The damage caused by Donald Trump to the United States’ reputation is creating opportunities for China, particularly with regards to Taiwan, according to a retired senior colonel from China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Speaking to the Guardian in Beijing, Zhou Bo said that Trump was damaging the US’s reputation “more than all of his predecessors combined”.
“By the end of his second term, I believe America’s global image will simply become more tarnished, its international standing will just go down further,” Zhou said. The people of Taiwan “know that America is going down”, which “might affect their mentality” with regards to China.
Trump’s chaos is China’s gain; Taiwan’s trust in the U.S. hangs by a thread. The article provides substantial insight into shifting power dynamics but might overstate their immediacy.
🐱🐱🐱🐱
vows to tariff war against China
tariffs Canada, Mexico, and Taiwan upon entering office
Can’t tell if successful Russian/Chinese operation, or Trump is just mega stupid lol.
It’s easier to do damage from the inside by manipulating stupid people, I guess.
I think both.
As a person? Yes
As a politician? Arguably no since he’s not the one making decisions.
Hes so very clearly nothing but a figure head. His boss in Russia, the heritage foundation and their billionaire backers are commanding him. The fuckin guy was told to shut up by a child, in the white house while Elon was behind the desk answering questions. I think part of the game plan is to make America look as dumb/inept as possible and it is working beautifully.
China have been running rings around America for the past 30 years.
I blame Nixon for this one. Opening and normalizing relations with a communist country under a time when America was at an ideological war with the communists was dumb at best and treasonous at worst, at least in my opinion.
Yeah this communism thing sounds terrible. According to needs and ability? Like a meritocracy? Fuck that, lets find something that concentrates wealth into the hands of the few, like a monarchy or something…
Can? No, this is incorrect.
They’ve already been capitalizing on this for a long time. That’s why they supported and promoted him in the first place.
China is going to eat Russia’s lunch
This was Trump‘s goal. He’s a Kremlin stooge. Putin wanted the world order disrupted, and he got it with comrade Trump.
He’s probably absolutely flabbergasted that his investment is paying off far better than he could have ever forseen.
Krasnov strikes back.
Thank you to the Americans that took to the streets and demonstrated today.
Hopefully we will see more of that.I read this in a fictional novel once.
Crazy it is happening irl.
I would be interested in that title, if you recall.
Idk what novel they’re thinking of, but It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis pretty closely predicted how things are currently going down. Fictional novel written around WWII about how what happened in Germany with the rise of Hitler could happen in the US.
Thanks! I like Sinclair Lewis very much, and if I’ve read that, I don’t recall it. I’ll be checking out out.
I mean, sure, but PLA is always going to say those thing.
If you read the whole article, his actual statements sound pretty reasonable. Like he describes (to paraphrase) China and Russia as partners but not an alliance like two parallel lines that run next to each other but never overlap. And he doesn’t sound belligerent about Taiwan. More of a “As America collapses and China rises, maybe Taiwan will want to be a part of China proper as the most powerful nation.”
I don’t necessarily agree that China’s rise is inevitable and nor is America’s decline. (The last two days haven’t helped the latter but America has a short memory.) China’s economy, for all its strengths, can be sclerotic and legally uncertain. Trump is obviously a wildcard so the U.S. isn’t in a position to judge there. If I were rich, I wouldn’t know where to invest in either nation. Both countries, to me, need some significant reforms.
So, anyway, I’m not endorsing his newsletter or whatever but it doesn’t seem like he’s just spouting off jingoism.
China faces two issues nobody ever talks about.
- Xi Jinping is old so within years, he’ll need a successor…and with authoritarian systems, succession can be bloody.
- China is facing a demographic collapse they have zero grip on at the moment. They might lose half their population by the end of the century. and their population hit peak in 2021, and just in the next decade they are projected to lose 50M people, (so this isn’t hat far as many people think)
Regarding point 1, he is 71 years old. Certainly not young but Trump is 78, and if he makes it to the end of his term he will be 82…
Generally speaking, autocrats have a shorter-than-average life expectancy. At least as leaders. Trump’s mental and physical decline is very remarkable if you compare him to his 2015 self vs now. He’s slow, he has difficulty holding his attention (see Crimea annex comment this Friday), but the US still has a succession system
both of these issues are really reaching.
- CCP will have no trouble of succeeding Xi as it’s a single party system.
- The population issue is heavily overblown and we have yet to see it actually have an effect. China being a dictatorship also can handle this issue more efficiently than the west.
The only problem China would be facing is civil disobedience but as long as Chinese live slightly more comfortable year after year and don’t notice the spying/firewall too much the Chinese are just too spineless to do anything.
That’s why China basically has to do nothing to win geopolitica these days. Just sit back, continue spreading propaganda and see everything fall in their favor.
Chinese are just too spineless to do anything
Spineless? Chinese people literally just protested against the authoritarian “Zero Covid” policy and that pressured the CCP to end that policy.
Lol
There might be one party looking from the outside, but on the inside there are many currents, and as soon as there’s a power vacuum, those currents will infight to gain power.
Yup. and the classic paradox of authoritarian systems is that if you name and train your successor, they’ll sideline (I mean kill/imprison etc) you before your time is over, and if you make sure there’s no clear successor, power vacuum is guaranteed.
CCP will have no trouble of succeeding Xi as it’s a single party system.
The farther term limits are in the past the harder it will be.
The population issue is heavily overblown
I’d say it’s quite the opposite. Based on conversations with people who grew up in the one-child system and considering that one of the key elements of raising quality of life was reduction of births and spending more resources on these fewer kids, that are often traditionally raised by grandparents in their early years while parents are being economically productive. So people would have to compromise their present comfort to some extent to boost births. I’ve not seen a single nation in the world that succeeded in persistently raising births through pronatalist policy.
I’m not saying that this will be China’s end, but realistically they have to either lower quality of life for the populace and/or really switch away from cheap manual labor as their primary model towards more automation etc.
…China basically has to do nothing to win geopolitica these days.
I totally agree with this part.
I’m not convinced that shrinking population is at all an issue for a developed country that can replace workers with technology. China is already one if the most automated countries in the world and currently running the biggest infrastructure investments ever. I think if anyone can handle population reduction it’s probably China.
I’m not convinced that shrinking population is at all an issue for a developed country that can replace workers with technology.
OK, so why do other developed countries panic about shrinking and aging populations? Developed countries “solved” this issue by outsourcing low-skilled manual labor to China. But a population tree isn’t only about manufacturing, it’s also about caring for an aging population. Our growth-based economic systems are quite vulnerable to this.
China is already one if the most automated countries in the world and currently running the biggest infrastructure investments ever.
There’s no precedence for infrastructure investments to resolve loss of workers on the scale that China is facing. Infrastructure also needs to be maintained by people. There’s also an unprecedented potential for a real-estate crisis, considering the devaluation of housing if more and more becomes uninhabited.
I think if anyone can handle population reduction it’s probably China.
Sure, they just have to achieve like 2-3 unprecedented things that also come with unprecedented consequences, etc. These responses feel like being dismissive for sake of being dismissive. My point remains: the Western powers (and russia) are dealing with precedented, or at least predicted issues, many accelerated by aging despots. China has been winning putin’s war, so time serves their purposes etc, but their hegemony isn’t guaranteed either.
Nah I think it can be reduced to efficiency loss but if you replace that loss with gains through technology you can maintain the system and I think we can definitely see that. Contemporary Chinese is much more productive than what was 50 years ago and 2050? China with its current technology progression is looking very good in that regard.
On the opposite end theres Italy which doesn’t have the same tech capabilities so they can only really import more people to sustain.
I think the benchmarks are Japan and South Korea, and their example suggest otherwise. Again, I do think it’s absolutely possible for China to overcome these challenges, but it’s not a given. Truth be told still more likely than the US fixing its fascist problem.
A “peaceful” unification with Taiwan (meaning no open war) is obviously in China’s interest. I don’t think being part of the PR of China is something Taiwan or any nation should go for, regardless of their influence over the world; Hong Kong’s recent history should be a warning in that regard. But China doesn’t want a war with Taiwan, they want Taiwan and would probably accept a war to achieve that goal, but would prefer to avoid it.
Not an alliance? They run joint naval exercises and cooperate on social media psy-ops, they couldn’t be more allied if Putin and Jinping shared an apartment and fucked on the balcony.
Jingping is the Given Name, Xi is the Family Name. Usually world leaders are referred to by their Family Name.
😉
Got it, The Murderous Cocksucker Winnie the Pooh. Did that clarify what jndividual I was referring to?
xD
I mean, we could call hitler the “austrian dude who failed art school twice”
🤣
This should probably make a lot of people here on lemmy very happy.
People? No. Tankies maybe, but not people.
Fair point.
America was already bowing to china because of Biden. Dont be fooled.
America was bowing to China because of cheap goods.
Lmao
All that needs to be said, really
