Opinion OpEd-Elites realizing that opening up the West to China did not bring about political liberalization

Now is a good time to remember the Bidens are on China's payroll, and they played a leading role in selling out middle class to Beijing.


No mean tweets tho...
 
We’ve sort of touched on this before but it is false to say that is exactly what they were doing because that means you’ve summed up Chinese-American partnership since 1971 in just one (1) decade, the mid 90s to the mid 2000s.

They weren’t liberalizing in the political sense in the 80s, and Jiang Zemin got to where he was by thoroughly backing a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. In fact, they weren’t even really liberalizing politically during that time period, no matter how much lip-service they gave it. Certainly some social liberalization came about but even then, when people had too much access to information, they started walling off the internet, for example. So while there’s a lot of evidence to support that idea, it was really a short piece in a long story.

And I’m not saying that everyone who believed that is a fool, everybody believed that, I believed that. But I’m just trying to put the history in the proper context. Just because we thought it was so doesn’t mean it was really so.

I'm not even talking about America-Chinese relations really, I'm talking about China's political development and economic liberalisation.

The Youth League faction reform in the '80s was the result of Deng Xiaoping. They were the populists, and were responsible for the majority of the socially progressive reform (such as the loosening of religious restrictions, House Churches stopped facing persecution). Deng openly criticised Jiang Zemin for dragging his heels on reform. However when it came to economic liberalisation (on which the factions agreed, although it was actually a lesser priority for the Youth League faction) that was what lead to Jiang Zemin creating the Shanghai faction, which was more about consolidation of power than ideological affinity.
The dichotomy on reform and consolidation of power between the tuanpai and the princelings was again there with Hu Jintao, but to be sure it wasn't as simplistic as one faction being "good" and the other "bad", as Hun Jintao reinstituted a lot of the religious authoritarianism. Likewise Xi Jinping's attack on corruption could have been a step towards reform and the institution of a truly independent judiciary, but instead he just used it to oust the Youth League faction and consolidate total power.
This was largely made possible due to the shift in power through the economic reform and urbanisation programs which utterly empowered the "princelings".
So what we have now is essentially a dictatorship, without the factional tension which existed throughout the era of reform, and which no longer models any changes on Singapore as Deng Xiaoping did (and Singapore in 1978 when he visited and got his ideas was a far cry from where it is now. It's not politically liberal now, but was even less so under Lee Kuan Yew).
 
Ofcourse big business cares about quarterly figures, but that does not preclude the thinking that China opening up economically = they would liberalize.

The West had minimal trade with Cuba and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. If big business profits trumped everything, including national security, why didn't the West have free trade with the Soviets? Why are there sanctions on Iran?

Because the US thought poor destitute China would lay down and let them do whatever they wanted. The US did that to Cuba too until they drove us out of Cuba. At the same time this was happening there was a Cold War between the US and USSR. That is why we did not do business with them. We were too busy sanctioning them.
 
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I'd say America did just fine and even fleeced China for the most part, apart from completely destroying it's own manufacturing in the process.

Oh, just that
 
Because the US thought poor destitute China would lay down and let them do whatever they wanted. The US did that to Cuba too until they drove us out of Cuba. At the same time this was happening there was a Cold War between the US and USSR. That is why we did not do business with them. We were too busy sanctioning them.
If the profits of business trumps everything, then why didn't it trump Cold War interests?

The US never wanted to takeover China, it just never expected China to become hyper nationalistic , expansionist and aggressive.
 
If the profits of business trumps everything, then why didn't it trump Cold War interests?

The US never wanted to takeover China, it just never expected China to become hyper nationalistic , expansionist and aggressive.

Like I said earlier. At the time China was not our direct enemy or a threat. Russia was. That is why.
 
Like I said earlier. At the time China was not our direct enemy or a threat. Russia was. That is why.
China is a massive country, with a massive population , run by 1 party that was ostensibly Communist and was never an ally, or neutral like India, post WW2. They supported the opposition in the Vietnam and Korean wars. They supported groups around the world that were opposed to Western powers and was allied to the Soviets to a degree, but there was Soviet-Chinese friction too and the US thought it could exploit this.

In any case, China was always going to be a serious threat to Western hegemony considering its size, homogenity and lack of any real domestic opposition.

Looking at China, it would be naieve to think that when they got rich, technologically advanced and influential, they were just going to sit by and accept Western dominance.
 
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China is a massive country, with a massive population , run by 1 party that was ostensibly Communist and was never an ally, or neutral like India, post WW2. They supported the opposition in the Vietnam and Korean wars. They supported groups around the world that were opposed to Western powers and was allied to the Soviets to a degree, but there was Soviet-Chinese friction too and the US thought it could exploit this.

In any case, China was always going to be a serious threat to Western hegemony considering its size, homogenity and lack of any real domestic opposition.

Looking at China, it would be naieve to think that when they got rich, technologically advanced and influential, they were just going to sit by and accept Western dominance.


Well that is the thinking process of monied interests aka Capitalists. No one ever thinks about long term effects or even long term profits. Everything is short term.
 
Honestly I'm not sure this was ever really "believed" at the higher levels of power, I think it was moreso just something used to sell to the public were as the actual reason for engagement with China was that it suited the interests of those people, it enriched them and damaged the poltical power base of their rivals(especially Unions). Equally the switch in policy is now likely due to China becoming powerful enough that it can potentially threaten the interests of those people, its not based on caring about Chinese human rights abuses.

Really I think we see that the legacy of market liberialism has been a shift towards facism world wide.
 
Every interaction with China should have had conditions/expectations and we never should have let ourselves become so dependent on them to make all of our stuff.
 
I don't think they were wrong, I think they were lying. Everybody knows bad influences are more powerful than good influences, and everybody knows that fascism is a sweet deal for the ruling class. Corporations are certainly willing to push political narratives to help the politicians in exchange for preferential treatment.

The whole game for decades has been democrats and republicans representing different corporate interests, and every few years we get to see which ones get the preferential treatment.
 
And gave China "Most Favored Nation" trading status.
And allowed China to enter the World Trade Organization.


The CCP played our establishment epically.
And all it took was bringing them tremendous wrath at the cost of the middle class, for the elites to learn a lesson that honestly any honest person could see 20 years ago
 
If the profits of business trumps everything, then why didn't it trump Cold War interests?

The US never wanted to takeover China, it just never expected China to become hyper nationalistic , expansionist and aggressive.
Because they did do deals and set stuff up like in Bulgaria they made a lot of PC parts but the Warsaw Pact never had enough economic growth and size to sway the west. It had too many problems to really encourage mass investments
 
Yes, the ChiComs killed the 'capitalis and trade bring democracy' theory we all grew up with
 
Japan warned us. We didnt listen.
 
I can't believe believe the day would come when I would agree with @MicroBrew .
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The star of fucking David is in that mushroom cloud, you done fucked up
 
Because they did do deals and set stuff up like in Bulgaria they made a lot of PC parts but the Warsaw Pact never had enough economic growth and size to sway the west. It had too many problems to really encourage mass investments

Back in the 80s, Toshiba sold machine tools to the Soviets that they (Soviets) used to make quieter props for their submarines. The US government heavily fined Toshiba for violating some arms control laws. The Soviets would have gladly bought American and Western manufacturing technology if they were given access to it. In the 90s Madelline Albright nixed American oil companies providing equipment and services to the Russians stating it would harm US national interests.

With China, the West did not restrict manufacturing and defense technology to the degree they did with the Soviets. The American company Loral Space and Communications helped China's rocket program, which ultimately helped their ICBM become more accurate. In the early 80s the US sold China a small number of Blackhawk helicopters. Israel gave F16 technology to China. American industry greatly advanced China's industrial and military manufacturing capability.
 
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