"China is the future, do you agree?"

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I would like to hope no one nation is the future. Replacing one global hegemony with another is not my idea of progress.

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I agree

未來屬於

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For whatever it's worth, despite never formally studying Chinese, I managed to read both the Chinese sentences, albeit with the wrong tones. Like to be fair I have studied Japanese, and I am generally a bit of a weirdo with a knack for this sort of thing — but I do still have to wonder if more people are just going to start casually picking up hanzi just from exposure like I have, as China becomes more prominent. I could certainly see it happening.

"China is the future" is a bit of a vague question, though. I absolutely think that the USA is currently crumbling as the world's hegemon — interestingly enough, the USA's flag actually has stars on it to represent a "new constellation", using the constellations in the sky as an allegory for the rise and fall of nations; so it indeed seems like the fifty-star constellation is beginning to fall beyond the horizon, as a new five-star constellation rises.

This being said, I don't think China's behavior as future hegemon will be the same as the USA's current behavior as present hegemon. I don't necessarily know what to expect from the future, though, so it's probably best to prepare for all possibilities until we gain a clearer understanding of the situation.

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Don't know why you're lionizing anti-communist nationalists as the "true China." The KMT were brutal nationalists, just because they preceded the Communists doesn't make siding with far-right nationalists the answer.

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Already!

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Looks like I was dead-on, haha.

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Taiwan/RoC is not currently ruled by the KMT though. (Nor is today's KMT very comparable to what they were many decades ago)

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The KMT is where the origins of RoC as "true China" come from. Outside of the KMT, there are no claims of the RoC as anything resembling a "legitimate heir to China," only the KMT as the former rulers of the mainland.

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No thanks, replacing one imperialist for another won't help the world.

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Also, we can't really know and judge China as the world leader, as they're not yet.

As soon as you are on top, your behaviour might change. Both for the better, but most likely for the worse. (see US)

Also, we have to remember that China still needs all western partners to keep up their production. They are still a manufacturing country.

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Can you elaborate? How is the PRC in any way comparable with respect to Imperialism as the United States?

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I'm onboard with Wales. Let Wales rule for a bit.

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Damn, they blocked Tor Browser.

I went to Fennec with uBlock on and VPN enabled (privacy reasons), the first thing I see is a download attempt of the 小红书 .apk file. I tap X, and it does it again. Damn, seem like Reddit all over again. ‍️

Also, they require a +86 phone number for registration. Not a fan of that. Its like Facebook + region locking. Well I guess it make sense... too many TikTok refugees lol.

I had to change to user agent to windows. The comments are pretty chill, unlike some other Chinese sites. I don't see any "MAGA" type comments like you would see on twitter.

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Oh my, I can't even begin to imagine what a Texan or Creole Welsh accent would sound like if that was the international language! ‍

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Or they may just be pushing back on the idea that the PRC has legitimate claim to the nation of Taiwan. People online like to say it because they know it upsets the PRC government. Basically, it asks the question, "What makes the PRC any more the "True China" than Taiwan?"

Truthfully, neither nation is "true China", and neither are the nations that they were years ago. No one in Taiwan today holds any belief that the ROC government is the rightful government of the mainland in exile.

But Taiwan is unable to be widely recognized as a sovereign nation in its own right to this day because the government of the PRC is still sticking to the "manifest destiny" sort of idea that there is a single, ideal land of China rooted in its imperial legacy, which for some reason the current mainland government feels they have an obligation to claim.

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Why do you think it upsets the people of the PRC to say that the RoC is "true China?" Do you think it might just have to do with the fact that the far-right nationalists that used to rule China fled there after the Communist revolution? Could it have anything to do with many people of China giving their lives to throw off the KMT?

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Belt and Road Initiative, China owning most of the cobalt reserves and refining resources that oftentimes rely on enslaved child labor, anti-Black discrimination inside Chinese enclaves in Africa (1) (2), mandating Mandarin in Ugandan schools, with Kenya and South Africa making it optional

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China is manipulating events to ensure that they are the future, getting Trump to create to chaos by proxy through Putin to demonstrate to the world that the US is an unreliable leader/partner. They will make the case that they are a stable world power who can be relied on to stay true to their agreements, and they will point to the chaos that Trump is creating as an example. Trump will turn the US into an economic pariah.

Trump’s rhetoric on taking over Greenland and Canada will also ruffle military alliances and the traditional Western powers will fracture. If the US does make any aggressive moves China will likely support whomever the US targets; economically and policy-wise at first, but potentially with military power to demonstrate that it, unlike Russia, is truly a near-peer adversary of the US. Assuming success, because there will be virtually no will in the US for supporting an actual protracted invasion of another sovereign nation that is causing international problems, China will then lay claim to victory in their first major head-to-head clash with the US. World opinion of the US as the leading superpower will wane, and China will continue to make inroads at taking over leadership of the world economy.

I could see a scenario in which China takes the lead at mediating between Russia and Ukraine and forcing Putin to withdraw, and even declaring that they no longer have any intention of invading Taiwan because they have a greater purpose in leading the world to a new era of peace. That would be the final nail in the coffin for the US politically, and China would do everything it could to ensure that the US was held in-check to keep the dollar weak so that they can never challenge China’s economic leadership again.

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the CCP was no less far right than the KMT during that era, exemplified by the many genocides they committed and continue to commit against ethnic minorities

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Can you elaborate on how BRI is Imperialism? Further, learning mandarin as a second language in schooling isn't the same as forcing everyone to speak it, Spanish is required learning in many US schools and it isn't a form of Mexican imperialism. I'd also like to see a source on the child labor in the cobalt mines.

The racial discrimination is terrible, no doubt, and it needs to be worked on and fixed. However, this doesn't seem to be something the PRC is pushing so much as individual racists. I am hopeful that that situation will improve especially.

There are many arguments against China being Imperialist, from Vijay Prashad. Here's an excerpt from a sepatate article, a quick 9 minute read:

In a 2005 presentation to the Congressional U.S.-China Commission, U.S. State Department official Princeton Lyman assessed how China’s model of socialist state loans don’t serve the function of profit:

China utilizes a variety of instruments to advance its interest in ways that western nations can only envy. Most of China’s investments are through state-owned companies, whose individual investments do not have to be profitable if they serve overall Chinese objectives. Thus the representative of China’s state-owned construction company in Ethiopia could reveal that he was instructed by Beijing to bid low on various tenders, without regard for profit. China’s long term objective in Ethiopia is in access to future natural resource investments, not in construction business profits.

Despite recent claims that China has been using its companies to engage in neo-colonialism throughout Africa, the situation Lyman assessed has continued to be the case throughout the last fifteen years. As I’ve mentioned in past writings, China’s investments do not meet the definition of neo-colonialism; Chinese enterprises help the job markets abroad rather than only employing Chinese workers, China hasn’t been engaging in “land grabs” in Africa, and China isn’t working to trap African nations in debt. In accordance with China’s not engaging in regime change, China has also never favored any government for its form or ideology.

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"China is the future, do you agree?"