China: We're Beating the Pirates
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
Yeah, upon reading the words "China, We're beating the pirates!" , I just assumed they meant it litrally.
To be fair, I think their version of the Sniper and Medic would be awesome.josemlopes said:Im sorry, what?
Particularly if they still had the same accents as the normal TF2 versions do.
To quote Pratchett
"To get a drop in crime, the police have to work harder. The thieves guild just had to work less."
Chinese holiday = drop in piracy.
"To get a drop in crime, the police have to work harder. The thieves guild just had to work less."
Chinese holiday = drop in piracy.
Most likely somebody will make it so you can play with those models in TF2. Although I doubt they will include the voices, since this game is only going to be released in China, thus all voices with be in Manderian.Paragon Fury said:To be fair, I think their version of the Sniper and Medic would be awesome.josemlopes said:Im sorry, what?
Particularly if they still had the same accents as the normal TF2 versions do.
So don't compare them; because that is, in fact, what you (and the majority of us) are doing.Grey Day for Elcia said:
Li Mu has agreed with and countered some of your points, so it's rendered my points pretty pointless as I was just going to repeat what he has said. I know it sounds all kinds-of hippie when I say the world isn't black and white, but it needs saying...
Don't compare.
China is not the Doctor Evil of the world, drilling her fingers together wondering how to get away with her next cunning and vile plan. China is making her progress, in her own way and the future is bright. Maybe some countries are closer to the finish-line than others, but it doesn't do well to look back on others trying to catch-up, mocking them for their progress and wishing for them to stumble, trip and fall.
You know, before I came to China, I thought everyone ate rice all the time and could do Kung Fu. Checkout what some of the Chinese netizens have to say on websites like Chinasmack.com and some articles of how "some" corruption is being dealt with.
I also feared to travelling to America, thanks to the media. I feared being out late at night, being mugged by the general population all carrying guns. I feared being attacked by a group of drunk holligans then having an American stand over me with his phone-camera screaming "YOU GOT KNOCKED THE F**K OUT!" I now know this is crap.
Get your ass to a developed city within China, Beijing or Shanghai and be completely gobsmacked at how safe you have ever felt in your life.
Actually, I think it would be more accurate to say the gold farmer problem would disappear.Paragon Fury said:
Li Mu said:
Well, in the future you might try expressing yourself without being a troll.
That said at it's core you do have a valid point, as your correct in saying that you shouldn't mass murder people at the drop of a hat. HOWEVER in the cases where I talk about warfare, breaking cultures, etc... it's situations where we have tried diplomacy and other methods first. Continueing to try failing plans is just stupid, real war (as opposed to police actions) and wiping people out might be a matter of last resort, but that is differant from saying "never".
Whether you believe it or not we've actually spent a lot of time dealing with China about this, but the bottom line is that since China is a "robber economy" and it's current prosperity is based on thefts and knock offs, it's not going to stop. It might make a diplomatic show of it, but it will not either acknowlege international law, or the rightful ownership of patents/IPs/etc.. by foreigners. We can pass any law we want elsewhere and China is not going to bother to follow them.
Likewise, the whole issue with knockoffs is that they are providing the same basic goods to buyers for a fraction of the price, and not having to have come up with the idea or pay development and research costs to begin with. To nations buying from China, they don't care about right or wrong, they just want the goods. We're dealing with a big enough issue and big enough players, where simple embargos don't work, especially when the purchusing markets benefit so heavily from China's crimes in many cases.
The bottom line is that if China is going to stop, someone is going to have to MAKE them stop, and that means forcing them, which of course means war.
Now you are correct that a land war in China is stupid, but then again we're only stupid if we let liberals moralize the military into inaction. Part of the point of havig all of these weapons that can wipe out towns, villages, cities, etc... from massive distances is so you don't have to go in on the ground and fight people gun to gun.
Right now the viable way of beating China would be to pretty much bring our navy to bear on it's coast, especially our ships and subs with interception technology to shoot down any outgoing nukes. Then once the coastline is secure to pretty much start bombing the living crap out of China, and by this I don't mean surgical strikes with rocks, I mean using things like Daisycutters for the job they were intended, and dropping them on towns "Bomber Harris" style. We sit there and pretty much use China as our own personal shooting gallery while keeping it relatively bottled, with only the occasional surgical ground strike, and yeah, we could win. In this case we'd have a very specific set of goals, which would include China agreeing to abide by US/Allied trade laws, social reforms of their goverment, and a laundary list of other things. Once China agreed, they would disarm whatever was left of their military and not build any more (by treaty) and it would come down to US advisors making sure China followed the agreements, under the threat that if they didn't we'd come right back in and start mass murdering them again. Like it or not targeting civilians is part of war, in part because it shows their goverment can't protect them and causes them to put pressure on the powers that be. A goverment that can't protect the people, tends to cause the people to want to deal with the other side to put an end to the war. Sure there are always hard feelings about this kind of thing, but it generally does work. Japan surrendered partially because it was hopeless and we killed enough people to show the populance that their goverment wasn't going to be able to protect them. Once we established we could kill them at will and were willing to, they surrendered, and pretty much reformed their entire society.
In the case of the war I'm talking about, it's one that ultimatly has a very clear goal.
HOWEVER, understand that there is more to this than just pretensions of American Conquest. See those knockoffs, piracy, etc... are hurting US business to a crazy degree. Why buy from us, when people can buy stolen products/knockoff/pirate versions from China, produced by sweatshop labour for less money? A country like the US with our standards can't compete with the labour of disposable peasants, and when it costs millions or billions of dollars to invent/produce something, that influances the cost. China's knockoffs don't have to worry about a company that invested billions in drug development and testing or whatever needing to recoup that cost.
It was relatively easy to ignore China when the US economy was strong and it wasn't doing much, but right now it's one of the things that is absolutly hammering us, and we're looking at the potential fall of the US as a global super power if things continue. China presents a threat here, granted it's not the kind of threat Hitler represented when he was actually invading people, but a country going down due to economics and another country draining them is still going down.
Not to mention that it's time sensitive, China is building up a much larger and more sophisticated Navy and military to make thid kind of thing difficult to do, but they aren't there yet (but will be if we delay). If China drains he US and other western powers and has a huge military built up when we can't support ours, and then decides to invade/colonize other countries as it has rattled sabers about... yeah that could be really bad. A lot of people have had their eyes on China's rising military over the last decade or so. Indeed if you follow conspiricy theories, China is one of the big culprits suspected of 9/11 because they had a lot to gain from it (understand this is a conspiricy theory, not something I said happened, but it's grounded in a degree of truth which is why I mention it). Not as popular as 9/11 being an inside job to justify some war of revenge, but basically to motivate the US and western allies to go after The Middle East, leading to anger and them looking towards China as a trade partner, and also draining our coffers and abillity to sustain a war while China pumps up it's military. After all China was under major scrutiny right around the turn of the millenium, but with 9/11 pretty much all focus changed over to The Middle East and while mentioned China hasn't been a major focus of US concern.
At any rate, don't get this wrong, I'm not going to argue theory with you, the point is simply that it's a more defensible position than you seem to think.
My comments on the war are simply because I think the problems are going to get worse to the point where it's going to happen, and within our lifetime. China isn't going to give up it's prosperity, and the US is eventually going to realize that if China doesn't we're going to fall as a result. This is going to lead to an "us or them" type conflict over economics and trade. A global bloodbath, but one with a clear objective, either the complete destruction of one side or the other, or the voluntary relinquishing of economic rights to the other which would probably amount to the same thing in the long term.
I'd vastly prefer China simply agree to respect international patents, copyrights, etc... and similar things, and war wouldn't be nessicary, but that's not going to happen.
The dominant world power is never popular by defnition. In the case of the British Empire it had it's pros and cons compared to the US, and it's our turn to get scorn. We're a bit differant though in that we don't have quite the same colonial attitude towards the rest of the world that they did. We aren't out to say establish a beachhead in your nation ande declare it's now the newest state, you'll follow our laws, and pay taxes to our goverment. The US at it's worst is more about protecting it's own interests, in this case we're talking specifically about things like IP and people ripping off the creators on a global scale (and costing the US trade dollars as a result). Other than that, we're generally criticized for being a bunch of cowboys, and basically forcing countries to follow our ethical standards on human rights and such (ie the world police crack).
Wars suck, but understand that in this case we're talking about an issue big enough to affect billions of people and their standard of living, as well as what amounts to global control. That's why I think it's inevitable that it will come to war, because both sides are diametrically opposed in a way that prevents dialogue, and neither side can compromise with the other without basically destroying itself. China stops robbing it's economy collapses back into the poverty it's been rising out of. The US continues to let China rob, and our economy collapses and our standard of living and national power goes to pot. Like most things, both sides want what is best for them and their people, but it's mutally exclusive. There is no "good guy" or "bad guy" in an absolute sense.
