Jump to content

General Tsao's Cold War


romad1

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, romad1 said:

Canada and China have been going round and round

The Canadian chinese diaspora is very much on the minds of the PRC leadership.  How do we keep them under control when they are in a free country?

I think the other dynamic at work here is that while everybody knows that everybody else is running intelligence under diplomatic cover, and it's tolerated, the level of tolerance of it has a lot to do with the perception of where the overall relationship is headed. From the time Mao passed, the basic outlook of the West toward China was that there was an evolution underway that was moving China in a good long term direction, and it's that hope that raises the tolerance for other irritations in the relationship that remain. Xi has put an end to all that. We now look out and the perception is of a China moving in the wrong direction. There isn't any light at the end of the tunnel anymore so decreasing reason for a US or Canada to tolerate old status quo petite aggressions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Up until about 4 years ago Canada was still sucking up to China for commercial reasons.  

As of this morning a Canadian diplomat has been expelled but the greater fear is that they will arbitrarily arrest a couple of people and charge them with espionage, they've done it before.

Edited by Jim Cowan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Jim Cowan said:

Up until about 4 years ago Canada was still sucking up to China for commercial reasons.  

As of this morning a Canadian diplomat has been expelled but the greater fear is that they will arbitrarily arrest a couple of people and charge them with espionage, they've done it before.

Yup - Hostage taking seems to be standard playbook. But the commercial interests have to know it's a terribly counter productive economic policy. You can't do much business when no-one will come to see you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
48 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

LOL - the 'development' loan trap looks pretty much the same whether the banker is the US, the IMF or China. China is going to find out the hard way the same things the West found out the hard way. Your leverage has a limit. Ultimately the clients will default and the only result of that will be Chinese bankers mad at the Chinese government. And poor people on the ground in those countries stay just as poorly off as before the cycle started.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

LOL - the 'development' loan trap looks pretty much the same whether the banker is the US, the IMF or China. China is going to find out the hard way the same things the West found out the hard way. Your leverage has a limit. Ultimately the clients will default and the only result of that will be Chinese bankers mad at the Chinese government. And poor people on the ground in those countries stay just as poorly off as before the cycle started.

Xi seems to be good at being a gangster.  They routinely stiff their creditors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is astonishing.  The USN has excellent damage control because of its 250+ year tradition.  The PLA Navy apparently does not.  You can almost imagine how bad things are below the deck if the deck is this bad. 

The PLA Navy is a bunch of technocrats who apparently don't understand shipbuilding or ship maintenance on this scale.   But, not having fought multiple wars and not having sustained a large multi-ocean fleet for the entirety of the last 100 years might limit a navy's awareness of such things. 

https://twitter.com/GwarWorin/status/1663242285255933954?s=20

Edited by romad1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/30/pentagon-to-filmmakers-we-wont-help-you-if-you-kowtow-to-china-00104315

Very interesting.

 

The fact that Ted Cruz is the one who insisted on the rule doesn't detract from me enjoying that it happened.  China has leveraged that there are a lot of cowards among the Hollywood investor class.

Quentin Tarantino famously told them to stuff it when the Chinese government decided to get huffy on behalf of the estate of Bruce Lee over depiction of him as a mouthy punk in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  

 

Edited by romad1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
43 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

Love seeing that, but the posture of China in just the last few years makes me quite hesitant.

I think we can go overboard with drawing parallels between Xi and Putin. China is not Russia. China is always going to see how far it can get with pressure and coercion, and cycling between periods of pressure and accommodation can be expected from China - that's not much different from what Reagan's approach to Russia was. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

Looks like Hu was sick…. Wonder if it was something like a mini stroke, or perhaps a viral sickness (which moving him from Xi side would also make sense.   
We aren’t likely to get an actual factual answer, though. 

I thought that as well but I don't really see anyone looking at him with sympathy. Even Xi's body language betrays that thought. It would seem that if he was sick, he would have been removed privately and with dignity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Biff Mayhem said:

I thought that as well but I don't really see anyone looking at him with sympathy. Even Xi's body language betrays that thought. It would seem that if he was sick, he would have been removed privately and with dignity.

Maybe ….. he sneezed on the wrong guy. 😁

Remains to be seen if we see this person in public any time soon, or ever. Like I said before, it’s doubtful we’ll know the actual story behind this.  Not officially, anyway.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...