It's not USD purchase specifically, it's exchanging your RMB for any foreign currency that's restricted. The Communist Party keeps people's money hostage and the reason is very clear: The rich obviously do not trust that they're safe. There is no rule of law, you can be arbitrarily locked up and have your savings taken from you at any time. All it takes for example is a change in leaders, as the Xi purge has shown. So they take their money abroad. To Canada, to the US, the UK and elsewhere.
The bill is probably needed but this is a bad look for the US whichever way you view it. I could go into long details but in short the situation we have now with increasing trade restrictions, stock delistings and so forth is the culmination of catastrophically failed policy towards the Chinese regime. The US and other developed countries were completely wrong and naive in the way they dealt with China. In fairness, in the 80s and 90s no one could have foreseen the current development and it was a reasonable assumption that with economic growth the country would liberalize. Even under Hu/Wen, I can see how people could convince themselves into believing increasing economic ties would make things better. Although already back in the late 2000s it was clear that the promise to open up the markets was a lie that never happened. Foreign ownership continued to be restricted, companies were forced into joint ventures (aka "thanks for the blueprints, suckers"), the Yuan control actually got tighter...
Western countries plus Japan, Korea and Taiwan made the Communist Party rich and powerful. Without all that foreign investment and technology transfer Mainland China would still be a broken backwater. Corporations in the developed world had gold glittering in their eyes when they looked at China and it's massive population. The Chinese regime found that one fatal flaw in free market capitalist systems: While economically they work, there is no incentive for the corporate leadership to do what's best for the country. Those who spearheaded the outsourcing of jobs and factories profited massively. As did the shareholders initially. It only came at the cost of the future of all the less wealthy people in the respective countries. Plus now they have a nuclear power pouring more and more billions into their military, preparing for war, while running concentration camps and allying with Russia and Iran.
Currency controls are the purview of nation states. Sometimes preventing the currency from leaving, sometimes from using the currency of an adversary.
The digital yuan is a form of Chinese soft power projection (as the US dollar is similarly), and it's not entirely unreasonable to dissuade its use (depending on your geopolitical views).
You seem to be implying being hypocritical isn't the optimal geopolitical strategy.
Akin to saying, "it's bad when you do things that make you powerful, but good when we do them" which is unquestionably true from the perspective of any individual great power.
I don’t know all the details about digital yuan but USA has enjoyed an exorbitant luxury by being the world’s reserve currency. I can see how senators with more political and macro economic experience than I would favor this ban.
I’m curious to learn what the realpolitik behind this really is.
Are these the same geniuses who "attacked" RUB? They "damaged" it so much it's up 25% over USD this year and the central bank has had to slash interest rates... I'm sure the Chinese are very concerned.
The currency controls have been repeatedly loosened, though it's difficult to try to find what the latest rules are. Russia's now growing concerned that the Ruble is growing too strong. That can hurt exports and exporters, as it means [relatively] higher domestic costs + lower profits.
Temporarily true in certain jurisdictions, but OTOH one may with RUB purchase oil, natural gas, palladium, nickel, copper, steel, aluminum, wheat, fertilizer, etc. So, those who need e.g. catalytic converters, especially if they live on the 70% of the planet where there are no limits on RUB whatsoever, will probably continue to use it.
If you think it is nothing more than a "bank with a nice API", I've got some oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you.
It is a specific CCP initiative to project power and track both its citizens and foreigners and undermine the power of western democracies and the power of the Euro and Dollar.
We were fools to not resist the offer to give away strategic manufacturing technologies and capabilities to China in exchange for cheap labor and a few quarters of profit. We'd be even greater fools to allow this next camel's nose under the tent (Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...).
Even if the senators are typically Luddites, this is a very good move and cannot happen soon enough.
The west has learned how easy it is for China to take advantage of price arbitrage. This is especially true when they block access to their market for the thing being competed.
For example, some of my colleagues used to work at US solar companies before they all collapsed due to the market being flooded by below cost Chinese panels.
If a country‘s government is willing to back technology below cost (or by blocking their market only for competitors), that is an appropriate place for tariffs or banning.
>inefficient capital and labor allocations, which create waste.
You can thank this 'inefficient capital' to almost all modern innovations. In reality, the US System has evolved to be no different than China, only slightly more people have their hand in the pot in the US.
We also heavily subsidize electric energy production, manufacturing and all other manners of industry. We just don't allow sweat shops in manufacturing anymore, only tech.
Agree. And this is similar to policy US itself took (and many other rising economic powers) in the early 1800's [0]
"The American System was an economic plan that played an important role in American policy during the first half of the 19th century. Rooted in the "American School" ideas of Alexander Hamilton, the plan "consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other 'internal improvements' to develop profitable markets for agriculture".
The establishment of a protective tariff, a 20%–25% tax on imported goods, would protect a nation's business from foreign competition. Congress passed a tariff in 1816 which made European goods more expensive and encouraged consumers to buy relatively cheap American-made goods."
The unelected Chinese government created a system wherein the Chinese taxpayers were (unknowingly) subsidizing panel production so that Chinese companies could sell their panels in other markets below the cost of materials.
This prevents competition from forming… yes the US government should do more, but it is slower in a democracy to respond…
To be fair, most US competitive products in the private sector arose from the public sector taking most of the risk away in publicly funded research from consumer electronics or aerospace to pharmaceutics. The internet and agent orange came from project AGILE in ARPA. How much electing did you partake in either?
Globalization and free-trade were beneficial when US was unipolar hegemon (though arguably not being protectionist against China enabled China's rise)... but in earlier periods of America's primary growth, "bans" of foreign good through protectionism favoring domestic industries is what made America strong.[0]
Innovation is not antithetical to taking heavy-handed policy targeting adversaries, whether through trade or monetary/financial policy.
You mean a USB cable will cost 2,50 instead of 50 cents and will last longer than 1 use and will be made out of materials that don't cause cancer and neurotoxicity and my purchase will not be sponsoring a world-war-hungry genocidal regime?
In what world does this even affect the Chinese economy? We’re talking about restricting Chinese payment apps from American app stores. The Chinese economy is driven by users who have access to the Chinese app stores
> prohibit app stores from hosting apps that enable transactions in China’s digital yuan
I think it would be reasonable to restrict usage of digital yuan by US businesses, but complete deplatforming seems annoying
I get that “China bad” is a popular position, but all you’re doing is punishing Americans who might want to travel to China or interact with Chinese friends (or worse: force those Americans to buy Chinese phones to avoid the deplatforming)
Every government routinely does things worth criticism. I don’t mean to do moral equivocation between all possible different wrongs, but some wrongs do get amplified way more than other comparable wrongs.
The difference being that those people stood trial, whether or not you think the sentence was justified.
Earnestly, can you see how that's different from being taken away from your home in the middle of the night because your provincial government decided they don't like the way you practice your religion?
Does it make sense to you, Hung, that those two situations are very different?
Comparing criminals convicted of crimes (taking into account the unfairness of the law of course) with innocent people rounded up because they are the wrong ethnicity or religion is cynical, even for a tankie.
Even with all the anti-government rhetoric in the US when it comes to political discussions and the dysfunctional state of congress it's pretty clear that the US has a much more pleasant form of government to live under.
As someone who isn't a huge cheerleader for America I'll add a few specific points.
The US rather recently used tear gas to disperse a crowd in an absolutely unjustifiable action - while China has been regularly assaulting Hong Kong residents that are trying to preserve their comparatively free local government.
China is chomping at the bit to seize and annex the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) while the US has (granted, with a fair bit of awful execution) generally entered into wars without the explicit goal of bringing more territory under a dictator.
On American internet I can criticize Biden, Trump, Manchin and Cruz without being concerned over what consequences the government will try and visit on me for my disloyalty.
As a young teenager I watched a neighbor of mine flee the country after 9/11 due to their Omani heritage and relations and I was horrified at how middle-easterners were treated. Some Americans were even kidnapped in the middle of the night and detained (I'd argue illegally) in Gitmo. China has routinely rounded up anti-party agitators.
In my early adulthood I watched a semi-serious debate in Vermont about voluntarily leaving the union - anyone even talking about advocating for a free and independent Tibet is routinely arrested.
America has shifty credit score companies that dictate what you can and can't afford through opaque, mysterious and often quite flawed metrics - China has social credit.
America, as flawed as they may be, has elections, and, again as flawed as they may be, does have two parties - precisely one more party than China has. It'd be really nice if both countries actually had a sane number of political parties but hey 2 > 1.
> America, as flawed as they may be, has elections, and, again as flawed as they may be, does have two parties - precisely one more party than China has. It'd be really nice if both countries actually had a sane number of political parties but hey 2 > 1.
All those elections didn't stop a murderous rampage in the Middle East, resulting in the death and displacement of millions.
As mentioned above, I'm not a cheerleader for America and I think I've quite clearly pointed out a lot of awful qualities about the country - my comparisons weren't "Here's why America is unimpeachably awesome vs. something terrible about China" - I tried to pick especially warty examples for America.
If you want to say "America Bad" hey, I'm with you - but if you want to say "America is worse than China" then I think you've got some pretty rose tinted glasses on.
And, lastly, this entire thread has reeked of whataboutism. Given your objection I tried to actually provide an explanation, so feel free to take that as you will.
As does America. Internment of Japanese Americans, Vietnam War, Iraq War + the various war crimes committed there etc etc. most countries have things about them worth despising. Just depends on how long your memory is.
I'm okay letting go of things which happened before any current politician was in office. The past is the past, but I can despise the CCP for what they are doing right now.
Yeah, you're cheerleading for the CCP, I get it. The intent alone that underlies genocide is not at all comparable to the questionable wars the US gets involved in for reasons many of us don't agree with.
And think about the bright side. We can bitch here all we want about the US Government and I feel zero.... ZERO concern that they're going to track me down and punish me. Cannot say the same in China about the CCP.
Okay, then blind hate for the US. You've actually attempted to equate civilian casualties of war with genocide, which is.... amazing.
> Tell that to Julian Assange.
Okay, sure. Has he ever been in the custody of the US govt? Was he accused of criticizing the government, or helping someone else divulge classified info? Whether you think that's what he was doing or not, you're stretching a looooong ways here to try and make the US govt as bad as the CCP. You've got a long ways to go.
At the end of this giant thread, you're still claiming that Russia is doing a genocide in Ukraine? UN says 4000 Ukrainian civilians have died so far in this violent clash between heavily armed militaries. In the last eight years 14000 people died in Donbas alone because Ukraine government couldn't enforce the Minsk agreements on its own Nazi battalions. (These are real Nazis, whose grandparents are still honored in Ukraine for helping Germans liquidate Jews, Roma, and Poles. This ain't the Jan 6 buffalo-hat fake Nazis.) Of course both of those figures are dwarfed by the deaths in e.g. Yemen. How is it that you've picked out this smallest death toll as a genocide?
You would have to be purposefully blind of the truth at this point, which you are. That's something between you and your own sense of morality, stop wasting our time with this rubbish.
Maybe most of USA war media pretends to believe everything that the infamously corrupt Ukraine government says, but I don't have to. I can remember at least five TV wars, and in every case we heard lots of manipulative lies from the TV over the first several months. There's no reason to believe this is an exception.
Not that I admire Russia or anything. It is a crime to invade another nation except in response to violent military action. However, that isn't genocide. Even if it were, we'd decide that after international experts had thoroughly investigated. That hasn't happened yet.
You seem kind of emotional. Perhaps deeply-felt emotion might cause someone to believe everything the TV says?
"Yeah but what about Iraq" is not a response to any of the evidence supplied on Russian crimes in Ukraine, it's a way for you to feel better about supporting the enemies of your enemy.
I have not ITT mentioned Iraq. Supporting the enemies of one's enemy is fairly common, although again that's not something I've done here. My enemy, and that of all ethical Americans, is the USA military-industrial complex. No one in Russia or China or wherever is their enemy. People overseas are just resources for them, grist for their blood-mill. Soon enough we may find that we too have been reclassified into resources.
Yes you did. You just don't have the courage to say "because Iraq was wrong, Ukraine doesn't matter." Because that is what you are implying, but it's so nonsensical you must hide behind platitudes.
> Supporting the enemies of one's enemy is fairly common..
As the kids say, "lol".
> although again that's not something I've done here
My word you don't have to courage to stand behind any of your beliefs, do you?
> My enemy, and that of all ethical Americans, is the USA military-industrial complex. No one in Russia or China or wherever is their enemy.
Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine wrong, yes or no. Is the massive amount of evidence for a targeted killings of civilians proof of genocide, yes or no. And if your answer is "no one can know because they got Iraq WMDs wrong", don't bother.
Julian Assange is held in the UK because the US asked him to be extradited. Do you read news?
"Civilian casualties of war" -> This is some NK-level mental gymnastics. "It's ok when the US murders people, but not cool when the Russians do it". People die either way.
considering that Russia's actions in Ukraine are now the threshold for a genocide, the US and its allies have committed four genocides just in the last 20 years - in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya and in Syria
In addition to the more recent observations of sibling comments:
The actions on the western frontier were explicitly intended and contemporaneously described as genocide. After we ran out of Native Americans to kill, we hopped the Pacific to Philippines where more than 10% of the population perished in five years. CIA managed the Indonesian massacres of well over a million innocent people. The answer must be at least... three genocides? Historians might discover more! For instance, are we sure there are no American fingerprints on Cambodia? I think rather we feel lucky not to have found any undeniable links yet...
I save my outrage for governments and politicians that are actually in power today. Whether China, the US, Russia, whoever. Sins of the parents and all that.
I have the distinct feeling that your "outrage" is even a fair bit more selective than that... Anyway, don't look my direction for "outrage". Only chumps get upset about wet rain-clouds or imperialistic capitalism.
I sincerely attempted to answer your question. It wasn't obvious that you meant "how many in the last two weeks?"
So, when do we expect to see that outrage for the people that invaded and destabilized Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Syria and continue to kill countless people with drone murders?
are you serious? It is irrefutable that the US is built on the genocide of an entire continent of people who lived here before settler colonialism. Hundreds of cultures, millions of people, hundreds of millions who would've been born but now never will be. These are basic facts
Raytheon weapons don't sell themselves! Ukraine has generated $54B this year, but where will the profits be next year? In-the-know lobbyists say: "Taiwan!"
Two things can simultaneously be true - the military industrial complex can exploit global politics to make money above and beyond what's necessary to actually provide aide to countries.
I think the last big weapons deal the US signed before agreeing to help Ukraine was subsidizing Saudi Arabia killing Yemenese in a bid to extract value from their civil war.
Seems really odd to call a deal where Saudi Arabia was paying us for weapons in Yemen a "subsidy". You can argue that we shouldn't have allowed the sale, but it was a net profit for America.
The idea that USA has any interests whatsoever in Ukraine was definitely "made up" by someone. [0] If anything, Taiwan's outsized international commercial importance makes it less likely to be the next site of disastrous war. Or so I hope...
"Fake news" has become a flag phrase, like "whataboutism". The first comment in the thread to include it, either to praise or to damn, was made by the biggest moron.
That's decidedly not what we are talking about. Interesting use of projection to get out ahead of anyone accusing you of whataboutism/appeal to hypocrisy.
When war is so unimaginably profitable to the people with an outsized influence in the running of country, that is going to play a significant role in deciding how we shape our geopolitical relations. This is precisely what Eisenhower warned about in his famous farewell address. [1] Literally everything he warned society about has come to pass.
It's hard to position Russia as a state enemy when half the politicians keep apologizing for and justifying their every action and decreeing any criticism of them as "a hoax".
Certainly seems to be the case though, they’re clearly doing big work to build their own sphere outside east Asia, and seem much more competent than Russia, whom NATO seems to be paralyzed with.
The obvious reply here is that WePay/AliPay are also parasitic payment networks, whose parent companies are propped up by the CCP for gains of their own. I also enjoy the spirit of this law, frankly, because China has a default-no attitude towards the outside world, so why the hell would we openly accept something like Digital Yuan? I see no reason why we should let China out of it’s corded-off world only when it finds it beneficial.
> why the hell would we openly accept something like Digital Yuan?
Define “accept”? If I, an American with an American phone, travel to China and can’t buy lunch because the American government mandated deplatforming of the payment app, that’s really annoying to me.
I agree that nobody in the US should be using the e-CNY in place of the USD, but a more targeted law could accomplish this without trying to police the applications I can install on my iPhone
I frankly doubt e-CNY even has a chance to take off here, in my local Chinatown everyone pays by credit card not by Alipay or Wepay.
> an American with an American phone, travel to China and can’t buy lunch because the American government mandated deplatforming of the payment app, that’s really annoying to me
Politicians only like hammers so all problems are nails, maybe you are right that the enforcement mechanism is overly broad but I also think the situation you paint is inaccurate/made to seem more difficult than it actually would be. My parents went to China and did fine paying for things 13 years before Digital Yuan was created, my (naive) assumption is that, like all places tourists are herded in any country, the place you go will accept both native currency and USD, watches, nice shoes, jewelry…
You would think but just in 2019 I’ve run into places where pay is by app only, restaurants where you order/pay by scanning QR code, etc. honestly my thought on the way home is that China is way ahead of us in terms of convenience technology on phones (for better or worse)
If you go to China, get a burner, or buy a Chinese cell phone, the same you're buying a plane ticket, or paying for a hotel. If it's for work, ask your company to pay for it.
I don’t understand what a CBDC is. To the best of my knowledge, it seems like money that is backed by a SQL DB in DC or Beijing rather than paper with anti-counterfeiting measures.
It sure seems a lot harder to trust that a CBDC wouldn’t be abused than a cash-based system, which at least has a paper trail (literally).
Would this make the Digital Yuan more banned than Terra or Ethereum?
That would show the true colors of how much of America's liberalism (e.g. free markets) is conditional on free markets being favorable for American hegemony.
As long as everyone agrees on a global form of payment (USD) with swift and a 'Friendly?' globalistic enviroment there will continue to be no need for crypto.
However as we start to see fragmentation in the payment space between Russia, China and the EU/US along with an explicit writing in the transactions to disallow crosstalk, there start to be some kind of 'use' for crypto again.
The need for a verifiable, self-soverign, uncontrollable medium of exchange starts to become useful again.
Problems with the above:
Low liquidity,
uncontrollable is a loose term here. If the US forces publicly traded companies to dump crypto it will cause a huge crypto winter and a huge amount of money to be 'eaten up' by the bulls.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadThe digital yuan is basically a bank with a nice API and should be treated similarly.
The real solution is to fix our financial system so that transferring USD is cheap, fast and easily done through an API.
The bill is probably needed but this is a bad look for the US whichever way you view it. I could go into long details but in short the situation we have now with increasing trade restrictions, stock delistings and so forth is the culmination of catastrophically failed policy towards the Chinese regime. The US and other developed countries were completely wrong and naive in the way they dealt with China. In fairness, in the 80s and 90s no one could have foreseen the current development and it was a reasonable assumption that with economic growth the country would liberalize. Even under Hu/Wen, I can see how people could convince themselves into believing increasing economic ties would make things better. Although already back in the late 2000s it was clear that the promise to open up the markets was a lie that never happened. Foreign ownership continued to be restricted, companies were forced into joint ventures (aka "thanks for the blueprints, suckers"), the Yuan control actually got tighter...
Western countries plus Japan, Korea and Taiwan made the Communist Party rich and powerful. Without all that foreign investment and technology transfer Mainland China would still be a broken backwater. Corporations in the developed world had gold glittering in their eyes when they looked at China and it's massive population. The Chinese regime found that one fatal flaw in free market capitalist systems: While economically they work, there is no incentive for the corporate leadership to do what's best for the country. Those who spearheaded the outsourcing of jobs and factories profited massively. As did the shareholders initially. It only came at the cost of the future of all the less wealthy people in the respective countries. Plus now they have a nuclear power pouring more and more billions into their military, preparing for war, while running concentration camps and allying with Russia and Iran.
The digital yuan is a form of Chinese soft power projection (as the US dollar is similarly), and it's not entirely unreasonable to dissuade its use (depending on your geopolitical views).
"You invaded someone else therefore you should allow yourself to be invaded."
Akin to saying, "it's bad when you do things that make you powerful, but good when we do them" which is unquestionably true from the perspective of any individual great power.
(One reason I could never be a politician is that I can’t empathise with nationalism like that; I recognise it, but it feels a bit dirty to me).
They can shut a country financial system down at any moment.
I bet they are afraid of being victims of what they know it's possible with such powers.
I’m curious to learn what the realpolitik behind this really is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/26/business/russia-rates-rub...
Temporarily true in certain jurisdictions, but OTOH one may with RUB purchase oil, natural gas, palladium, nickel, copper, steel, aluminum, wheat, fertilizer, etc. So, those who need e.g. catalytic converters, especially if they live on the 70% of the planet where there are no limits on RUB whatsoever, will probably continue to use it.
It is a specific CCP initiative to project power and track both its citizens and foreigners and undermine the power of western democracies and the power of the Euro and Dollar.
We were fools to not resist the offer to give away strategic manufacturing technologies and capabilities to China in exchange for cheap labor and a few quarters of profit. We'd be even greater fools to allow this next camel's nose under the tent (Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...).
Even if the senators are typically Luddites, this is a very good move and cannot happen soon enough.
For example, some of my colleagues used to work at US solar companies before they all collapsed due to the market being flooded by below cost Chinese panels.
If a country‘s government is willing to back technology below cost (or by blocking their market only for competitors), that is an appropriate place for tariffs or banning.
Rather, the U.S. failure to do so is bad.
You can thank this 'inefficient capital' to almost all modern innovations. In reality, the US System has evolved to be no different than China, only slightly more people have their hand in the pot in the US.
We also heavily subsidize electric energy production, manufacturing and all other manners of industry. We just don't allow sweat shops in manufacturing anymore, only tech.
"The American System was an economic plan that played an important role in American policy during the first half of the 19th century. Rooted in the "American School" ideas of Alexander Hamilton, the plan "consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other 'internal improvements' to develop profitable markets for agriculture".
The establishment of a protective tariff, a 20%–25% tax on imported goods, would protect a nation's business from foreign competition. Congress passed a tariff in 1816 which made European goods more expensive and encouraged consumers to buy relatively cheap American-made goods."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_System_(economic_plan...
This prevents competition from forming… yes the US government should do more, but it is slower in a democracy to respond…
When the ruling class interests align, the US acts swiftly.
Innovation is not antithetical to taking heavy-handed policy targeting adversaries, whether through trade or monetary/financial policy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_System_(economic_plan...
The only reason why it's popular is because our traditional banking system is so anti innovation and refuses to offer decent APIs.
Prepare to see Made in Japan in everything you buy.
Oh, and every item will also cost 5x more. But it's just a detail...
Cheers!
oh noes!
I think it would be reasonable to restrict usage of digital yuan by US businesses, but complete deplatforming seems annoying
I get that “China bad” is a popular position, but all you’re doing is punishing Americans who might want to travel to China or interact with Chinese friends (or worse: force those Americans to buy Chinese phones to avoid the deplatforming)
America needs a new bogeyman now that Muslims are not scary anymore.
Earnestly, can you see how that's different from being taken away from your home in the middle of the night because your provincial government decided they don't like the way you practice your religion?
Does it make sense to you, Hung, that those two situations are very different?
Even with all the anti-government rhetoric in the US when it comes to political discussions and the dysfunctional state of congress it's pretty clear that the US has a much more pleasant form of government to live under.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.[1]
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Based on what exactly? You made a claim, without anything to back it up.
The US rather recently used tear gas to disperse a crowd in an absolutely unjustifiable action - while China has been regularly assaulting Hong Kong residents that are trying to preserve their comparatively free local government.
China is chomping at the bit to seize and annex the Republic of China (aka Taiwan) while the US has (granted, with a fair bit of awful execution) generally entered into wars without the explicit goal of bringing more territory under a dictator.
On American internet I can criticize Biden, Trump, Manchin and Cruz without being concerned over what consequences the government will try and visit on me for my disloyalty.
As a young teenager I watched a neighbor of mine flee the country after 9/11 due to their Omani heritage and relations and I was horrified at how middle-easterners were treated. Some Americans were even kidnapped in the middle of the night and detained (I'd argue illegally) in Gitmo. China has routinely rounded up anti-party agitators.
In my early adulthood I watched a semi-serious debate in Vermont about voluntarily leaving the union - anyone even talking about advocating for a free and independent Tibet is routinely arrested.
America has shifty credit score companies that dictate what you can and can't afford through opaque, mysterious and often quite flawed metrics - China has social credit.
America, as flawed as they may be, has elections, and, again as flawed as they may be, does have two parties - precisely one more party than China has. It'd be really nice if both countries actually had a sane number of political parties but hey 2 > 1.
All those elections didn't stop a murderous rampage in the Middle East, resulting in the death and displacement of millions.
If you want to say "America Bad" hey, I'm with you - but if you want to say "America is worse than China" then I think you've got some pretty rose tinted glasses on.
And, lastly, this entire thread has reeked of whataboutism. Given your objection I tried to actually provide an explanation, so feel free to take that as you will.
There is plenty to despise here.
And think about the bright side. We can bitch here all we want about the US Government and I feel zero.... ZERO concern that they're going to track me down and punish me. Cannot say the same in China about the CCP.
> We can bitch here all we want about the US Government and I feel zero.... ZERO concern that they're going to track me down and punish me.
Tell that to Julian Assange.
> Tell that to Julian Assange.
Okay, sure. Has he ever been in the custody of the US govt? Was he accused of criticizing the government, or helping someone else divulge classified info? Whether you think that's what he was doing or not, you're stretching a looooong ways here to try and make the US govt as bad as the CCP. You've got a long ways to go.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-ukraine-inves...
https://twitter.com/nikicaga/status/1532802261696618496
Not that I admire Russia or anything. It is a crime to invade another nation except in response to violent military action. However, that isn't genocide. Even if it were, we'd decide that after international experts had thoroughly investigated. That hasn't happened yet.
You seem kind of emotional. Perhaps deeply-felt emotion might cause someone to believe everything the TV says?
ps. wrong sockpuppet
And you aren't fooling anyone.
Yes you did. You just don't have the courage to say "because Iraq was wrong, Ukraine doesn't matter." Because that is what you are implying, but it's so nonsensical you must hide behind platitudes.
> Supporting the enemies of one's enemy is fairly common..
As the kids say, "lol".
> although again that's not something I've done here
My word you don't have to courage to stand behind any of your beliefs, do you?
> My enemy, and that of all ethical Americans, is the USA military-industrial complex. No one in Russia or China or wherever is their enemy.
Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine wrong, yes or no. Is the massive amount of evidence for a targeted killings of civilians proof of genocide, yes or no. And if your answer is "no one can know because they got Iraq WMDs wrong", don't bother.
"Civilian casualties of war" -> This is some NK-level mental gymnastics. "It's ok when the US murders people, but not cool when the Russians do it". People die either way.
how many millions of civilians are dead or displaced directly or indirectly because of China's actions?
The actions on the western frontier were explicitly intended and contemporaneously described as genocide. After we ran out of Native Americans to kill, we hopped the Pacific to Philippines where more than 10% of the population perished in five years. CIA managed the Indonesian massacres of well over a million innocent people. The answer must be at least... three genocides? Historians might discover more! For instance, are we sure there are no American fingerprints on Cambodia? I think rather we feel lucky not to have found any undeniable links yet...
I sincerely attempted to answer your question. It wasn't obvious that you meant "how many in the last two weeks?"
I think the last big weapons deal the US signed before agreeing to help Ukraine was subsidizing Saudi Arabia killing Yemenese in a bid to extract value from their civil war.
Seems really odd to call a deal where Saudi Arabia was paying us for weapons in Yemen a "subsidy". You can argue that we shouldn't have allowed the sale, but it was a net profit for America.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/22/middleeast/arms-exports-saudi...
But that doesn't fit the narrative, now does it?
Ukraine does not get a check for N billion dollars, it gets N billion dollars worth of outdated equipment at MSRP
"Fake news" has become a flag phrase, like "whataboutism". The first comment in the thread to include it, either to praise or to damn, was made by the biggest moron.
[0] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/capitalizing-on-con...
[1] - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp
Two party political systems are the worst.
WePay/AliPay merchant fees are around 0.6%, competing against that could dull some shine.
I’m not claiming it’s the only or main reason, but I expect a lot of lobbying dollars will be backing it.
Define “accept”? If I, an American with an American phone, travel to China and can’t buy lunch because the American government mandated deplatforming of the payment app, that’s really annoying to me.
I agree that nobody in the US should be using the e-CNY in place of the USD, but a more targeted law could accomplish this without trying to police the applications I can install on my iPhone
I frankly doubt e-CNY even has a chance to take off here, in my local Chinatown everyone pays by credit card not by Alipay or Wepay.
Politicians only like hammers so all problems are nails, maybe you are right that the enforcement mechanism is overly broad but I also think the situation you paint is inaccurate/made to seem more difficult than it actually would be. My parents went to China and did fine paying for things 13 years before Digital Yuan was created, my (naive) assumption is that, like all places tourists are herded in any country, the place you go will accept both native currency and USD, watches, nice shoes, jewelry…
With the pandemic US has caught up a lot though
It sure seems a lot harder to trust that a CBDC wouldn’t be abused than a cash-based system, which at least has a paper trail (literally).
That would show the true colors of how much of America's liberalism (e.g. free markets) is conditional on free markets being favorable for American hegemony.
However as we start to see fragmentation in the payment space between Russia, China and the EU/US along with an explicit writing in the transactions to disallow crosstalk, there start to be some kind of 'use' for crypto again.
The need for a verifiable, self-soverign, uncontrollable medium of exchange starts to become useful again.
Problems with the above:
Low liquidity, uncontrollable is a loose term here. If the US forces publicly traded companies to dump crypto it will cause a huge crypto winter and a huge amount of money to be 'eaten up' by the bulls.