This topic is arguably broader than it should be, but, well, too late now.
So recently, the Australian government has decided to invest heavily in defence with the "threat" of China. By itself, I wouldn't post a thread on this, because despite what some people may claim, the idea of Australia matching China militarily is laughable. But there's been various comments about how the world now is in a similar situation as it was in the 1930s. Never directly spoken, but the insinuation is that China is to the world what Nazi Germany was to Europe - a rising, aggressive power bent on expanding its territory.
Personally, I find that spurious. However one feels about China, about the Ughyrs, or Hong Kong, or its own state aparatus, China's mostly been content to operate within its own borders. Yes, there's the issues of the South China Sea, and accustations of pursuing colonial policy (mainly in Africa, but you can cite other examples, such as Sri Lanka), but Nazi Germany? Really? This isn't semantics about fascism vs. communism, it's the idea of territorial expansion. I'm not trying to play a game of whataboutism, but at the least, China hasn't engaged in the same misadventures the United States has over the last two decades. There's no China's equivalent of Iraq, or having a role similar to NATO in Libya. Heck, Russia arguably makes the better equivalent since it did perform a land grab in Crimea. So if anything, if I was making analogy to prior war, it would be the Cold War. Only instead of the Soviet Union being the main go-to for communism, China is the one promoting its own model of development.
Truth be told, I'm often iffy about the "threat" of China. I'm not excusing its human rights abuses, but again, this isn't some imperial power, at least in what we might consider conventional imperialism (and when I say that, I'm referring to the entirety of human history, where empires grow by force most of the time. Frankly, it strikes me as bizzare that we're trying to invest in military hardware that wouldn't change anything if China DID invade, when we could be spending that money on, I dunno, renewable energy (but of course I'd say that). Also, there's the idea of a multipolar world, as opposed to the Cold War paradigm that lasted for decades. Yes, China is behaving badly. But what else is going on? Well, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been waging their own cold war, and Yemen's paid the price. Israel is playing with fire right now with its annexation of more territory in the West Bank, and Turkey's declared that Jerusalem is their red line. Turkey itself is asserting itself on the world stage as well. Or, going back to China, the recent skirmish between it and India, not to mention the tensions between India and Pakistan, even casting aside Khasmir. And that's not covering intercine wars within and between countries.
I guess the TL, DR version of this is whether you think the situation with China is reminiscent of the 30s, or whether we're in a new Cold War, or on the cusp of one. And if either of these sentiments are true, how concerned should we be?
So recently, the Australian government has decided to invest heavily in defence with the "threat" of China. By itself, I wouldn't post a thread on this, because despite what some people may claim, the idea of Australia matching China militarily is laughable. But there's been various comments about how the world now is in a similar situation as it was in the 1930s. Never directly spoken, but the insinuation is that China is to the world what Nazi Germany was to Europe - a rising, aggressive power bent on expanding its territory.
Personally, I find that spurious. However one feels about China, about the Ughyrs, or Hong Kong, or its own state aparatus, China's mostly been content to operate within its own borders. Yes, there's the issues of the South China Sea, and accustations of pursuing colonial policy (mainly in Africa, but you can cite other examples, such as Sri Lanka), but Nazi Germany? Really? This isn't semantics about fascism vs. communism, it's the idea of territorial expansion. I'm not trying to play a game of whataboutism, but at the least, China hasn't engaged in the same misadventures the United States has over the last two decades. There's no China's equivalent of Iraq, or having a role similar to NATO in Libya. Heck, Russia arguably makes the better equivalent since it did perform a land grab in Crimea. So if anything, if I was making analogy to prior war, it would be the Cold War. Only instead of the Soviet Union being the main go-to for communism, China is the one promoting its own model of development.
Truth be told, I'm often iffy about the "threat" of China. I'm not excusing its human rights abuses, but again, this isn't some imperial power, at least in what we might consider conventional imperialism (and when I say that, I'm referring to the entirety of human history, where empires grow by force most of the time. Frankly, it strikes me as bizzare that we're trying to invest in military hardware that wouldn't change anything if China DID invade, when we could be spending that money on, I dunno, renewable energy (but of course I'd say that). Also, there's the idea of a multipolar world, as opposed to the Cold War paradigm that lasted for decades. Yes, China is behaving badly. But what else is going on? Well, Iran and Saudi Arabia have been waging their own cold war, and Yemen's paid the price. Israel is playing with fire right now with its annexation of more territory in the West Bank, and Turkey's declared that Jerusalem is their red line. Turkey itself is asserting itself on the world stage as well. Or, going back to China, the recent skirmish between it and India, not to mention the tensions between India and Pakistan, even casting aside Khasmir. And that's not covering intercine wars within and between countries.
I guess the TL, DR version of this is whether you think the situation with China is reminiscent of the 30s, or whether we're in a new Cold War, or on the cusp of one. And if either of these sentiments are true, how concerned should we be?
