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Jason's avatar

"whether there are any China experts left in the U.S. government"

There have never been China experts in the US. What is different now is that China pseudoexperts are more vocal than before.

"whether tariffs are designed to deliberately collapse China’s economy"

They are at least partially designed to do so.

"whether the United States may be deliberately goading China into launching a disastrous war over Taiwan"

This one is a rationalization of America's incoherent Taiwan policy. If the US wants to avoid war, it makes no sense to provoke China in ways that do not actually materially enhance Taiwan's defense (e.g. Pelosi visit). China is attributing to malice what can actually be explained by stupidity.

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Dennis Wilder's avatar

Ryan, this is an excellent analysis of China and a very superficial analysis of the US. I would suggest that perhaps you have not traveled enough within the US to see happy Americans enjoying their freedoms and ability to debate politics intensely. May I suggest a Friday night football game at a high school in West Texas?

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Ryan Fedasiuk's avatar

I do love freedom, the Southwest, and political debate! But I'll hop on this comment to clarify something, because the tone of my post seems to have left some readers confused:

I personally have confidence in the American system and would much rather continue living under Pax Americana — but it is obvious that a certain brand of declinism has swallowed the public narrative in DC and much of America today. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults now say the American dream doesn't hold true anymore or never did. Fewer than half of young people are optimistic about the future of the country, while two-thirds report being fearful about the future of democracy in America. Trust in government and virtually all of our social institutions has cratered to record lows. For the first time, nearly a third of people my age report being embarrassed to be American.

Much of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. America has always had problems, and has survived far worse. You can see the seeds of greatness and find inspiration among our builders and entrepreneurs. But, whatever its merits, our surge in national self-doubt is proving infectious both at home and abroad. It has empowered political factions with little regard for the ideals that have, for a century, defined what it means to be an American and provided the very source of our national power. And it has lent credence to Xi Jinping's personal mantra that "the East is rising while the West is in decline."

I wrote earlier this summer about the stakes of what seems to be a deeper, civilizational struggle between the dignity of the individual and the seduction of the machine. I am and forever will be a defender of the American Idea — that democratic governance, for all its inefficiencies and frustrations, produces better outcomes for human flourishing than technocratic authoritarianism: https://www.choosingvictory.com/p/what-are-the-united-states-and-china

For me, visiting China did not change this framing. But it did update my thinking on what it means to cultivate civic faith. Though our systems are obviously not the same, I think we deny China's ability to approximate some of the fruits of liberalism at our own peril. We should be clear-eyed about what many people around the world consider to be liberty's cost-benefit analysis, not reflexively dismissive of the question.

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Ibrahim.'s avatar

You are almost there, Ryan. I told you few weeks ago how China had already won, and this century is theirs for taken. But now you are tentatively dipping your toe to that larger sobering paradigm shift. Which is difficult for an American to make. But the rest of the world, who never had a dog in this contest of the century between USA and China, already knew the outcome of it. As much of the rest of the world knew that the US was heading for a quite win over Soviet Union by late 1970s when it became apparent that dysfunctional and economically backward Soviet system wasn’t going or destined to last in the marathon against the US’s dynamic economy. But now it’s US that is the dysfunctional one, a financially extractive and rent-seeking one, where industrial competitiveness is no longer their forte. Hence why we are at the cusp of Industrial-based pax-Sinica global economic order.

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Godfree Roberts's avatar

Interesting, but marred by Cold War tropes. Some niggles:

1. "Even as a skeptic predisposed to find problems in China’s economic model"?? China's economic model(s) have worked well for 75 years. Why be skeptical?

2. "For all its dysfunction, the United States remains a superpower”?? A self-anointed superpower that has never won a war and lost wars to both Russia and China? C'mon.

3. "The foreign population that left during the pandemic simply never came back, and you can feel their absence everywhere". Perhaps you can, but I and 1.4 billion Chinese cannot.

4. "With fewer foreigners and an ever-tighter information environment, even sophisticated Chinese elites are working from caricatures of the United States”?? Nonsense. The average Chinese has a much more accurate picture of the US than the reverse.

5. "The Party’s success in sealing out Western influence has also sealed in ignorance about the American policy process and political economy”?? Can anyone understand Trump's policy process and political economy? Anyone at all?

6. "Though China’s universities are technically world-class, their primary draw remains financial and logistical rather than cultural or aspirational”.?? No, their primary draw is the opportunity to do great science, as their publications demonstrate.

7. "China seems to have worked out many of the kinks of authoritarian capitalism”??Authoritarian Capitalism is clearly an American thing, to which China's market socialism bears little resemblance.

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Opposcholar's avatar

"With fewer foreigners and an ever-tighter information environment, even sophisticated Chinese elites are working from caricatures of the United States”

So fucking fake, so fucking pretentious, so fucking boring. 😂

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