Six years ago, The Onion mocked the idea of TikTok being dangerous to the US as a paranoid fantasy.[0] Now, that position is bipartisan consensus. China hysteria appears to have no limits.
To think China is not an adversary to the West is simply foolish. Either via blatant cyberattacks, corporate espionage or nefarious trade moves, China is not a friend.
I don't even know what you mean by "adversary to the West."
China is a major country that has its own interests, which sometimes align with and sometimes are at odds with those of the US, EU countries, and other countries that belong to "the West."
The type of simplistic friend/enemy thinking that you're engaging in will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As China hysteria continues to skyrocket to previously unforseeable levels in the US, the US will take ever more extreme measures, the relationship between the US and China will get worse and worse, and the two will eventually come into real conflict.
The only way to avert that fate is to counter simplistic "China is the enemy" thinking.
It’s amazing that you have a lot of ideas to defend China but completely clueless how China is an adversary to most of the west. This is the same thinking that Europe fell for with regards to Russia. You don’t happen to reside in Europe so you?
There is no simplistic friend/enemy, notice how you are using those words not me. Countries of all level of diplomacy play games. Geopolitics are shades of gray and it would be blind to say China has not over the past 10 years gotten bolder in state sponsored cyberattacks, flying satellites/balloons over the US, market flooding, taking HK early, state sponsored corporate espionage.
Please stop using your simple mental models. Nobody is getting in a conflict as of yet and it’s in nobody’s economic interest. China still thinks very much in terms of economics but on the long horizon. You think in such a binary way with this strange idea that anyone is getting into a military conflict.
> There is no simplistic friend/enemy, notice how you are using those words not me.
Make up your mind.
> over the past 10 years gotten bolder in state sponsored cyberattacks, flying satellites/balloons over the US, market flooding, taking HK early, state sponsored corporate espionage.
You say this all as if the US were not doing much the same in reverse. The NSA has a yearly budget in the tens of billions of dollars, and part of its mission is offensive cyber operations. The US has dozens of satellites overflying China at any given moment (I don't even know if the Chinese balloon was intentional - in the end, it actually seemed as if China had simply lost control of the balloon). The US has military bases all over China's periphery, which pose a serious military threat to mainland China. The US has imposed broad sanctions intended to cripple China's entire high-tech sector, which is a fundamental attack on China's goal of becoming an economically developed country with a high standard of living.
By any objective assessment, the US is much more aggressive in its attitude towards China than vice versa. The type of thinking you're engaging in, which paints China as an enemy with which mutually beneficial relations are impossible, will lead to ever more antagonism and eventual conflict, if not curtailed.
Six years ago, The Onion mocked the idea of TikTok being dangerous to the US as a paranoid fantasy.[0] Now, that position is bipartisan consensus. China hysteria appears to have no limits.
0. https://theonion.com/xi-whiz-1844838344/