakh which is a disputed region in the Hindu Kush China occupied in 1962 after a short war with India and which has been an occasional source of flare ups ever since. Link. 

Taiwan next? 

This is probably a try out to see how the rest of the world reacts, before the big one.

Edited May 24, 2020 by Max Power

[Chinahand]

 

[Chinahand]

Remember - 100s of people had been shot the night before.

Tank Man knew these tanks had blood on their tracks.

An inspiringly brave act of political defiance.

Click the link for more: https://youtu.be/qq8zFLIftGk

 

[the stinking enigma]

It's one of the most iconic moments in my lifetime. Certainly top 10. Is the anniversary commemorated in any way in china? 

[the stinking enigma]

I'd like to see tank man try that shit in iraq while holding 2 satchells.

[Chinahand]

CPC enforced amnesia is all that publicly exists.

[woolley]

19 hours ago, the stinking enigma said:

It's one of the most iconic moments in my lifetime. Certainly top 10. Is the anniversary commemorated in any way in china? 

I think the politburo has a slap up party each year to mark the occasion.

[Chinahand]

Interesting twitter thread of pictures from Beida [Peking University] immediately after the massacre.

 

[Chinahand]

On 5/3/2020 at 10:05 PM, Chinahand said:

Prof Rory Truex of Princeton has put his entire Chinese Politics course lectures onto Youtube.

https://youtu.be/hOcXk_35-rI

 

I recommended these a while ago, and have only slowly got around to watching them.

I will say the fourth lecture is particularly good, especially on the use of deliberate political violence by the Communist Party and Mao in particular.  There is a current within the CPC which uses division and violent conflict within society to advance its political agenda and as a result millions of people have died within China, whether in struggle sessions in the 1950s, Cultural Revolution violence in the 60s and 70s, Tiananmen in the 80s, the repression in the 90s as a consequence of Tiananmen, and now in Xin Jiang.  The CPC as a strategy to maintain power does not want a civil society to develop separate from it and so actively profits from keeping society divided and distrustful.  Even more worryingly nowadays is its continuing rhetoric of grievance in the international sphere and using a claim of Chinese uniqueness to divide China from the rest of the world - presenting its population with a stark choice - accept China's uniqueness or be a traitor.  Such divisiveness will have huge consequences not only for China, but also for the rest of the world. 

Politics which deliberately divides and destroys trust is dangerously corrosive to society.  We need to understand that and beware it.

[Chinahand]

On 5/24/2020 at 12:38 PM, Chinahand said:

China is flexing it's muscles and likely taking advantage of the West's self absorption in its failure to stop Coronavirus, something China is using to crow about the superiority of its political system.

... moving troops into Ladakh which is a disputed region in the Hindu Kush China occupied in 1962 after a short war with India and which has been an occasional source of flare ups ever since. Link. 

Multiple dead in hand to hand combat between Indian and Chinese troops. Link

Both sides insist no bullet has been fired in four decades, and the Indian army said on Tuesday that "no shots were fired" in this latest skirmish.

How a clash that did not involve an exchange of fire could prove so lethal is unclear. There are reports that it was fought with rocks and clubs

Big risk of things going noisy.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Chinahand

[Chinahand]

Fascinating Reuter's article showing satellite photos of the disputed area on the India China border.

[Uhtred]

Rather soon, the Chinese need a damn good hiding. The problem is, there’s no one to deliver it. Trump won’t, NATO won’t. And it’s unlikely to be Modi.

[the stinking enigma]

A little context to the Huawei hysteria.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/17/us-judge-whatsapp-lawsuit-against-israeli-spyware-firm-nso-can-proceed

[woolley]

On 6/28/2020 at 1:44 PM, Uhtred said:

Rather soon, the Chinese need a damn good hiding. The problem is, there’s no one to deliver it. Trump won’t, NATO won’t. And it’s unlikely to be Modi.

It's an interesting concept, but the conundrum comes down to nuclear weapons. Both sides have them, and this principle has largely kept the peace between the big boys since 1945. Cold war, proxy wars, and all of that notwithstanding. Nobody wants to be fried. In the nature of humanity though, you do wonder if a way will be found, and some tacit accommodation will be reached, or at least understood, de facto, that there might be some conflict short of an all out nuclear war. Taiwan might be a case in point, or perhaps a confrontation in the South China Sea. The problem is that nobody can control a miscalculation, and then where does it stop spiraling to a situation where one side concludes that, after all, a strike is preferable to defeat.