okay, but...
tell you what CN, repeal your one-party system, take human rights and patent/IP abuses seriously and then we in turn can take you seriously.
also, Mao was a terrible person.
While the United States wrestles with president Donald J Trump's attempt to suspend refugee intakes and ban visits from citizens of seven nations, China's decided it's time to make it easier to become a permanent resident, beef up its diplomatic corps, elevate the role science and technology plays in its economy and even improve …
Is that china's international warmongering, surveillance and spying? Or the US' international warmongering, surveillance and spying? Or Britain's? Or Russia's?
If its one thing that we all seem to agree on its the need for international warmongering, surveillance and spying :)
Well, get rid of ridiculous international warmongering, surveillance and spying.
Not sure if you're talking about the Chinese or the US here. As far as I can tell, the US has got a far larger and better developed network for spying and clandestine operations than the Chinese. At least the Chinese do not pretend to be anything but what they actually are.
Goals, goals, goals. But first, the most important goal:
"To get rich is glorious!" (致富光荣)
That is, before the goals you want, we must enrich the country by enriching the people. Once they have entrenched the yuan as the dominant world currency, then they can bestow beneficence on citizen and world alike.
(If you looked at world history, and with a long view, seeing the successes/failures and importantly the misdirected/mistimed efforts, in what order would you implement development, diplomacy, democracy, beneficence? And I think that is why the majority of Chinese aren't too vocal about direction - they are going along with "A rising tide floats all junks." I haven't seen too many missteps since Mao. Lots of face stomping, but not development missteps.)
Once they have entrenched the yuan as the dominant world currency, then they can bestow beneficence on citizen and world alike.
Actually, that is already in progress. One of the pillars that kept the US dollar from crashing as it ought to given the countries staggering debt is that everyone needed it as a reserve currency. Now the Renminbi is accepted as a reserve currency in its own right it can start eating away at the dollar position. Add to that that the US has just lost its grip on the Euro thanks to a looming Brexit (messing up the Euro and the EU block was UK's main role in its "special" relationship with the US) and that pillar one gone.
Pillar two is the use of the US dollar as energy currency, which was the real reason the US went to war on Saddam Hussein: he had the temerity to start selling oil in Euros. The US could not afford the rest of the Middle East to do the same and so destabilise the dollar, so they dreamt up an excuse (eagerly assisted by one T Blair who did well out of it) and bombed the bejezus out of the nation as a warning to all the others. The problem: China did a big oil deal last year with Russia which involved no dollars at all, and they're a tad too big to bomb - they could actually meaningfully strike back, unlike the sort of backward places where you can just keep on sending drones, kill innocents and call it "collateral damage" to make it right (sorry, my cynicism escaped there, I'll put it back in its box).
The last gotcha with the US dollar is that it's not money (represented by real value), but currency (a floating value that can be manipulated at will) - those holding stores of dollar reserves are kept beholden to the US for not messing around with its value too much or their dollar stores devalue with it. There are only two things that hold up the US dollars up in value right now: trust and fear.
The Chinese government has always played the long game - and Trump is helping them mightily with taking the trust factor down quite a few notches. Or do you not realise just how low the trust in the US must have sunk for the Chinese to start offering something better?
For people who have been watching US international relations, this day is certainly one for the history books.
BTW, slight aside: here's an explanation of the difference between renminbi and yuan
No Mao was great! He was a beautiful leader, he made China Great again. Walls - they have a Great wall - and you can SEE it, not like that invisible wall keeping us safe from Mexican Muslim terrorists like the ones responsible for the Springfield massacre, and the Mexicans paid for the Chinese wall! And the Chinese also have a MOAT between themselves and Mexico - the Mexicans paid for that too.
And their leaders are a great colour - YELLOW - that's so much more beautiful than ORANGE.
Facts - they don't have lies or alternative facts - just what the leaders want people to hear - they are almost as good at it as the US dictator, Trump.
China's political system is so great, the people vote, then the establishment chooses the loser as the new leader - it's such a beautiful system.
(Sorry, too long for a tweet!)
, not.
They want innovation, but block innovation by limiting internet connectivity and using old education system. Most innovations today are based on previous innovations. You get free internet, you create search engine, webpage, entertainment, etc. Limiting them means they have to recreate the wheel.
See that fake apple store? Yea, they can only copy since innovation is limited for a good reason.
If I take potshots at my glorious 'leaders' on twitter, I don't want to be disappeared thank you.
No, no, no, you got that all wrong. It's "extraordinarily rendered". If you take potshots from within HK, yes, that's a troublesome issue, but if you do this from anywhere else you won't have to worry about people in black sticking a needle in you and then flying your now inert body back to a place outside China so it can claim it doesn't do bad things to people.
The US certainly cannot claim the moral high ground here.
In this context I like this statement in a recent speech by Angela Jolie:
The lesson of the years we have spent fighting terrorism since Sept. 11 is that every time we depart from our values we worsen the very problem we are trying to contain.
In my opinion a nice and succinct summary.
"It's a b*tch to move, though.."
All you need is a couple of big trucks and a marching choir :-)
While making these claims, China runs concentration camps where dissidents are harvested of organs for the Party hierarchy, and any member of the media who dares criticise the Party line is liable to wind up in concentration camps being DNA -tested for matching those Party members.
They are dredging ecologically sensitive reefs in order to build military bases on reefs that properly belong to the Philippines according to the International Court in the Hague. Where is the outrage such actions should provoke from the Greens?
Compared to this moral abyss, the USA has plenty of moral high ground compared to China.
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