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Forums - Politics - Do We Really Want a New Cold War?

OTBWY on 25 May 2020
Mnementh said:
OTBWY said:

I'm not saying that it's all good, far from it. The US has a lot of issues. But it's not an authoritarian state like the others.

I don't know what is so good for the Chinese people, if you're talking about economic benefits sure. They had an economic boom. But in the last few years China has become more authoritarian, like implementing a 1984 esque social credit system. It's one of those things out of many that seem to look like a bad direction for that country.

I agree that there are bad things in China. But I disagree that these can be solved by conflict. On the contrary.

And life for the normal people in China got better. They would disagree with you. Their life in the 80s was much worse than it is today. So if the US implements sanctions or increases military pressure it will negatively affect the life of normal chinese citizens. And they will in this case not blame their government, but yours.

I am not so sure about that. There are a couple of things that I want to note here. The people in China say what the CCP wants them to say. It is not a free state, so there is no way of knowing how content they are with the status quo. Besides, you're talking about improvement to their lives, but even there we don't know. CCP for example claims that there is no poverty in China, how? They lowered the poverty level to 4 dollars a week. There is huge corruption there, public humiliations, punishments for things that go against party lines like watching porn, bad food hygiene, big child kidnapping numbers, violence against foreigners, horrible working conditions, bad healthcare and reliance on bogus Chinese medicine. The list goes on and on of the problems in that country. And if you ask me what a good example is, I'd say go look at Taiwan. Another Chinese country (in practice) that doesn't have those issues.

No, I definitely think that there is no other way but to sanction that country in order to topple that party. Same goes with Russia with Putin. I think appeasing them will not change anything, better yet I think it will only get worse.



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SvennoJ on 25 May 2020
John2290 said:
SvennoJ said:

What exactly are you hoping that will improve from wiping China off the face of the Earth?

Covid19 could have come from anywhere, also from places which would have taken much longer to figure out what was going on. Not that mattered since the rest of the world simply assumed it would stay in China, then in Italy, then in Europe, oh shit it doesn't give a crap about borders.

Perhaps your fight is with companies taking advantage of the cheap labor, which can be found in other places as well. India will gladly take over.
Perhaps your fight is with consumers going for the cheapest crap instead of choosing high quality locally manufactured items?
Perhaps your fight is with gullible people falling for Chinese twitter and other nonsense?
Perhaps your fight is with companies caving in to Chinese demands for censorship?

I didn't say anything about wiping China off the face of the Earth, those are your words. My fight is with the CCP, noone else and the PLA just happens to be the appendage of thr CCP that would have to be sliced off. Why are you apologising for China? Do you have any idea what that nation has become? School yourself and you may see why this world with China going at the pace it's going is going to end up as a factory for the CCP. Capitalism might not be perfect but whatever monstrosity of a system they've Frankensteined together is pure indifference, it's no better than Hitlers national socalism and the CCP are no better than Hitler. Yet they're winning and no one has the balls to challenege them before they make half the world an indifferent factory for their gain. Go catch up on what China has become cause I can't take anyone seriously who apologises or gives them the benifet, covid or no covid, if this was 2019 my opinion would still only very minorly be changed. Covid infact, at least brought light to the CCP for the world to see the shit thry go on with. 

What am I apologizing China for?

War is not a solution, only makes things worse for the people you want to save from the CCP. Change has to come from within. As long as the west keeps the CCP in power by caving in for the opportunities they provide, things won't change. Same as the West support(ed) dictators in the Middle East to keep the cheap oil coming. How much better off are Afghanistan and Iraq from the wars...



Mnementh on 25 May 2020
OTBWY said:
Mnementh said:

I agree that there are bad things in China. But I disagree that these can be solved by conflict. On the contrary.

And life for the normal people in China got better. They would disagree with you. Their life in the 80s was much worse than it is today. So if the US implements sanctions or increases military pressure it will negatively affect the life of normal chinese citizens. And they will in this case not blame their government, but yours.

I am not so sure about that. There are a couple of things that I want to note here. The people in China say what the CCP wants them to say. It is not a free state, so there is no way of knowing how content they are with the status quo. Besides, you're talking about improvement to their lives, but even there we don't know. CCP for example claims that there is no poverty in China, how? They lowered the poverty level to 4 dollars a week. There is huge corruption there, public humiliations, punishments for things that go against party lines like watching porn, bad food hygiene, big child kidnapping numbers, violence against foreigners, horrible working conditions, bad healthcare and reliance on bogus Chinese medicine. The list goes on and on of the problems in that country. And if you ask me what a good example is, I'd say go look at Taiwan. Another Chinese country (in practice) that doesn't have those issues.

No, I definitely think that there is no other way but to sanction that country in order to topple that party. Same goes with Russia with Putin. I think appeasing them will not change anything, better yet I think it will only get worse.

I agree that current day China has many problems. Yet I don't think sanction, military pressure or exclusion from trade agreements is helping.

To put another point of view at it: I met multiple chinese students that were studying in the west while I was at the university. They were at times critical of their government, because outside of China they had not to fear repressions. But also because exposure to western style of life and western media changed their point of view. A point of view they took back to China. I bet, that student exchange does a lot more to change societies than sanctions do. It takes time, yes. But it works much better.



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Nighthawk117 on 25 May 2020
Soundwave said:

The US wouldn't win a war against China anyway, not without great cost. They couldn't even beat the Taliban in Afghanistan after 15+ years, they've withdrawn and the Taliban are back running large parts of the country and having been doing that even before the US left.

They couldn't get Saddam the first time and couldn't win cleanly in Vietnam either. China is a whole other ball park of trouble.

I don't know about a "Cold War", but I think China has badly damaged their standing with the Western world, not just this COVID19 situation but other issues were already bubbling to the surface. I dunno about "Cold War" ... maybe "Lukewarm posturing", lol. 

What? Your examples are purely examples of "Hot" Wars. Not Cold Wars.  Did the US military ever engage in combat with the Soviet military during the US-USSR Cold War? A Cold War is "war" without actual warfare.  Examples today are US relations with Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.  

What is needed to punish China over their responsibility for the Covid-19 outbreak are sanctions, not overt warfare.  Besides, warfare between nuclear powers only ends in MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

All countries in the world affected by this virus should come together and enact economic sanctions against China that will last for years.



Nighthawk117 on 25 May 2020
Mnementh said:
OTBWY said:

I'm not saying that it's all good, far from it. The US has a lot of issues. But it's not an authoritarian state like the others.

I don't know what is so good for the Chinese people, if you're talking about economic benefits sure. They had an economic boom. But in the last few years China has become more authoritarian, like implementing a 1984 esque social credit system. It's one of those things out of many that seem to look like a bad direction for that country.

I agree that there are bad things in China. But I disagree that these can be solved by conflict. On the contrary.

And life for the normal people in China got better. They would disagree with you. Their life in the 80s was much worse than it is today. So if the US implements sanctions or increases military pressure it will negatively affect the life of normal chinese citizens. And they will in this case not blame their government, but yours.

Do the Chinese people have more freedom than the people of Hong Kong?  It is not the responsibility of the US government to overthrow the CCP, 

rather it is hoped that the Chinese people will one day rise up and overthrow the CCP.



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Mnementh on 25 May 2020
Nighthawk117 said:
Mnementh said:

I agree that there are bad things in China. But I disagree that these can be solved by conflict. On the contrary.

And life for the normal people in China got better. They would disagree with you. Their life in the 80s was much worse than it is today. So if the US implements sanctions or increases military pressure it will negatively affect the life of normal chinese citizens. And they will in this case not blame their government, but yours.

Do the Chinese people have more freedom than the people of Hong Kong?  It is not the responsibility of the US government to overthrow the CCP, 

rather it is hoped that the Chinese people will one day rise up and overthrow the CCP.

Either that or slowly as younger people replace older in the ranks the country will change. I posted about the chinese students I met. These people may influence politics in the future. An great example is also Taiwan. That was an authoritarian government. But people were replaced slowly, and step for step the one-party system got replaced, elections allowed for new people to get elected and at some points new leaders arised. Under Chiang Kai-shek Taiwan wasn't democratic, but today it is. At no point the people overthrew the government, but it changed gradually. That can work too. It takes time though.



3DS-FC: 4511-1768-7903 (Mii-Name: Mnementh), Nintendo-Network-ID: Mnementh, Switch: SW-7706-3819-9381 (Mnementh)

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10 years greatest game event!

bets: [peak year] [+], [1], [2], [3], [4]

Nighthawk117 on 25 May 2020
Ka-pi96 said:
Nighthawk117 said:

What? Your examples are purely examples of "Hot" Wars. Not Cold Wars.  Did the US military ever engage in combat with the Soviet military during the US-USSR Cold War? A Cold War is "war" without actual warfare.  Examples today are US relations with Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.  

What is needed to punish China over their responsibility for the Covid-19 outbreak are sanctions, not overt warfare.  Besides, warfare between nuclear powers only ends in MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction).

All countries in the world affected by this virus should come together and enact economic sanctions against China that will last for years.

Why? A lot of countries should blame themselves/their own governments a LOT more than they blame China. Just for starters countries that had terribly orchestrated lockdowns that encouraged large swathes of people to move across the country spreading the virus are infinitely more to blame for how bad the situation got in those countries than China is.

The only thing you can evenly remotely blame on China is trying to cover up the severity of the situation. But you're an American. Your government is just as guilty of that as China's.

China is solely responsible for the outbreak in the first place.  It originated in Wuhan.  Tell me this, when China put Wuhan into lockdown, they shut off all travel from that city.  Roads were closed. Trains were shutdown.  They also shut down all domestic flights.  Right? The only thing they didn't shut down were international flights out of Wuhan, that was the only way out of the city, and 5 million people left that way.



OTBWY on 25 May 2020
Ka-pi96 said:
OTBWY said:

I am not so sure about that. There are a couple of things that I want to note here. The people in China say what the CCP wants them to say. It is not a free state, so there is no way of knowing how content they are with the status quo. Besides, you're talking about improvement to their lives, but even there we don't know. CCP for example claims that there is no poverty in China, how? They lowered the poverty level to 4 dollars a week. There is huge corruption there, public humiliations, punishments for things that go against party lines like watching porn, bad food hygiene, big child kidnapping numbers, violence against foreigners, horrible working conditions, bad healthcare and reliance on bogus Chinese medicine. The list goes on and on of the problems in that country. And if you ask me what a good example is, I'd say go look at Taiwan. Another Chinese country (in practice) that doesn't have those issues.

No, I definitely think that there is no other way but to sanction that country in order to topple that party. Same goes with Russia with Putin. I think appeasing them will not change anything, better yet I think it will only get worse.

Except that doesn't work either. If "sanctioning" a country was able to topple parties then North Korea wouldn't be an issue.

Not to mention that there are a whole slew of countries that wouldn't agree to any sanctions against China because it would hurt them just as much as it would hurt China.

Besides, a lot of those "problems" you listed are also present in western countries...

North Korea only survives because first the Soviet Union kept it alive and now China keeps it alive. China allows NK workers to work in China, and in turn they do business in NK. It is not isolated as you think it is.

On the other points: That is why you should never put all your production (eggs) into one country (basket).

Excuse but where else do you have a social credit system but China? Specifically western countries? What western country is a totalitarian single party ultranationalist pseudo communist state?



jardesonbarbosa on 25 May 2020

China is winning the capitalism game playing by the rules, so I fail to see how we should "stop China" or anything like that.



hunter_alien on 25 May 2020

OTBWY said:
The US engages in both soft power and hard power. It uses the means of subversion and slow coercion to slowly extend its influence and strengthen its position. It does invade countries or sends mercs/pmc's and they do have their online paid troll farms. China does it more in an economic sense.


It is trying to expand at the expense of others. It is extremely nationalistic and is turning slowly but surely authoritarian/dictatorial. It must be checked like any other aggressive country.

Fixed it for you



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