The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury

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• 
  Gweilo
  June 16th, 2019
  

  Hardly a “secret” strategy. They’ve been quite open about becoming the No 1 superpower from the start.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 16th, 2019
  

  

  It’s genuinely difficult to conceive of the level of delusion necessary for a regime like that to look upon any civilised people as “barbarians” - but in addition to the pandas, they do own a heck of a lot of debt. So now it’s - “how high, sir?”
  Thanks again, Andy.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  Gweilo
  June 17th, 2019
  

  @caesar963: every culture thinks other cultures are barbarians, whether they say so or not. That’s where the word came from; Greeks defined it as anyone who didn’t speak Greek.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 17th, 2019
  

  The operative term is “a regime like that” - we all know the history of China’s appalling tyranny, and all the others like it. When a culture has performed every possible human rights abuse (and then some) on the largest possible scale; and everyone else is aware of it, because each international agency: Amnesty, HRW, UN bodies, etc. has ceaselessly drawn attention to these barbaric atrocities; objectively, then trying to regard other cultures as barbaric & uncivilised, is arrant delusion. Of course, these delusions would be rife in such an echo chamber.

  Going back to those wondrous Greeks, the Graeco-Roman dynamic is instructive in this particular regard (how cultures perceive one another). The high-achieving Romans did not regard the Greeks themselves as barbarians, although they were a discrete cultural entity. They actually revered Hellenic culture and adopted many of its forms. Aristocrats would ensure that their children were educated by Greek tutors. Romans were excellent soldiers & engineers, but you’ve got to have a hinterland.

  Cultural cross-pollination has been vitally essential, throughout history.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  Gweilo
  June 18th, 2019
  

  @caesar: you’re just proving the point; listing why China is barbarous from your Western viewpoint. Read People’s Daily and see a mirror critique of the West.
  As for Greeks and Romans, yeah they respected each other and shared culture. As did the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans in between killing each other; like the British and Germans in the early 20th C.
  Anyway, I’m not an apologist for China, but they are hardly uniquely barbarous.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 18th, 2019
  

  Well, no, I’m specifically not saying that China is barbaric, I’m saying this regime (and all such) is objectively barbaric. Objectively, because Chinese people agree (if they get the opportunity): the courageous protestors of Tiananmen Square, the dissidents - at home & abroad (those who had to, and could, escape), the people of Hong Kong, the millions in illegal detention (due to not having access to trial, or fair, independent procedures) and concentration camps. The Chinese people who live in my country regularly protest the despotic Beijing regime. And the tens of millions who were murdered, starved and tortured - they would also demur.

  I appreciate & take you at your word that you’re not an apologist for the Chinese regime. However, you have to grasp that you’re making many of the same arguments as such an apologist.
  People’s Daily is an official propaganda operation, we seriously cannot regard such an entity as being equivalent to international, independent NGOs, like HRW, Amnesty International, etc.

  These political, opportunistic, avaricious conflicts have always existed, and will continue to do so. Because people love power and can’t quit war. They will use any “justification” to perpetuate hostilities in order to pursue self-aggrandisement. The crazy thing is that populations are aware that they are being lied to. The Germans & British knew about the manipulative propaganda, but went along regardless. At a certain point it becomes about survival. Many people also fundamentally like being told what to do. That’s a particularly dangerous one, which we should all keep an eye on.

  Germany had been regarded as one of the most civilised countries in the world (educational standards, Weimar Constitution, legal & political system). However, objectively it did actually descend into barbarism (along with all the other 20th Century slave-state despotisms - including the present one). From an objective Western, and human, point of view.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  Gweilo
  June 20th, 2019
  

  Probably all countries have “descended into barbarism” at different periods.
  It isn’t an inherent part of any race or culture.

  Name any country and you can find atrocities, recent or back a few centuries at most.

  As for China: I know how evil Beijing is; I was marching against the extradition bill in Hong Kong last week. The Chinese in Hong Kong are different, at least for now. The Chinese in Taiwan were under a basically fascist government until the 90s, now they are a representative democracy, more or less.

  Meanwhile, the US and much of Europe is leaning more to xenophobia, which enables “barbaric” abuses of whatever ethnic groups are scapegoated. Not on the same scale as China with Tibetans and the Uighurs, but qualitatively, not a lot different.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 20th, 2019
  

  Again, it’s the toxic regime - this one & the rest of its totalitarian ilk - which is savage & brutal, quite obviously not the people. The people are victims of the regime. Barbarism is clearly not an inherent part of any race or culture, no one can sustain that nonsensical argument.

  Taiwan has made progress, but the regime in China has not. The difference with Europe & the West is that we pursue a rights-based approach and the rule of law, instead of rule by law, which is the norm in undemocratic systems. Unfree people are subject to coerced conformity. Dictats are enforced by the authoritarian system. Equality before the law is non-existent, as rulings can be decided by officials nominally outside the process, or by the party. We’re far from perfect, but our humane traditions & constitutions are immeasurably more responsive to people’s needs.

  The case for a deluded regime is further supported by the fact that they acknowledge & endorse the putative “Western” standard/concept of human rights, and what constitutes a violation or contravention of those fundamental rights. (The nihilistic relativism of maintaining that the condemnation of regime X for mass murder & torture, represents an unwarranted, improper cultural imposition, is purely nonsense). It does so by explicitly denying the overwhelming evidence of its crimes & atrocities, both past & present. Manifestly, there is something which shames even them. Moreover, they rightly condemn the Japanese for their evil actions during the Second World War, thereby admitting that such acts (which they themselves are ironically guilty of) are manifestly, profoundly wrong. Consequently, the regime affirms this essential, (international) objective moral (natural) law; applying, as it does, to all peoples.

  History is full of atrocities, but I think there is a qualitative & quantitative difference with the onset of the 20th Century. The alteration was the growing complexity, reach & organisation of which the, particularly tyrannous, modern state was capable. Destructive force was greater, by orders of magnitude, because of increased sophistication & bureaucratisation in administration. Little chance of escape from this Big Brother. It became a mere bagatelle to crush the individual, especially once they had been stripped of their humanity, which was facilitated by the abandonment of objective moral values & universal ethical standards.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  Gweilo
  June 20th, 2019
  

  Everyone defines “barbarian” so that it’s other cultures who are the barbarians.

  It’s not a useful term; it means basically “people who have different values then I do”, really. You cannot prove it’s “true”, you can only vent.

  Just talk about the actual things that are wrong, specific rights that are violated, forget about the incendiary labels.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 20th, 2019
  

  Of course, it is the Chinese regime itself which ironically is said to regard others as barbaric, in what is indeed a self-serving effort.
  It’s the massive, ongoing infringements of human rights by such a government that is the real issue, which they would naturally wish to divert from. We can call their conduct many things: inhuman, uncivilised, savage, cruel, brutal (accurately). Objectively (established by international NGOs & Chinese people themselves) - barbaric is not the most inapt term. The essential values do seem to be shared, given the conduct & the witness offered.

  We’ve actually already outlined many of the breaches. I’d be most familiar with the legal & historical abuses & transgressions. Absence of fair (& open) trial, right to face one’s accuser, secret law & procedures, absence of notice, long-term detention without formal charge & trial, denial of general & specific human rights, no habeas corpus, no independence of the tribunal, no proscription on retrospective legislation (ex post facto law), etc. Any one of these would operate to undermine a system of justice. The full catalogue means that the smallest measure of justice is totally unattainable. No one can repose confidence in this legal fiction.

  Think of how vibrant & free Hong Kong has been, and still is, to a large extent. That cannot be permitted to continue, because it’s a threat and a dangerous beacon to the rest of the subject population. El Presidente For Life (term limits?! That’s just asking for instability & disorder) will not tolerate it for much longer. They rarely do.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  Gweilo
  June 21st, 2019
  

  “Of course, it is the Chinese regime itself which ironically is said to regard others as barbaric”
  – “said to”? Have a source where someone notable has actually said that in the last 50 years? (Forgetting they would have done it in Mandarin, where the connotations of whatever word is being translated as “barbarian” are a matter of opinion.)

  I don’t doubt they THINK it, say it in private, same as every other country sneers at others. But calling out a country for hypocrisy in not living up to their own stated values is shooting fish in a barrel. They all do that. They don’t care what you think, because they are talking to their own people, who either never see (as in China) or don’t believe (as in the US) any contradictory views.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 21st, 2019
  

  Obviously, ’said to’ in the Michael Pillsbury book (description), which is referred to. A fluent Mandarin speaker, no less, ‘drawing on his decades of contact with the “hawks” in China’s military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books.’ All of that.

  Although, I agree that the arrogance, hypocrisy and duplicity of the regime is boundless. However, I wouldn’t say that they “talk to their own people” - talk at, perhaps, or dictate; which is the central problem with such a toxic system. Clearly, they care a great deal what others think of them, hence the bogus denials of flagrant, large-scale human rights abuses and historical atrocities being so vociferous & vehement. Otherwise, why would they bother?

  I don’t think that there’s a one-to-one correspondence between communist China and a liberal democratic republic, like the United States. There exists access to information & open political contention, with a whole host of contradictory views expressed, in the US. Such is wholly impossible in the grinding tyranny of China.

  Of course, it’s inaccurate to assert that the Chinese people never see contradictory views. There would subsist something like the samizdat operation which functioned under the other communist despotisms in Russia & Eastern Europe. That’s why we saw the courageous protestors of Tiananmen Square, and we continue to see brave dissidents. And don’t forget the millions in unjust detention and concentration camps - they are manifestly in possession of ‘contradictory’ views!

  The oppressive system which they exist under is revealed to be so profoundly evil & unjust precisely because they have available to them freer comparators, paradigms & analogues.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  Gweilo
  June 21st, 2019
  

  You’re the one running with the “barbarian” thing, If you make a big deal of it, you need to make sure it’s actually true.

  As for controlling information, China can’t keep 100% of it out, but the do control all the mass media and huge effort to control internet.
  Even more importantly, they control education, most people under 30 know nothing about Tiananmen except the official line, and if you try to tell them otherwise, they shout you down as a propagandist.

  China kidnapped five Hong Kong publishers who were printing books embarrassing to Xi a couple of years ago, then they appeared in China charged with a variety of bogus offences. And mainland companies are buying up media and withholding advertising from any others that are critical of the government. It’s not total control but it’s still very effective.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury
• 
  caesar963
  June 21st, 2019
  

  I’m walking briskly with the barbarian thing, yes, from the book description. The bitter irony & delusion of such an absurd position is thrown into sharp relief by what we know about the atrocities carried out by the regime, which is not subject to review, of course.

  Yeah, such systems do try to control the individual, from the cradle to the grave, as it were. Yet, dissidents have continued to exist, in spite of concentrated repression. They will continue to do so, with samizdat operations and networks. Of course, you may be shouted down by a person for many reasons, fear being a chief one, the cause of most aggression. The majority of the population are usually held to a system of outward conformity, with coercive control ensuring compliance. Suasion isn’t much good without the ubiquitous cattle-prod, which no tyrannical regime can leave home without.

  As I said above, subject people can be extremely dubious about official propaganda, in spite of what outsiders like us may think. Do dictators really enjoy 100% support? I have my doubts.

  The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower - Michael Pillsbury

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