China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis(english.news.cn) |
China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis(english.news.cn) |
Democracies have safeguards in place that complicates many radical actions, such as starting wars. So the long-term solution to problems like these is to get rid of all dictatorships, as peacefully as possible but with strong determination.
I'd like to see a UDN - a united democratic nations. The base rules should be that no country that has had the same person in the top two political positions of power for more than a decade can be part of the UDN and there should be steep barriers for trade with non-UDN nations.
This should be done while democratic countries still have the largest economies in the world, after that it's too late.
The US gets involved in a new war every 2-3 years [0]. In the 21st century pretty much every time they start something it has been effectively unprovoked. Democracies are notably more bloodthirsty than dictatorships; dictatorships need to preserve their troops at home to suppress dissidents but can't afford for the army generals to be too powerful which leads to a level of self-contradiction and ineffectiveness in undemocratic armies.
It is quite possible that if Russia were a democracy, the only change would be that they prosecuted the war more competently.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...
This page explains how grassroots democracy and public participation works in China. https://news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-runs-the-cpc/index.html
This is a good overview of how the party is structured, and how people participate in the governing process. This is fundamentally different from how electoral parties work in western countries. https://news.cgtn.com/event/2019/whorunschina/index.html
The party in China is predominantly composed of working class people as opposed to a ruling political class as seen in the west. This goes a long way in helping ensure that the interests of the government align with the interests of the working majority http://www.chinatoday.com/org/cpc/
Furthermore, a study spanning many decades of US policy shows that US can hardly be called a democracy in practical terms:
What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to pretend to be shocked that in a country who's censorship apparatus is not only the worlds best, but well known by the name "The Great Firewall of China"[^1]. The same country who has demonstrated they will jail you for having or expressing thoughts contrary to the ruling party's stance[^2]. That people who live in said country, when asked, agree their country is the best. If I was worried that admitting I have questions about my country would get me sent to an interment camp, for some forced "re-education". I'd likely adamantly agree my country was democratic.
But even I'm mistaken about all the human rights abuses in China, and it's actually a great, misunderstood place. I still wouldn't trust the majority public opinion about something. Because unless I'm curious about sentiment, it's far better to trust and rely on experts, rather than the feelings of an opinion poll. Which is something I'd hope you agree with given you cite a Cambridge study in this very comment.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_China [^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_China
Having a peaceful mandatory transfer of power from any individual after a set number of years is not the only requirement but it's one of the most fundamental. China has removed that. The US for all its problems still has that, despite the troubles during the most recent election.
A democracy that has been subverted by corporate interests and is not acting in the best interests of its population still has mechanisms in place by which the population can detect and change such subversions. The forced transition of power being one of the most important.
There simply isn't enough political chatter coming out of China to support the idea that there is a healthy democratic process at work. Although I take no position on how stable their foreign policy may or may not be.
Given that Russia has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council with veto power, this is basically making it impossible to sanction Russia.
Section 2 is a clear condemnation of NATO expansion into Ukraine.
>The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs.
I don't think there is any other way to read this. Russia is not expanding a military Bloc. A "military bloc" is a set of countries with military alliance. This is perfectly in line with China's historic perspective on the issue.
NATO is a defensive alliance.
So you are saying China don't want their neighbors to defend themselves?
Absolutely not, and especially so if those neighbors were aligning with the USA. Do you think China would be excited about Taiwan or Mongolia forming a military alliance with the USA? Even if it is defensive?
Read point 2. It clearly condemns defensive Alliances.
“The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs.“
...
“All parties should oppose the pursuit of one's own security at the cost of others' security, prevent bloc confrontation, and work together for peace and stability on the Eurasian Continent.“
I can't think of another way to read this
2. Abandoning the Cold War mentality. The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly. There is no simple solution to a complex issue. All parties should, following the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and bearing in mind the long-term peace and stability of the world, help forge a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture. All parties should oppose the pursuit of one's own security at the cost of others' security, prevent bloc confrontation, and work together for peace and stability on the Eurasian Continent.
>The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs.
The most clear interpretation of this section is a condemnation of NATO expansion into Ukraine. NATO is the "military bloc" described here.
A military bloc is a military alliance of states. Russia invading Ukraine isn't a "strengthening or expansion" of the Russian military bloc.
NATO alliance Ukraine clearly advances the security of the EU and Ukraine itself.
It seems some countries don't want their neighbors to defend themselves?
China and American Conservatives are an demanding immediate halt of Western support for Ukraine followed by "peace talks". What exactly is there to talk about when Russia doesn't even recognize Ukraine's right to exist?
Russia has been somewhat effective in misleading the West into thinking that the conquest is only about Donbas and Crimea. Meanwhile Russian officials all the way up to Putin himself have been hinting or outright stating that the war is about annexing all of Ukraine.
No one thinks that.
"Ukraine-Russia Peace:
- Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.
- Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).
- Water supply to Crimea assured.
- Ukraine remains neutral."
That's clearly: If Ukraine gives away Donbas and Crimea, Russia will leave.
There seems to be millions of twits that have forgotten that Russia assaulted Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts
Putin can start doing that today if he's serious about peace. China should demand Putin to do these things if China is serious about peace.
But they're not serious, are they.
would a person that is capable of starting a war ever accept those terms ?
especially since pulling back now puts them in a worse state than before having invaded, with NATO expansion, losses etc
You could argue that NATO is a defensive Alliance but much of the world does not view it that way. The US uses NATO bases for every war it conducts and houses nuclear and non-nuclear missiles and in NATO countries.
Independent of whether you think NATO is a defensive Alliance, this statement condemns the expansion of alliances even for the purpose of increasing security of the Allied countries. It states it quite plainly that it opposes defensive alliances too
Perhaps you mistake countries who are part of NATO to being NATO itself?
"just a few examples".. I expect there are lots more examples you can give? Especially if your point is that NATO is not a defensive alliance and is used to invade and gain territory.
NATO massacred over 6 million in war on terror alone https://bylinetimes.com/2021/09/15/up-to-six-million-people-...
Meanwhile, US is obviously the biggest NATO member and what it does is clearly condoned by the rest of NATO members whether they are involved directly or not.
Should we complain about homeowners installing locks and security cameras on their houses?
“The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs.“
Perhaps then China doesn't need to build military bases in South China Sea?
You might disagree with China's perspective or think they are hypocrites and that's fine, but that doesn't change the point of what they said
Evidently, you weren't even aware of the fact that there are multiple parties in the country.
Meanwhile, absolutely hilarious of you to talk about gulags when US runs concentration camps for kids on its border https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-detention-child-migrants
Wow, you're just going to be all sorts of mean today... feels bad...
But I think maybe I was unclear. I wasn't claiming the majority of the population in China was unhappy with their lives, or that we shouldn't believe them when they claim to be happy. My point was, it's bad policy to believe an opinion poll, in this case the arguably uneducated populace opinion of how democratic a country is, over experts in the field.
> You should also let people like Manning and Assange know that they shouldn't be worried about being sent into an interment camp.
Interesting red herring here, but my views on the reasonability of these two prosecutions. At least they were for crimes, not related to "subversion of state power". And the fact that there's really only 2 you can name also speaks volumes compared to the volumes you need for the number arrested by CCP.
Here's a Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey showing that Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...
Here's a summary of studies finding that China is in fact more democratic than the US
https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-tha...
Another Harvard study https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...
And another survey https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilif...
All of these western sources, and all agree on this point.
Furthermore, why don't we take a look at the tangible outcomes of the policies of the CPC to see why the government enjoys such high support, and why people in China consider their country democratic. Chinese government practically eliminated extreme poverty. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-10-17/Graphics-Ending-China-...
In fact, China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.
China also massively invests in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2014/12/05/china-...
China has built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/ten-years-2...
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-peop...
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet.
Social mobility in China is also far higher than it is in US according to NYT https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/ch...
This is what a government that actually works in the interests of the majority looks like.
China is most definitely not a democracy. At the same time, it is misunderstood in the West, and it's nothing like the nightmare that most Westerners imagine. Westerners are subjected to an unbelievable level of propaganda when it comes to China. China is neither a utopia nor a dystopia.
Ultimately, a democracy is a government that works in the interest of the majority and that's being held accountable to the majority. Chinese system seems to do a good job of that as evidenced by the fact that quality of life in China continues to improve. People living in China think they have a democracy because they see the government working for them. The same can't be said for many western countries.
Any democracy that gives great power to its leader has term limits (or they are not a democracy for very long). Most democracies have both divided executive powers and also term limits.
And of course China offers this. Here is the footage of Tianamen Square 1989 as reported on television in China https://web.archive.org/web/20200604205421/https://www.youtu...
Interestingly enough this footage was removed from youtube recently, which leads to the question of which government is actually practising censorship here.
Why would Russia not end up in a worse state after launching an ill-advised war of aggression? Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
what you describe is unrealistic. Russia keeps killing people and handing over the Ukraine to them is no option.
And who suggested that? The question is whether Russia will violate 80 years of superpower precedent by acting with integrity and admitting defeat and willingness to face externally determined consequences or if something else will happen.
No need to ask that question. Putin has made Russia weaker, poorer, and a pariah with fewer friends:
https://fortune.com/2023/02/20/russia-economy-self-immolated...
Russia has become a lesser state run by a sad little man. If Russia wants to rebuild itself then its best option is to remove Putin and withdraw entirely from Ukraine.
Putin created his own problems and he has made Russia weaker. It's well past time for him to find the honesty to admit it.
Putin made his choices. He gets to live them.
Is it still illegal to know things in China? I read stories all the time about government enforced censorship in China, so I think it's fair to assume that people in China know less about the country than interested parties outside the country, right?
And while I am just a white American dude, thankfully one who can find China on a map. The tone here screams needless hostility.
I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd. People can certainly understand whether they are happy with their lives and whether their quality of life is improving or not. Given that vast majority of people in China claim this is the case, I'm going to go with their lived experience over your notions about what life in China is like.
Frankly, the fact that people in US have been convinced that they know better what life in other countries is like than people living there do is a testament to the effectiveness of US propaganda.
> If Russia wants to rebuild itself then its best option is to remove Putin and withdraw entirely from Ukraine
The second option doesn't seem to require Russia to do the first. Nor does it really require Russia to remove Putin to get peace. Putin withdrawing is no doubt more realistic if China helps put lipstick on the pig with an obfuscated treaty on future alliances that can be called a victory.
Americans believe they live in a democracy because they've been conditioned through propaganda that their guns make them free. Yet their consent for American imperialism is manufactured by lies from the media, their police steal from them and murder from them with impunity, their intelligence services spy on everything they say and do, and their government is engineered to operate completely divorced from the will of the people. They suffer a quality of life worse in many metrics than other first world countries, with fewer rights and freedoms. But it's cool as long as they can shoot a senator in the head whenever they want.
I'm not, but seeing as you just want to scream at someone on the internet, while also attempting to straw man any argument I make. Which seem to me so that you can argue that opinions from a heavily censored country are more important than independent evaluations from experts. I'll simply respond with
no.
For anyone else following along, majority of the links I looked at, don't support his assertions, or missing enough context that they are deeply misleading. The remainder seems to be "what about [bad thing] in [other place]" It's dangerous to allow that to distract from the point.
That's quite telling. People are often surprised that East Germany had multiple parties too; surprised for the same reason.
An ad hominem is "a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself."
Your incorrect and baseless assertion that I can't find China on a map attacks me as a person, and not what I said. I'm also not American fyi.
Now kindly never interact with me again.
I'd say the exact opposite - those in a system become desensitized to its failings, and steeped in societal myths. One needs to be outside of that to have a frame of reference to compare anything to.
Your argument seems to hinge upon material wealth. That can carry a lot of water for a system's failings, as it does in the US. But it's not particularly indicative of the shapes of power structures.
Interesting, can you cite any of these books? I don't believe they contradict my understand that censorship in China is so drastically different from the US that the comparison becomes dishonest.
> I think the idea that people living in a country understand their own lives worse than an outsider is beyond absurd. People can certainly understand whether they are happy with their lives and whether their quality of life is improving or not.
I didn't claim this, because normally I'd agree with you. I don't think I understand their lives better than they do. If someone says they're happy with their life, and I don't suspect duress. I'm happy to believe them. My claim was, in part because it's so hard to get reliable information inside from China given the extreme government censorship; that the opinions from the population about the quality shouldn't be given the normal amount of weight you'd give opinions about the government from a country that has strong protections and freedoms for the press. At best, they're under informed, and at worse they're misinformed. If you disagree, and believe they're perfectly informed, can you explain why there's so many articles, information, and evidence showing the CCP attempting to coverup information and events?
https://archive.org/details/inventingrealit000pare
https://archive.org/details/pdfy-NekqfnoWIEuYgdZl
>My claim was, in part because it's so hard to get reliable information inside from China given the extreme government censorship; that the opinions from the population about the quality shouldn't be given the normal amount of weight you'd give opinions about the government from a country that has strong protections and freedoms for the press.
Then you surely will give weight to western sources, such as Harvard, saying this is the case?
Here's a Harvard research center study of long-term public opinion survey showing that Chinese citizens overwhelmingly approve of their government
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...
https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-tha...
https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/understanding-ccp-resil...
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilif...
>If you disagree, and believe they're perfectly informed, can you explain why there's so many articles, information, and evidence showing the CCP attempting to coverup information and events?
You seriously need me to explain to you why there ism assive propaganda in US against its peer competitor? The very fact that you can't even spell the name of the party, which is Communist Party of China (CPC) correctly says volumes. It's like if I insisted on calling your country ASU.
Yes, because you're not convincing anyone you're right. You're convincing people that you're kind of a dick. I have a large body of evidence claiming one thing, and the other side culminates in "just trust me bro". And because you're being such an asshole to both me and other commenters, I find it really hard to trust you, given I don't think you're operating in good faith.
> The very fact that you can't even spell the name of the party, which is Communist Party of China (CPC) correctly says volumes. It's like if I insisted on calling your country ASU.
No, it's not because my primary source of information is "western" explicitly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party which uses CCP, and because I'm on a predominantly "western" message board. I chose to use the more commonly understood initialism. Do you find ad hominem convincing yourself? Personally I find them either insulting, or distracting, and quite often distractions and red herrings are used to stifle conversations and the sharing of ideas. Which seems to be a theme across most of your comments here, you misunderstand a comment, and then bring up distractions from the topic quite a lot.
> What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
And, if you think that's what a democracy is then what else is there to tell you.
>No, it's not because my primary source of information is "western" explicitly
Once you actually read your source, you'll see that the official name of the party is indeed CPC, the Communist Party of China.
> The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Why ASU affiliated sources choose to call the party CCP I have no idea.
>Do you find ad hominem convincing yourself?
If you're going to use terms like ad hominem to make yourself sound smart then you should at least learn what they mean first.
Ad hominem, would be me saying that you are wrong because of poor quality of your character. However, I've actually provided factual sources to show why your argument is wrong here. Perhaps don't engage in debate on subjects you're utterly ignorant regarding and then you won't feel the need to feel insulted.
I understand your comment perfectly, and all you're doing here is using sophistry to distract from the fact that your comment was demonstrably asinine.
If we use campaign contributions as a proxy for interests, then internet companies like Google and Facebook and their employees support Democrats much more than they support Republicans, and it's vice versa in the aerospace and defence industry.
The idea of a singular ruling class controlling the whole country is a lazy conspiracy theory that ignores the complexity of politics and governance.
There is a ruling class (capital), but it is not – nor is it asserted to be – monolithic. There are conflicts as well as common interests within it; the common interests are more consistently served by government bipartisanly because the dominant factions of each party answer to (different, but overlapping, subsets of) the capitalist class. The points on which the ruling class are also the points of genuine (rather than ginned up to build support on other issues) divisions between the parties.
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.
And this is precisely what the analysis of US government policy shows. US has a government by the rich and for the rich.