Is trade conflict with China beginning to broaden into something bigger and more long-lasting? It would appear so. Much of the current backlash is a product of the West’s long-standing, but misplaced, fawning and awe over Beijing’s historically unprecedented economic advancement over the past 30 years: the naïve assumption that its growing prosperity would inevitably lead to a more open, politically liberalized country whose interests would more closely align with those of the West.
As those expectations have been dashed, so too the backlash has arisen accordingly: Many now view China as both a trade cheat and a mounting global security threat, as it approaches economic parity and strategic rivalry with the West. And China’s leadership appears less well equipped both politically and economically than its Western counterparts to deal with this rising conflict, as it metastasizes into a fully fledged Cold War 2.0.
By any standard measure, it has not been a good few weeks for China. In November alone, retail sales slumped to a 15-year low; the country’s exports rose 5.4% from a year earlier, the weakest performance registered since a 3% contraction in March, and well short of the originally forecasted rise of 10%; car sales fell to levels not seen since the 1990s; the vast majority of companies directly impacted by US tariffs (around 86%) have reported a decline in orders, “according to a survey of 200 chief financial officers in manufacturing firms with significant export business”; and the default risk (a gauge of financial stress) for Chinese companies has climbed to the highest level in 13 years, according to the Moody’s rating agency.
Most ominous, a senior executive from China’s largest telecom-equipment manufacturer, Huawei (also the daughter of its president), was arrested in Canada, after a US extradition request on the grounds of suspected money-laundering designed to mask evading US trade sanctions imposed on Iran.
This arrest took place against a backdrop in which Beijing has increasingly been viewed as a security threat. In addition to the long-standing charges of intellectual-property theft, China is now being accused of conducting hacking attacks on the home-country servers of big Western companies, and using Huawei’s new 5G (fifth-generation wireless) network as a platform for this cyber-espionage.
This national-security angle is adding to the traditional complaints about Chinese trade practices. In echoes of the old Cold War, the so-called “Five Eyes” (an organization that was originally established among the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand after World War II to counter Soviet influence) are now actively exchanging sensitive intelligence on China’s foreign activities. In aggregate, this is triggering concerns that we’re entering new and more dangerous terrain between the West and China.
Oddly, this rising hostility has sprung from exactly the opposite set of circumstances that created the foundations for the original Cold War. In contrast to diplomat and historian George Kennan’s famous telegram about the old Soviet Union (which correctly rebutted US president Franklin D Roosevelt’s naïve assumptions about Josef Stalin and provided the diplomatic underpinnings for a sustained policy of Western containment after World War II), today’s Cold War 2.0 is typified by what author James Mann calls the West’s “China fantasy,” a notion encapsulated by former US president George W Bush’s remark: “Trade freely with China, and time is on our side.”
The main idea was that Beijing would ultimately internalize Western norms and values as it integrated and prospered via an increasingly globalized world economy. It is worth recalling that similarly optimistic assessments about trade and globalization were made about the world on the threshold of World War I.
But much as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand quickly dispelled early-20th-century optimism, a similarly rapid, albeit less dramatic, reassessment of China is now under way, especially given the increasingly autocratic nature of the current regime under President Xi Jinping. Most striking is that even long-standing China doves are now echoing the language of old-guard hawks, who have long viewed trade with China as a zero-sum game.
The Huawei extradition request is also symptomatic of this reassessment, which is increasing the Western assault against Beijing, and taking it well beyond Donald Trump’s earlier tariff tantrums.
Certainly, the historic tendency to see China’s economic rise through rose-tinted glasses is not a charge one can make about the Trump administration, which came into power viewing Beijing as a major strategic threat. When President Trump first introduced his tariffs, the perception was that China’s wise policy mandarins would play the long game, and simply wait out the tariffs, which, it was argued, would affect the US more adversely than China. Beijing itself proclaimed that it would refuse to negotiate “with a gun pointed to its head,” and pointedly threatened countermeasures.
Since the trade war was launched, however, the US economy has not shown any significant signs of weakness, even allowing for the recent stock-market jitters. The official unemployment rate is at a near 50-year low, and labor-force participation is rising; wage rates are picking up, yet there are few signs that inflation is about to take off.
By contrast, China is slumping badly and appears eager to negotiate despite (or, perhaps, because of) mounting US pressure. If anything, by demanding the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s president, Ren Zhengfei, the Trump administration has upped the ante further.
Beijing’s response to the pressure has been to offer up one concession after another: substantially cutting tariffs on US auto imports into China, upping purchases of US soybeans and other crops, and even offering substantial amendments to the country’s “China 2025” industrial policy (hitherto savaged by US trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer, among others, as protectionist), by promising greater access for foreign companies.
That was once considered a red line by China’s negotiating team. Retaliation for the extradition of Meng has been directed at Canada, rather than the US itself.
Why did so many get this calculation about China so wrong? Part of it, of course, is a product of an intense, albeit understandable, animus toward Donald Trump himself. Another aspect reflects a visceral attachment to free trade
By any objective standard, these are not the signs of a country negotiating from a position of strength.
Why did so many get this calculation about China so wrong? Part of it, of course, is a product of an intense, albeit understandable, animus toward Donald Trump himself. Another aspect reflects a visceral attachment to free trade.
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has exploited this sentiment, positioning his country as the new champion of globalization and free trade, even though recent trade pacts have had far less to do with a free exchange of traded goods, more an entrenchment of existing multinational corporate privileges designed to subvert domestic regulation. And China itself hardly qualifies as a paragon of free trade.
But in a broader sense, China has not conformed to the expected Western script. In spite of integrating itself into the global economy under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Beijing has not internalized liberal rule-based norms implicit in these organizations.
In fact, under President Xi, the Communist Party’s political strength and “purity” have become an end in itself, to which economic reforms have become subordinate (“purity” being a term with strong Leninist connotations).
Not only is this adversely affecting China’s economic performance, but it is contributing to changing Western perceptions of Xi’s government and provoking countermeasures: restricting Chinese investment in sensitive high tech industries, limiting academic exchanges at Western universities, and more closely scrutinizing Beijing’s diplomatic overtures around the globe.
The latter is occurring (in the words of The Economist) because of concerns that “China is co-opting institutions such as the UN and the WTO to make them safe for authoritarianism, state-backed capitalism and other threats to a rules-based order.” As the magazine notes, the Western figures leading this charge are not just anti-China trade hawks, but “ex-doves [who] agree that 20 years of patiently cajoling China to change has not worked.”
In other words, the relationship is unlikely to revert to the status quo ante. Globalization is dead; the world will likely fragment into regional trading blocs as a result. The “Chimerica nexus,” which married China’s massive labor force and savings surplus to the US consumer and housing market, has been shattered. Global supply chains are likely to be re-domiciled closer to home (the newly concluded United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement being the first illustration of that phenomenon).
“Reciprocity,” once a code word associated with trade protectionism, is now seen as a vital national-security quid pro quo, a safeguard that will govern future negotiations with Beijing.
This is already posing grave economic difficulties for China. Likewise politically, as the country is poorly equipped to deal with these mounting challenges. Unlike the US (where constitutional safeguards can mitigate the capriciousness of a volatile leader like Trump), the increasing concentration of power and control around President Xi means that there are fewer checks or constraints to balance his government in the event that it makes errors and miscalculates in its dealings with the rest of the world.
Modern China has never been a liberal democracy, but the earlier introduction of term limits for Communist Party political posts (now scrapped) provided a check or, at the very least, introduced a degree of limited accountability, had Xi been forced to hand over the presidency to some new leader in 2022. On the other hand, as economist George Magnus argues in Red Flags:
“Unbridled power, the disincentives to argue with or reason against the leader, the heavy hand of state censorship and limitations on learning … are not ideal, hand-maidens of dynamic reform and high economic aspiration.”
This is especially true given the mounting challenges for China’s leadership as it faces new, potentially hostile economic and political terrain vis a vis the West. The fundamental tension among modernity, markets and a rules-based order on the one hand, and the maintenance of an arbitrary one-party state on the other, is for now being resolved in favor of increased authoritarianism, occurring in the context of deteriorating economic growth.
The problem is that the whole basis of the Communist Party of China’s national legitimacy has been predicated on its continuing ability to deliver growth and prosperity to its people. Minus the prosperity, the party’s political position becomes more tenuous, especially as it is increasingly identified as a proximate source for Cold War 2.0.
Historically, the reflexive response of the CPC has been more repression (often under the guise of anti-corruption probes), more politically driven economic projects (which actually detract from growth in the long term), fabricated targets, more debt-fueled “white elephants” via the state-owned enterprises, less transparency, and more overall financial fragility.
But if the West continues to perceive China as a security threat to be managed, rather than a friend in need, it is hard not to imagine yet more tension (trade and otherwise) or, indeed, outright conflict, breaking out in the years ahead from the resultant fallout.
This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute, which provided it to Asia Times.
In his imagination China will be European. China is where it is because it is Chinese, not mimicking the West. You can try to bring it down, but would not succeed. The Chinese people are fully behind the leadership.
In his imagination China will be European. China is where it is because it is Chinese, not mimicking the West. You can try to bring it down, but would not succeed. The Chinese people are fully behind the leadership.
All these crap about getting CHINA to be more like them …Well they have been containing China for almost 2 centuries …and now they want US to be like them !!! What crap …You should be more like US !!!
All these crap about getting CHINA to be more like them …Well they have been containing China for almost 2 centuries …and now they want US to be like them !!! What crap …You should be more like US !!!
Wow. Has this author taken a look at the West in recent years? The clouds of teargas might have obscured his view. Police robots beating the livin be jeesus out of peaceful protestors all over the West. Every country drowning in debt. Journalists either thrown in jail or drummed out of their profession simply for voicing dissenting views. Rule of Law? Where? People starving in poverty while militarism reigns supreme? in the US alone 2.5 million people in jails that the UN considers inhumane and in defiance of UN declaration of human rights. jullian Assange held in the Equadorian embassy for the last 6 years because he exposed war crimes of the US military. The US bombing the crap out of 7 different third world countries as i am writing this. While China has risen 800 million people out of poverty the West has driven a corresponding number into poverty.
Why in the world would China be interested in copying this political model? For the good of the world the world should be copying China`s model. it has a proven track record.
Wow. Has this author taken a look at the West in recent years? The clouds of teargas might have obscured his view. Police robots beating the livin be jeesus out of peaceful protestors all over the West. Every country drowning in debt. Journalists either thrown in jail or drummed out of their profession simply for voicing dissenting views. Rule of Law? Where? People starving in poverty while militarism reigns supreme? in the US alone 2.5 million people in jails that the UN considers inhumane and in defiance of UN declaration of human rights. jullian Assange held in the Equadorian embassy for the last 6 years because he exposed war crimes of the US military. The US bombing the crap out of 7 different third world countries as i am writing this. While China has risen 800 million people out of poverty the West has driven a corresponding number into poverty.
Why in the world would China be interested in copying this political model? For the good of the world the world should be copying China`s model. it has a proven track record.
I coudn’t see any logic in this post. Basically it seemed to be claiming that because China hadn’t met Western liberals’ hopes to evolve into a liberal democracy, globalisation was dead and conflict with China was inevitable. There was no carefully-reasoned argument explaining why this would be the case, nor is there any intuitive reason to think it’s true. China isn’t trying to export an alien ideology to the rest of the world, or to dominate it with military force (the USA has done both). All it wants is to regain the position of dominant regional power which it has historically held because of its size, industry and culture. While that might butt up against other countries’ interests it’s hardly evidence of Chinese malevolence.
BTW thanks for the throwaway line that "the US economy has not shown any significant signs of weakness". It gave me a good laugh, coming just after I read a report that most US CFOs and economists expect a recession by 2020 at the latest. The truth is that the USA is in inevitable decline from its unique position as the only global superpower. It will be up to Washington whether it faces up to this reality and manages its transition to a multi-polar world gracefully, or whether it drags the planet into appalling conflicts in a desperate, selfish attempt to retain global hegemony.
I coudn’t see any logic in this post. Basically it seemed to be claiming that because China hadn’t met Western liberals’ hopes to evolve into a liberal democracy, globalisation was dead and conflict with China was inevitable. There was no carefully-reasoned argument explaining why this would be the case, nor is there any intuitive reason to think it’s true. China isn’t trying to export an alien ideology to the rest of the world, or to dominate it with military force (the USA has done both). All it wants is to regain the position of dominant regional power which it has historically held because of its size, industry and culture. While that might butt up against other countries’ interests it’s hardly evidence of Chinese malevolence.
BTW thanks for the throwaway line that "the US economy has not shown any significant signs of weakness". It gave me a good laugh, coming just after I read a report that most US CFOs and economists expect a recession by 2020 at the latest. The truth is that the USA is in inevitable decline from its unique position as the only global superpower. It will be up to Washington whether it faces up to this reality and manages its transition to a multi-polar world gracefully, or whether it drags the planet into appalling conflicts in a desperate, selfish attempt to retain global hegemony.
Marshall writes: " World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Beijing has not internalized liberal rule-based norms implicit in these organizations."
This is garbage. China has complied with WTO but it does not mean it must comply with IMF and the WB. Liberal rule-base IMF has wrought havoc on Greece’s economy, and numerous other countries in Latin America and Asia.
Again he writes: " recent trade pacts ( by China ) have had far less to do with a free exchange of traded goods, more an entrenchment of existing multinational corporate privileges designed to subvert domestic regulation."
Ha. This is exactly what TTP and TTIP of the " liberal world order " is all about, entrenching MNCs to subvert domestic laws where MNCs can sue governments for enacting laws that negatively impact the profits of the MNCs and the tribunal consists of corporate lawyers. An effect of this would be the inability of countries to enact laws to protect the environment.
He writes : " The main idea was that Beijing would ultimately internalize Western norms and values as it integrated and prospered. "
This is typical of the arrogance of the imperialist whites claiming that their values are superior to all, the shining city on the hill. Why should China internalize western norms and values ? These western values have created massive financial destruction on the world in 2008 without meeting out justice to the criminal financial executives, these values inflict endless wars on numerous countries killing, maiming millions, destroying countries and institutions, all based on lies. These values declared wars on innocent civilians by imposing financial sanctions. These values force the domestic laws of one country, the US, on the entire world. These values vomited out a grotesque, lying narcissist to be President of the USA. These values produced an ongoing 21 trillion USDollar fraud by the Pentagon without narry an investigation to bring the fraudsters to justice.
I can carry on and on……
Marshall writes: " World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Beijing has not internalized liberal rule-based norms implicit in these organizations."
This is garbage. China has complied with WTO but it does not mean it must comply with IMF and the WB. Liberal rule-base IMF has wrought havoc on Greece’s economy, and numerous other countries in Latin America and Asia.
Again he writes: " recent trade pacts ( by China ) have had far less to do with a free exchange of traded goods, more an entrenchment of existing multinational corporate privileges designed to subvert domestic regulation."
Ha. This is exactly what TTP and TTIP of the " liberal world order " is all about, entrenching MNCs to subvert domestic laws where MNCs can sue governments for enacting laws that negatively impact the profits of the MNCs and the tribunal consists of corporate lawyers. An effect of this would be the inability of countries to enact laws to protect the environment.
He writes : " The main idea was that Beijing would ultimately internalize Western norms and values as it integrated and prospered. "
This is typical of the arrogance of the imperialist whites claiming that their values are superior to all, the shining city on the hill. Why should China internalize western norms and values ? These western values have created massive financial destruction on the world in 2008 without meeting out justice to the criminal financial executives, these values inflict endless wars on numerous countries killing, maiming millions, destroying countries and institutions, all based on lies. These values declared wars on innocent civilians by imposing financial sanctions. These values force the domestic laws of one country, the US, on the entire world. These values vomited out a grotesque, lying narcissist to be President of the USA. These values produced an ongoing 21 trillion USDollar fraud by the Pentagon without narry an investigation to bring the fraudsters to justice.
I can carry on and on……
Thank you well said. Yes you could go on and on because the rot in the West goes right to the core. Why are people turning to populist leaders all over the West? Because they are praying for the kind of strong, intelligent and corruption fighting leadership like China has. They yearn for the type of Government that has raised 800 million of it`s people out of poverty, not the Western style Democracies that has driven the corresponding number of people into poverty. They are tired of being ripped off by the Capitalist controlled corruption ridden governments of the West. People are getting off their knees , They know there is something better that the chaotic systems of government promoted by the West because they know that the illusion that everyone shouting at once and total anarchy which is Western styled democracy is only a ruse so that the 1% can suck all of the wealth out of the West for themselves. They are finally waking up to the fact that democracy is loved by the 1% because they can buy it and own it. it has nothing to do with freedom. Oh yes the 99% does have the freedom to starve and freeze to death in the dark. The Capitalist do permit that freedom.
Thank you well said. Yes you could go on and on because the rot in the West goes right to the core. Why are people turning to populist leaders all over the West? Because they are praying for the kind of strong, intelligent and corruption fighting leadership like China has. They yearn for the type of Government that has raised 800 million of it`s people out of poverty, not the Western style Democracies that has driven the corresponding number of people into poverty. They are tired of being ripped off by the Capitalist controlled corruption ridden governments of the West. People are getting off their knees , They know there is something better that the chaotic systems of government promoted by the West because they know that the illusion that everyone shouting at once and total anarchy which is Western styled democracy is only a ruse so that the 1% can suck all of the wealth out of the West for themselves. They are finally waking up to the fact that democracy is loved by the 1% because they can buy it and own it. it has nothing to do with freedom. Oh yes the 99% does have the freedom to starve and freeze to death in the dark. The Capitalist do permit that freedom.
Well thats one view. The author when making comparisons fails to mention Fellugia, you know that city that the US flattened and refused even the Red Cross entry because it did not want the world to know about the attrocities and war crimes it had committed there. Please in future try and tell us all about war. Chechnya was no worse than Iraq, with it`s 2 million dead, 8 million refugees, and completely flattened country, which by the way has unlike Chechnya has never been rebuilt.
Well thats one view. The author when making comparisons fails to mention Fellugia, you know that city that the US flattened and refused even the Red Cross entry because it did not want the world to know about the attrocities and war crimes it had committed there. Please in future try and tell us all about war. Chechnya was no worse than Iraq, with it`s 2 million dead, 8 million refugees, and completely flattened country, which by the way has unlike Chechnya has never been rebuilt.
Yes, you are right, Thomas Kuhn. And the capitalists have the freedom to bomb the living daylights out of the millions of innocents and these innocents have the freedom to be bombed.
Yes, you are right, Thomas Kuhn. And the capitalists have the freedom to bomb the living daylights out of the millions of innocents and these innocents have the freedom to be bombed.
This is an disingenuous piece with a ton of malice against anything that undermines unrestraint brutal capitalism and the Military Industrial Complex and bias for the so called Western democratic darlings which merely managed to package their exploits better. The lack of intellectual integrity and superficial facile arguments presented here are nothing but cheap Western propaganda. In fact this idiot needs some schooling and it seems like Asia Times is going bat sh*t crazy for one set of practices sounding more like his masters voice losing its little established credibility.
I suggest using a certain editorial discretion and introducing some integrity and some substance into these essays.. Peace .. Z
This is an disingenuous piece with a ton of malice against anything that undermines unrestraint brutal capitalism and the Military Industrial Complex and bias for the so called Western democratic darlings which merely managed to package their exploits better. The lack of intellectual integrity and superficial facile arguments presented here are nothing but cheap Western propaganda. In fact this idiot needs some schooling and it seems like Asia Times is going bat sh*t crazy for one set of practices sounding more like his masters voice losing its little established credibility.
I suggest using a certain editorial discretion and introducing some integrity and some substance into these essays.. Peace .. Z
For everyone who doubts what the author says isn’t the gospel truth or isn’t what to happen soon, that’s because U haven’t watch enough Foxnews or watch all the Harry Potter series over and over, or see the all the Disney Princesses. The current dominant trend in Anglo-Saxon, eg UK/US/Five Eyes, is use your feelings and wish hard and it will come true. hahaha
For everyone who doubts what the author says isn’t the gospel truth or isn’t what to happen soon, that’s because U haven’t watch enough Foxnews or watch all the Harry Potter series over and over, or see the all the Disney Princesses. The current dominant trend in Anglo-Saxon, eg UK/US/Five Eyes, is believe in your feelings or gut, and wish hard and it will come true. hahaha
For everyone who doubts what the author says isn’t the gospel truth or isn’t what to happen soon, that’s because U haven’t watch enough Foxnews or watch all the Harry Potter series over and over, or see the all the Disney Princesses. The current dominant trend in Anglo-Saxon, eg UK/US/Five Eyes, is believe in your feelings or gut, and wish hard and it will come true. hahaha
China is a fascist regime. Like Mussolini’s regime, it uses the free market to build its power both internally and externally. The economic advantages are used to build a strong police state and a formidable army. No company is independent. Ultimately every corporation is at the mercy of the one party state. And, like Mussolini, the dictator uses extreme nationalist feelings to keep the support from its people.
China is a fascist regime. Like Mussolini’s regime, it uses the free market to build its power both internally and externally. The economic advantages are used to build a strong police state and a formidable army. No company is independent. Ultimately every corporation is at the mercy of the one party state. And, like Mussolini, the dictator uses extreme nationalist feelings to keep the support from its people.
China and The West are of two fundamentally different cultures and world views. China rising has again chosen a predatory world view. Full Stop. There is no reconciling with their current intentions.
China and The West are of two fundamentally different cultures and world views. China rising has again chosen a predatory world view. Full Stop. There is no reconciling with their current intentions.
Because there is no other choice
Because there is no other choice
Why don’t you move to China so that you can get a reality check. China is a totalitarian Communist country that steals intellectual property from the US in order to even have a chance of competing with us. Only a fool would think there is moral equivalence betweet China and and United States.
Why don’t you move to China so that you can get a reality check. China is a totalitarian Communist country that steals intellectual property from the US in order to even have a chance of competing with us. Only a fool would think there is moral equivalence betweet China and and United States.
Marshall, these are your western norms and values:
" But what is this “international order” except a world order of brutality, war and bribes, in which the liberties of the people are smashed and aggression and coercion are the primary tools of control. The Americans speak of their attempt to dominate the world as if it is a sacred thing, a gift from the gods, and presume to act as if they themselves are gods and any nation or people that rejects their domination are anathema, to be excommunicated from the international order, the mighty church of US imperialism, until they fall in line or are destroyed. Anyone who does not fall in line is automatically “authoritarian” and a rebel against their mafia “world order.”
But it is the USA and its allies that are the revisionist powers. It is they that have rejected and destroyed the principles of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg principles against aggressive war, the right to self-determination of peoples, the right to sovereignty of nations, of independent economic, social and political development, of peaceful co-existence or, as Chinese President Xi puts it, a win-win world order. It is they that have committed aggression against nations across the globe since the end of the Second World War, that have assassinated popular leaders, sabotaged economies, entire political systems, and have treated their own peoples as so many fools to be led around by the nose as the capitalists steal their money so they can have their wars to make themselves more money."
Quotation taken from Christopher Black, a Canadian lawyer.
Marshall, these are your western norms and values:
" But what is this “international order” except a world order of brutality, war and bribes, in which the liberties of the people are smashed and aggression and coercion are the primary tools of control. The Americans speak of their attempt to dominate the world as if it is a sacred thing, a gift from the gods, and presume to act as if they themselves are gods and any nation or people that rejects their domination are anathema, to be excommunicated from the international order, the mighty church of US imperialism, until they fall in line or are destroyed. Anyone who does not fall in line is automatically “authoritarian” and a rebel against their mafia “world order.”
But it is the USA and its allies that are the revisionist powers. It is they that have rejected and destroyed the principles of the UN Charter, the Nuremberg principles against aggressive war, the right to self-determination of peoples, the right to sovereignty of nations, of independent economic, social and political development, of peaceful co-existence or, as Chinese President Xi puts it, a win-win world order. It is they that have committed aggression against nations across the globe since the end of the Second World War, that have assassinated popular leaders, sabotaged economies, entire political systems, and have treated their own peoples as so many fools to be led around by the nose as the capitalists steal their money so they can have their wars to make themselves more money."
Quotation taken from Christopher Black, a Canadian lawyer.
I see a lot’s of paid Chinese goons responding to this article. They are a Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship. Not our friends.
I see a lot’s of paid Chinese goons responding to this article. They are a Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship. Not our friends.
China’s leaders have made lots of liberalizing progress since the 70’s. For example, this year they’ve only imprisoned 2 million of their own people in concentration/re-education camps for the crime of being Muslim in China. Compare that to Cultural Revolution and you’ll clearly see they progressed to paranoid/racist dictatorial thugs from complete bat-guano crazy communists.
China’s leaders have made lots of liberalizing progress since the 70’s. For example, this year they’ve only imprisoned 2 million of their own people in concentration/re-education camps for the crime of being Muslim in China. Compare that to Cultural Revolution and you’ll clearly see they progressed to paranoid/racist dictatorial thugs from complete bat-guano crazy communists.
Rich Ord Yeah his line about the west driving people into poverty is hoot. His head couldn’t be any farther up his ass.
Rich Ord Yeah his line about the west driving people into poverty is hoot. His head couldn’t be any farther up his ass.