Nikolaz72 said:
Gonna take a couple o'hundred years for the US to pay back their debt to China. Unless the US declares war, China currently holds most of the good cards, no reason for them to initiate anything. I can understand their want to have means to fight back against the US, the American Military has had plans (And who knows, still have) Of how to take out the western nations in case of a total-war. Ofcourse it makes sense that China would also be prepared for such a scenario, and you would kid yourself if you doubt for a second that the US is not prepared for such a scenario. I think it is fair that China prepares means in which to defend and attack, its not like the US arent doing the exact same thing.
I dont think that preparations for possible wars is a concern for civilians, thats the reason we have militaries in the first place. Filling the people with idea's of how china is 'different' and how we should prepare to 'kill' them. (Seems to be what you want) Is a lot less productive than promoting peace and trade. Run a soceity on a need-to-know/want-to-know basis. Soceity doesnt need to know the US plans for an invasion of Brittain, they just as little has to /want to/ know the US-plans for counter-meassures on their sattelites against Chineese missiles.
Maybe 'you' are fixated with the differences of the east and the west, but honestly (Keep that to yourself). Dont start spreading stupid propaganda saying that we should not focus on the similiarities. But always prepare to hate them at a moments notice.
In case the US decides to give China the middle-finger due to some fcked up diplomatic scheme and a war starts, China has to get around the fact that the US army is far better equipped, for example by blinding their sattelites. Its logical from a military standpoint, and I'm not intimidated by it as there is no reason to be. Fearmongering will get us nowhere, thats what got us the muhhamed drawings and several stupid wars (recently) and thousands of wars (Throughout history)
Well to be honest the US doesn't really owe China much. Those "loans" are were just a diplomatic way of China paying off the US. If you ever played an empire game you'd have this referred to as "tribute". In today's world though we don't term tribute, tribute, it's presented as a loan under "favorable" terms to the lender with the knowlege it will never be collected due to the differance in power, this is a face saving gesture for those giving the tribute, and a way of not seeming like an ogre for the group demanding it.
What happened with China is that when they started breaking patents, copyrights, and other things and producing knockoffs, the US was put in a position of what to do about it. This was decades ago when China was a mere shadow of what it is now. It was decided that the best thing to do was nothing, because if China made money that money would trickle down to the people who would demand more, leading to reforms within the goverment, and eventually more modernChinese innovation, which would in turn lead to them respecting copyright and patent laws to protect their own goods. The problem is that the goverment relies heavily on the monies from trade (which it taxes in various ways) and allowing China to rob US companies meant the US goverment losing money it needed to support itself. This lead to the US more or less cutting a deal where China would "loan" the US the money it needed to continue operations in exchange for the US (and it's allies) turning a blind eye to Chinese thefts and their robber economy. This incidently contributed heavily to the bad blood between the US goverment (well a lot of weastern goverments) and big business, because the businesses are forced to comply with ethical standards like not using sweatshops, preventing them from competing, and seeing their best work analyzed and knocked off by China and similar nations costing them money. This bad blood contributed to the recent climax with all the banks and big businesses going out of business, and how badly the businesses were cooperating with a goverment they felt they couldn't trust. A lot of those "sweetheart" deals people see being handed to businesses over the years were actually attempts to re-build bridges. As we saw, the businesses of the upper 1% everyone was complaining about were oftentimes running on empty for this reason (and many others).
Overall the plan with China was not a bad one, the thing is though that China decided not to reform, instead it took draconian measures to maintain it's internal status quo with it's knockoffs and sweatshops, with most of the wealth and progress only going to towards their elite (China is a nation with huge, modern cities, but also where the majority live in abject poverty, SARS started due to people living with their livestock for example). China instead put most of it's money into the military, and has internally been going off about wanting to solve it's population problems by invading other countries and colonizing them, their technology (Naval, missle interception, etc..) and increasing aggression (tagging the Kitty Hawke, air piracy, etc...) all reinforces this.
The debt owed to China takes on a new meaning if it achieved military parity with the US or gets into a position where it could viably collected it either directly or through indirect pressure. We're also arguably the only force right now that stands between China deciding to invade other nations given that we develop and provide most of the technology for the top western military forces, act as enforcement for the UN, and other things. Time plays to China due to their size and production, given enough thefts, and time to build up a nationt hat represents roughly 1/3rd of the human race can very much overcome us, and we know that, having put ourselves in this situation by ignoring it.
The vengeance aspects of things are also kind of disturbing, with the alleged "trivialization" of China after their loss in the so called "Opium Wars" (very complicated) and the belief they should have been ruling there. Then there is the whole spiritual aspect of "The Middle Kingdom" which apparently refers to China and it's people as being between heaven and earth, intended to rule earth and lesser peoples by celestrial mandate.
There is a lot to this, and I've done a lot of reading on the subject over the years.
The point is that I think your wrong about a lot of things, or at least why things are in the position they are.
You talk about considering the similarities between cultures, but understand that those similarities do not change the fact that in the end there are limited resources on earth, and we're already straining our limits of production, while the sources of those resources (wood, minerals, etc...) are drying up as we vastly exceed the abillity of the planet to replentish itself. In the end China wants what every nation wants, to have a high standard of living (outside of desires to rule the planet, which is another discussion entirely), that can't happen without those resources coming from somewhere else. For China and it's massive population to live better it needs more land, and to take resources (gas, wood, metals, etc...) that would otherwise go to other nations enjoying a high standard of living like the US. There just isn't enough stuff on the planet for everyone to enjoy a high standard of living on the level of Americans (and like anyone in my position, I like the way I live, and am willing to defend my lifestyle to the point of killing rivals for it, as would pretty much anyone in a similar position). The point here being that in the end, when you get past all the rhetoric to fire people up, it's not a matter of good or evil, it's a matter of us or them, and the same kind of competition over space and resources that has always existed, albiet amplified by the realities of us hitting the limits of both. In the final equasion, when you get past the justifications (destiny, revenge, trivialization) China is fundementally just preparing to do what any other nation and culture would do in a similar position... taking an oppertunity it sees both due to what it can do, and the self-imposed weakness (which is still weakness) of it's immediate rivals like the US and some of it's stronger allies.
Understand, China isn't preparing to defend itself, a land war in Asia is bloody insane given the size of the landmass and overpopulation. It also has the military to defend and hold it's borders as has been proven. The thing with China is that it's build up is to project itself into other countries, and head off most of the big technology like lon range weapons that could be used on them to stop them if they were to start going on the offensive.
Or in short the world basically sucks.
Things like hacking NASA are common sense in light of the ongoing conflicts, whether anyone thinks they are justified or not, the reason WHY someone would hack NASA (which is what I was responding to) is pretty obvious.
