Comment by ethbr1
7 months ago
He is 71 and getting older.
A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you've had absolute power for a decade and aren't overly concerned about consequences in 20 years.
7 months ago
He is 71 and getting older.
A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you've had absolute power for a decade and aren't overly concerned about consequences in 20 years.
A lot of crazy things look more reasonable when you realize that your metric for 'crazy' and 'not crazy' is less about gauging the mental state of the person making those decisions, and more about how much/little they upset Western interests.
Invading sovereign nations is pretty crazy. (Said to castigate both western and non-western countries)
Sometimes the standards of human decency are global.
We never call a Western or west-aligned politician who is doing it 'crazy'.
We have a lot of other negative terms for it, but for a very recent example, nobody in the press (even the press hostile to them) doubted Dubya's or Tony Blair's mental state in 2003.
Somebody opposed to us doing it, is, of course, mentally ill. There's no other explanation for it!
If you look at the history of the last 2000+ years in Europe and Asia, invading sovereign nations (or whatever you want to call the equivalent over that period) is pretty much the norm...so not crazy. Is it violating the standard of human decency if that seems to be the norm? Maybe we humans are not as decent as we would like to thing we are.
I think it's a mistake to give in to the temptation to jump to the conclusion that China is a tunnel-vision cult of personality everything-the-crazy-dictator-wants-he-gets government.
The Chinese government under Xi has a well-established track record of long-term planning that has done nothing but elevated China's status and leverage in the world.
It really couldn't be further from (e.g.) Putin's style of governance.
Sidelining potential political competitors and/or forcing them out of the public sphere doesn't inspire confidence in Xi's ability to resist using power conveniently.
> The Chinese government under Xi has a well-established track record of long-term planning that has done nothing but elevated China's status and leverage in the world.
Some of its neighbors in the South China Sea would beg to differ.
E.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V80MGYrWWaM&t=80s
I’m confused at what your video is supposed to disprove about what I said.
China rammed into a Philippine ship knowing they would face zero consequences.
Did they face any consequences?
China’s neighbors can hem and haw all they want. China is the superpower in the Eastern Hemisphere.
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> elevated China's status
In 2024 china issued 17% less residence visas than 2019.
Maybe. But the trend is down.
What does residence visas have to do with geopolitical power?
That’s one tiny variable of many.
Should I link you an article about how US immigration hit record lows after the Covid-19 pandemic?
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